. >> good afternoon and happy new year. welcome to the january 22nd, 2015 meeting of the city and school joint select xlit . i am your chair, supervisor jane kim. i am

joibed by supervisors john afrl afl and john farrell and this is their last meeting with our committee this year. it's really been great to have two parents sit on the city select committee. parents are very interested in public school issues but also issues surrounding youth and their families, whether it's our expanded green shared schoolyard program to making sure that we are servicing our youth that are undocumented within our school district. they have been reassigned to other committees and we will be joined by supervisor david campos and david yee sandra mendoza-mcdonnell and joel fewer will be staying on with us. i want to recognize sf gov

tv for filming our event today and making it available to the public online and want to recognize jim low and jen smith. >> can we please call the first item. >> file no. 150040 update on willie brown junior middle school development. sponsored by you, supervisor. >> this is an item we heard last year when the school was under construction and we do have an update from sfusd on the opening, which is set for the fall of 2015 including an enrollment and facilities update. we have the principal, jimmy hoffman but while they are setting up their presentation i want to give the floor to commissioner sandra fewer to give an intro deduction and some background on the sharing request. she

really pushed this project when i was on the board of education to make building a comprehensive middle school in the bayview neighborhood a reality, one that we don't have today. this is the first time in a very, very long time the school district is actually constructing a new school. so it's really exciting to see what the modernizing of technology and science and the physical structure means for the learning of our children. commissioner fewer. >> thank you, supervisor kim. yes, so we are very excited about willie brown which is going to open in august, 2015. to give everybody a little background on it, we have not opened a brand new school, i think, the last one to open was diane feinstein in the sunset which was a long time ago. willie brown is at the site of our old willie brown in the bayview. the old site had been originally a police academy, it

was condemned and then we had children in it as part of our 21st century school and then also it was one of our dream schools. so instead of putting ada money into remodeling that school we decided that that community could also use a brand new school, since we have a lot of school age children in that area. so there has not been a middle school now in the bayview district for a couple of years. so this is very exciting to us, i think, that we're opening a brand new school, that it is going to encompass some of our best practices. we are over resourcing the school meaning we are giving it more resources than we would normally a school of this size, but san francisco unified school district would like to target really children who live in that area, which is 94124. so i think a wonderful thing about willie brown is that we already have some partners that have come on board to really support the learning that's

happening there and that we are looking at this school to be a showcase of our middle schools and encompassing many of our best practices, as i said, but also a very diverse learning environment in the bayview and we hope to capture most of the school-aged children that are middle school age at willie brown. thank you. >> thank you, commissioner fewer. so i want to bring up either mr. hobson or miss bach. >> good afternoon, supervisors and commissioners, thank you so much for having us here today. my name is julia bach, i am director of special projects for san francisco unified supervisors focusing on the reopening of willie brown middle school and i'm excited to introduce you to demetrius

hobson, the founding principal of willie brown. today we're going to talk about our staffing approach and open it up for questions. without further ado, principal hobson. >> good afternoon. >> i know it's not a big room but i want to greet you formally, board of supervisors, and commissioners. thank you for this opportunity to share the willie brown middle school opportunity for the students of san francisco unified school district. i'm also thankful for the opportunity to come work here under the leadership of superintendent carranza and deputy superintendent guadalupe guerrero i am from chicago, i attended chicago public schools and enrolled in morehouse school to study history, returned to chicago as a teacher. i taught for 7 years before going to the harvard graduate school of education. as a teacher i

taught for 7 years. i became a principal and the north lion dail unit in the chicago community had a health care clinic. after that i was asked by the cpo to run a school in west inc. inglewood and it was there that we began to implement common core standards to help our students prepare for the new assessments that were coming out nationwide. i'm an urban educator. that means that i have a special commitment to myself, to our families and to the communities that we serve. especially the children we work with. i attended chicago public schools k-12 and i was blessed to have multiple engaged and qualified

and committed teachers during my matriculation. i believe that a quality education should not be a crap shoot. there is no gamble in developing schools. staffing them with committed quality teachers and building family investment in the education of our children. we know what works and we have to be willing to do what works. i think that's what is happening here with the willie brown middle school, as president fewer suggested earlier. i believe schools should be safe, non-threatening environments with students and we must have positive relationships with our students for them to thrive. our schools must be safe and civil learning communities, psychologically and socially safe. we have a partnership with

stanford university, we have to remain mindful of our thought processes as we engage this work and we have to have a growth mindset for ourselves before we can incorporate it in our practice. negative thoughts abound around this particular project because we're doing something new, so our school is the place where our students will be affirmed, our families will be affirmed, and all peachers involved, our stake holders will be affirmed. a productive value which means the growth mindset in a non-threatening environment prepares our school to be high performing academically and behaviorally. the entire organization will be able to perform at high levels over time in order to produce the results of our vision. students will learn to work hard so that they can do the hard work. i want our children to be productive students now so that they become the productive citizens our families need in the future.

personally i believe that educate is liberation. fundamentally quality teaching and quality learning is education. but the freedom of choice, the freedom to choose your high school, choose your college, choose your career, that's liberation. so i became interested in sfusd primarily because of superintendent carranza's narrative around redemption, equality, equity and justice. his compelling vision of 2025 by which our first class of seniors will be -- our first class of students will be seniors in 2025. it is very evident during the administrator's institute over the summer that the goal is to create a type of school system that will support all children. very few districts have a top level administrator focused on

social justice. that appealed to me and that's why i applied for the willie brown middle school. something different is happening here. the board and the district wants different results, better outcomes, improved academic performance. there is no shame in leveling the playing field nor in setting prefaces to balance the educational opportunities of the unpreferred. i applaud the board of education of sfusd for having the bold and couragous values to be leaders and protect the futures of the children we will serve at willie brown middle school. our next faisz -- phase of work is in recruiting staff. i am looking for teachers who are disciplined, creative and ethical. i find teachers who possess these qualities help students access the content andy become leaders of their own learning. i want teachers who can build trusting relationships with their colleagues and with our

students. we have to have teachers who are facilitative and will guide our students through the learning process. finally, our students will grow in our instructional program. we will guide our students to develop skills that we use every day as professionals. i expect to hear students questioning the teacher, discussing their work with each other, and giving presentations of their projects. our families will be partners and engaged in the designing and supporting of our students' learning in the school and our social academic program. i will have an open door policy for parents to share their concerns, comments and resources with me directly. so over the last 3 months i visited 20 elementary schools, met with fellow educators and district leaders, attended 40 community meetings and events and participated in dozens of

district leadership -- district professional and development sessions and conferences. we have engaged over 500 families before i crafted the mission of willie brown middle school. i bring to the table a wealth of experiences and knowledge. however, we are moving forward with building our staff and our teachers will have the expertise and knowledge needed for us to serve the children of san francisco in the bayview at willie brown middle school. thank you. >> thank you, mr. hobson. you are walking us through the powerpoint presentation? >> yes, it's somewhat lengthy. >> be mindful of the time. >> welcome to willie brown middle school. as you can see by our rendering it's a gorgeous and state of the art facility. however, it is still under construction. just like our buildings under

construction, our faculty is also under construction. as you can see from this slide our building is under construction and so is our academic development. this fall we identified our founding school leader but we also initiated conversations around the academic program and with the department of public health. moving into the spring it's all about hiring on boarding our staff and on boarding our families. . >> so a part of our theory is that we need to make sure we are prepared for the children who are walking into willie brown middle school. children are applying from across the city with diverse backgrounds, not just (inaudible) but also academically so we designed an academic program that will push all our students no matter what level they are. we are also

building psychosocial and emotional supports. ultimately our children will walk out with the healthy habits of mind and lifestyle so they can be healthy in high school and career. guiding us in that is the graduate profile from the vision 2025 document i mentioned earlier, as well as the 10 shifts that our school district is making over time. this is the mission statement and i want to read it aloud for the record. willie brown middle school's mission is to provide an education that uses the engineering practices as a guide for students to develop the foundational skills and beliefs needed to successfully major in science, stem, engineering and math degrees. we want our students to secure stem professional careers. students who use technology as a tool to explore their identities expand their possibilities and be of service to others. ultimately our

students will become advocates of social justice, lerbing to protect and expand the rights of humanity in the 21st century. three principles that guide us in this work are engage, explore, excel. under engagement we want instruction to be captivating so our students and are focused during the learning process. to do that we are using digital tools and digital content to increase student engagement. we have a distributive leadership theory. under that theory, i am not the sole owner of the power in the school, it is distributed amongst my administrative staff and my teacher leaders as well as my teachers and ultimately our students and families so decisions are made collectively for our school at multiple levels where stake holders are invested. we have built into the schedule collaboration for teacher teams, emphasizing strong relationships between teachers, between students and

students, we will have smaller class sizes, wrap around support services and exciting extended learning opportunities meaning after school programming and summer school planning. for explore we are strongly implementing the common core state standards through the core curriculum of san francisco unified district but we are taking a multi disciplinary approach. that means our students will be involved in project-based learning where they will apply skills from different areas in their project. when they complete that we want them to present what they have learned to their peers and to their families. we are offering 4 labs the first lab is an establishment of a stem pathway where they will learn computer programs, graphics design as well as robotic , the second lab is a performing arts lab or a language lab where students can take an entry course in spanish or mandarin. our college prep lab is designed in a format to

help students develop those study habits and skill we talked about earlier for our students to develop the skill they need to be successful in high school aligned to the requirements of sat, act and a through g requirements from the state of california. our fourth lab will be health and physical education. finally, under excel, we believe personalized learning plans are important for students and teachers to track their growth as well as families so we are searching for a digital platform to support us in that. every classroom, core con kent course, we will offer acceleration to support our students who are underperforming as well as our students who are at grade level and push them further. our digital portfolio of learning is a profile of students' learning across the year, it's an account that they will have access to what they have mastered across each year that they matriculate through

our school. because of our partnerships our students will have access to experts in all fields and ultimately our students will be college and career ready. that is why we are having mapping through a through g requirement, advanced placement courses and those courses offered in high school so our students are prepared to enter algebra proficient when they enter high school. here is a sample of our schedule. the school will open around 7.30 am and it available tore breakfast klubs. that means students who arrive early, at every school i worked at we set the time we want students to arrive but there are always 5 to 10 percent who arrive early because their parents begin them.

at 8.30 instruction will begin. we start off with00 lab, the stem lab where students will learn computer coding, engineering, the visual and performing arts, the second period of the day on that alternating schedule we provide our health lab and physical education lab, also the college prep lab. that's a unique feature in our schedule. it's an advisory so in that class period students will receive the avid type support as well as social emotional learning. at 10.45 is our first period of core content instruction. you see that that is a 75-minute course and in that the letter i and the letter a stand for intervention. we want teachers to provide intervention and then provide shaded support for our students. that will happen again at 1:00 and