>> 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 2.30. the school day will end at 3.55 and

at 4:00 our afterschool programs will begin. afterschool programs will be housed for students to continue their accelerated learning, their intervention learning, their academic clubs and their sports clubs. >> mr. hobson, before you move on this is an unusual schedule in any middle school in terms of the length of the periods and also the length of the school day. is that correct? >> how did --. >> i know the school board members have probably heard this, but what was the thought praus is he behind it how did we determine this was the appropriate length of time for learning, what did we learn from the current way our periods are set up? it looks like there is, i mean it's not a 7th period but you have an extended school day in this process. i guess i'm curious about the process of getting to this point and also how the funding occurred for you to be able to have a small classroom ratio and advisory to student ratio. >> i will answer the first

part then hand it over to julia for the funding part. one, i was given a blank slate so we looked at what was happening nationwide. there are national projects and research-based reports about extended learning space within the school day, not just time across the day and year. within the school day students who attend 50-minute classes to 55-minute classes and they have 7 period it becomes quite a bit for them to handle. students who are underperforming do not benefit as much from constant rotation between teachers and classes. that's one thought we relied on. second, we wanted deeper learning. we want teachers to have the time and space to facilitate that. the changes that are being made in the shifts in our education system nationwide are centered around high level dmabd and rigor for the common core state standards

and a 50-minute course doesn't provide enough time for that deeper learning. with our integration we are using other classes within a particular course or discipline. for example, within a math class the teacher will institute a science practice or engineering practice or ela practice. students will need time to write about the problem they are solving. less problems, deeper learning. so that's another factor. third, there's a shift. if i go back to the vision 2025 document that was co-created with all of the stake holders in the city under the superintendent's leadership, the third item on that document of 10 shifts is redesign space and time. so we redesigned the time and the space in our schedule to match vision of 2025. >> commissioner fewer, although you can answer the

second part of my question after commissioner fewer. >> thank you, supervisor kim, i just wanted to add a little something on to what principal hobson has said. i think that at our district we are no longer looking at middle school as an extension of elementary school. we are seeing it as a launching pad for high school and most of our high schools now have a modified block schedule in some way. so this is aligning it with what a lot of our high schools already have, so seeing it as a step to high school we thought a block schedule also would be beneficial because of that. and another thing i think is different is the way we're teaching. we are no longer hoping that teachers are not teaching sitting down, students are sitting in front of them, they are teaching at a podium. what we are learned through all of our research is that we need our students to be working in groups. we need our students to be having discussions, we need students to be able to use

technology and the teachers to be facilitators of information rather than the teachers being all the holders of information. that takes much more time, much more collaborative work with the students. after we did our vision 2025 and spoke to a lot of people and sort of the tech world, the working world now, they are saying this is how they are working now. they are not working in isolation, everyone is working in groups and also with common core coming down, with our smarter balance assessments, students are being asked to do much more critical thinking and this also takes larger blocks of time in order to do that. so it's really, what i said about willie brown, capturing all the new research, things they are going to need, skills they are going to have to acquire to be successful in the 21st century. this schedule complements what our students need for the 21st century and using these skills are new skills which we should be

teaching all of our middle schoolers but at willie brown since it's just coming out the gate, we want to institute this early. in a way i think willie brown is an example of what all our middle schools should be like. we have done a lot of work at the elementary and seminar high schools and our middle school area is really weak. i think you remember that from when you were on the board. this encompasses all the best things you should be doing about middle school. >> were there labor issues in having teachers teach in a different module as well, or was that something that didn't need to get worked out for this. >> we are following the general contract. this is only 30 minutes longer than the traditional day. all our students will have their per diem sty pend for that time. >> the recruiting process, how are we recruiting process?

okay, it's coming up. how did the funding work for the smaller ratio? obviously we would like this for all schools and i'm glad willie brown is going to get that because we want willie brown to be successful and i wonder how the funding worked out that we overresource or just adequately resource the school for it to be successful. >> our classroom sizes are the same size as any other school, what's smaller is the advisory. that is happening for 75 minutes every other day, that advisor will help manage the personalized learning plan as well as the college curriculum, but that's because we're asking all of our staff to participate in this relationship building instead of just having core teachers become the advisors. >> and how are you funding this? >> i mean the general model is funded the same way as every other middle school in terms of the staff. however, the longer

school day was an added commitment that the school board put to this school for the additional 30 minutes every day, as well as the additional 30 for three weeks in june. >> and the advisors are also from the school district budget, the additional advisors. >> they are not additional, they are just part of the school staff. it's just rethinking the way that we're staffing and using our staff. >> so we can have a 15 to 1 advisor to student ratio in all of our middle schools currently? >> i can't speak to all the middle schools. >> you know commissioner kim, i think we made a commitment in this district to overresource. so, for example, a school of this size would never put in an assistant principal but we felt we had so many immigrant chinese students coming or their parents, monolingual chinese speaking, we felt we

needed an assistant principal who was chinese speaking. we made a commitment, i have been personally i think in the beginning i was a little frustrated because it was slow to get on board but now i understand it's been very well thought out. deputy superintendent guadalupe guerrero, i have seen many schools (inaudible) without a lot of thought put into it and they have not been successful. i believe this, the overresourcing of it, the deep thinking and thoughtfulness that has gone into every aspect of this, the commitment to the resourcing and also the extended day, the summer programming i think is going to ensure that this school is successful for these students and this community. >> so --. >> i just --. >> if you look at the slide now you have a breakdown of who's in the building in terms of staff. so you have 8

classroom teachers two engineering teachers, one stem coordinator then the lab teachers are the additional support staff. gym, foreign language, all those teachers would be assigned a portion of the student population to mentor and to advise across their college prep period throughout the year. >> i'm sorry, with the recruiting, how is the recruiting happening and do you have to take within the district first, just certain teachers get seniority, how does that work for a new school? >> currently if you look at our recruitment hiring process, every person in the district, every teacher certified and credentialled can apply at willie brown middle school. clearly we want the best candidates so we are designing an interview process that is already in line with hr hr has its initial process, once county supplies through that portal then we screen the applicants and prepare for an interview. they post a