tv [untitled] March 6, 2015 12:00pm-12:31pm PST
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into it. k and 170 something next year that went into our public schools so it looks like about 80% but i do have a question, and i didn't realize that you lose your para midyear or whatever and as much as kindergarten teachers could do this it's not an easy task for any kindergarten teacher to do 22 kids. let alone -- the only caveat here when you -- not you, but we shouldn't make that comparison because we have to remember these are the youngest if they were in the kindergarten class so you wouldn't have 22 of them in that kindergarten class at that age. they're almost a year younger than most of the kids and which to me makes it
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evening more valuable to have that aid there. >> >> so here's a question. can you get me information on when you cost out having -- if you were to exsend the para to go all the way, a full year or whatever it is, a school year. what's the cost and get it to my office? >> okay. >> thank you. >> okay. so at this time i want to open up for public comment and see if there is any public comment on this item. seeing no public comment it is now closed. [gavel] i do want to entertain a motion to continue this item to the call of the chair. i know that supervisor norman yee would love to do an update. we take off june, july and august because of the conflicting recesses but also it's hard to schedule room
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in june in city hall because of budget committee so perhaps in the early fall we can reconvene again for many of the follow up but also continuation of the discussion. i think this is a priority for all of us in this room. we want to be engaged and continue to maybe this a real success so i want to thank all the folks in this room. i know it's been a long process but actually the outcomes have been really fast and it's great to see the work of the coalition of parents and teachers and education advocates starting with the public education enrichment fund all the way through now and i want to make sure we're going to support you in doing the outreach to some of the hardest to reach families and some of the targeted communities, but also to ensure we're fully funding these programs at a state and local level so thank you. are there any further comments from this
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committee? okay. so can i take a motion to continue the item to the call of the chair? we have a motion and we can do that without opposition. [gavel] mr. clerk can we please call the second item. >> item two is receive an update on the municipal transportation agency's trafic calming program particularly the school criteria for funding including update list of schools currently receiving funding through the program and potential criteria and physical solutions for schools that operate near heavy traffic art arts where lowing the speed limit by creating a "school zone" is not an option. >> thank you. and so just to give a little context to today's hearing i think this select committee body has often struggled to bring forward issues where both the school district and city are accountable to reaching goals and one issue that has been -- they know our office and supervisor yee's office has
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been working a lot on is vision zero and pedestrian safety. in particular we know that there's been a lot of partnerships with the school district on how we can achieve vision zero within and around our schools, so last year i did introduce a hearing request to try to identify some solutions to traffic calming issues faced by schools in the district that don't necessarily fall into the mold of neighborhood school within a residential enclave. about two years ago we were able to work with the department of public health and sfmta to get -- for example betty carmichael k-8 into the program but realizing that we needed a more robust strategy around the schools and how do we achieve 15 miles per hour when you're by a freeway or close to the downtown core or
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near valencia or cesar chavez or folium street and i want to thank in advance for the work that the departments have done with sfusd particularly around betty carmichael and [inaudible] park and working with sfmta to identify capital improvements to achieve our vision zero goals in this area and there is work done with the chinatown community and the elementary school there that we see vehicle and family student collisions as well so i heard our colleagues at the board of education may be introducing a vision zero resolution of their own to support it within our school, and today's hearing is really designed to identify how we can work collaboratively through all of our entities to put together a robust pedestrian safety strategy to achieve that. we
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also know that a key component of vision zero is education so it's apropos in working with the school district we are raising our current and future adult population of san francisco and how can we work with our family and kids to encourage them to walk and bike to school but also how to share the road with multiple users so we have darby watson from the liveable streets program here to present and we also have anna from the department of public health who manages the safe routes to school program and kathleen from the sfmta crossing guard program which i know supervisor yee has been a big promoter of here at city hall so are there any opening comments? all right. great. thank you. >> again i am darby watson and with the local streets group
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and a section leader and i have a little bit of a cold so i apologize. before i get started i want wanted to share a story why i come to work and there was an event that happened in 2010. raquel nelson and kids stepped off the bus and with the crosswalks up the street and she took her chance and her four year old made the decision for her and following another patron and ran ahead and was killed by a driver under the influence and he left the scene. i come to work everyday so no one has to make that terrible choice in our city. i share that with you so you understand my commitment and
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my colleagues' commitment to what we do in sfmta and we're lucky to come to work and leave the city in a better place than we found it in makes changes. in terms of the presentation i wanted to give an overview of the sfmta's approaches to schools work. we have multiple programs, all of them are data driven. there's three programs that i'm going to focus on today. safe routes to school is the program that you might be most familiar with but there are many other sfmta programs that directly serve schools and i will also focus on vision zero and our crossing guards program so vision zero as you all know is
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our policy to eliminate traffic deaths in san francisco by 2024. our work at sfmta is really targeted along the high injury corridors or the places where most people are injured or fatally injured in the streets. the data for this program prioritizes children and seniors and other vulnerable groups. this map shows the priority network and all of the schools and we will provide you with a list of all of the schools next to our high priority network. as part of the development of -- i'm sorry, in support of vision zero we used walk first as the pedestrian planning for to support swrigz zero and this really focused on the vulnerable populations including children so this map shows all of the collision profiles that match with children in the city. and
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walk first in support of vision zero identified the 6% of the city streets where 60% collisions occur and right now we're in phase one of the program. we're putting in the initial quick investments and already going in the ground. we're writing work orders for more visible crosswalks, count down signals and prohibition left turns and other things. this is an example of an advanced stop bar. you can see the white stop bar and the vblgs are complying and not encroaching into the crosswalk but it seems like simple paint but it makes a difference in how comfortable it is to walk around the city. we also have an extensive traffic calming program that was revised to
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focus on residential traffic calming and a pilot is under way and the work orders sent for another traffic calming program and we will evaluate the system and change the signal timing so cars have to go slower and reduce the speeds. the current criteria for our traffic calming program has additional points to proximity of land use including schools, parks, community centers and schools are prioritized when they have the 15 miles per hour zone so we use that as a baseline and if they're spending 20 miles per hour and over they are put into the system and anyone can apply for had in the traffic calming program. the safe routes to school program has two big components. one is capital and one is the non infrastructure. this is a map of the non infrastructure programs currently in the program. we
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are planning 35 next year and i wanted to through some of the education and enforcement programs that we have so currently we completed jefferson elementary. walking to school this fall just became safer. pedestrian safety improvements using the proposition k funds and have bulb outs at these intersections and they decrease the pedestrian crossing distances and improving visibility and reducing vehicle speeds. we also implemented in 201215 miles per hour zones around 180 schools and allows us to do more engineering and enforcement in those locations, reducing speeds, and certainly increasing safety in those areas. this is a map of all
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the 15 miles per hour zones across the city. you can see extensive. we are restricted by the state to put it in locations 500 feet from a school and only a two lane road or smaller. getting into the program side this is some data that is collected by uc berkeley for all schools in san francisco. the walking rate at the highest ever. this is the highest since it was started in 2010. the vast majority of schools with the highest rate of walkers have 75% or more on the reduced or free lunch program and there is a connection to that. biking is happening but more work to
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there. the walking drops dramatically when we get to sixth grade and 4% when we get to ninth grade. and then this is a survey that's done just of the schools that participate last year in the safe routes to school program so we saw walk trips increase at nine of the 15 schools. that is 60% and bike trips increased at% -- 40% of the schools and this is (paused) . and just to introduce our crossing guard program which has been very popular. this is application based. any school can request it. some of the criteria needs to be the k-8. a corner must be designated as a
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crossing and have the yellow crosswalk and a minimum of 300 vehicles an hour and 10 pedestrians every 10 minutes. we offer free training for volunteers if schools want to add new help or locations that don't qualify. we have 172 guards at 103 schools and work with them on pedestrian and parking and safety issues around arrival and departure time. beshear has been visiting schools with issues and working with them on the pick up and drop off procedures and just to talk about betty carmichael which i like to think of a success story. it's surrounded by arterials. it has a lot of bridge traffic and high walking mode share, greater than 30%. it has projects in the works
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and many years away so we worked closely with supervisor kim's office and school staff to put in a interval at seventh and folsom and did signal adjustment for more time to cross and put in signs and -- we have traffic calming procedure in place for norby sherman alley and another one that supervisor kim mentioned is gene parker and this is a school along a large arterial on broadway and the entrance to the tunnel. the safe route of schools program was merged and this is what it looks like today and this is what we are hoping it will look like very soon. we will have new landscape, new curbs, new ramps, new islands to make it
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safer for everyone in the community. thank you very much. there's my contact information. >> commissioner mendoza. supervisor campos. >> thank you madam chair and it's nice to see all these folks in one way or another have been connected to the school district over the years. thank you very much for your presentation and thank you for recognizing the personal side to the critical work that you do. one question they know that comes up with some of my schools in my district from time to time is the interaction between the shuttles, the so-called tech shuttles and the schools, especially as parents are trying to drop kids off or pick
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kids up. i am wondering sort of do you have any comments or thoughts about that nerms of whether or not that -- terms of whether or not how the mta deals with those issues? and whether or not that's something that's a recurring problem? i know that for schools like horace mann and that's been an issue. i am just wondering if you could comment on that. thank you. >> thanks. i haven't heard that complaint and i am glad to hear it now and we could have a engineer meet with them and see what we can do for hem. >> great. thank you. >> >> >> commission fewer. >> sorry. i had to turn my microphone on. seems like the board of education is really the only city entity that has not
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adopted a vision zero policy and yet it's something that we take very seriously. personally my husband spent the last nine years of his 35 career as a police officer as a traffic officer as a soloist motorcyclists and one of the main jobs was to respond to traffic accidents and fatalities and he would come home and tell me about all of the fatalities and we were shocked at the number of them. i think we are interested at the san francisco unified school district to look into what kind of policies we can support so that our schools can encourage safe walking and more biking and particularly in areas that have low car ownership and also where there is high injury corridors, so i think i just want to mention
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also supervisor yee's efforts around -- i just went to lake shore elementary school which is a great improvement supervisor yee having a designate lane for drop off everyday in the morning which used to be a nightmare frankly and also training -- i think what we have seen that enforcement with education has given us really positive results and this school crossing guard program has educated i feel like the whole school community, students and parents alike, so i think it's a positive thing and i want to thank supervisor yee for bringing that to our public schools. >> commissioner mendoza. >> thank you. i was curious -- i have been also curious about this but the curb cut with the yellow and bubbles and what is that and why do we have bubbles now and i only notice
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it when i am across the street in heels. >> it's for people with sight disabilities and it's truncated so they can feel them and it's yellow because it's the last color you lose when you are losing your sight. >> thank you. >> i have actually asked the same question of sfmta because i tripped many times on the yellow curbs. >> yeah. >> first of all thank you for this presentation and for working so closely with our office on this presentation but also on some of the case studies that i think some of the schools that most impacted at least by high speeding cars. it continues to be an issue even in the residential enclaves as well and supervisor yee is doing a lot of work in that part of town to make sure we're making routes
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to school safer. i am interested in two pieces. one is as commission fewer mentioned increasing the mode of walking and biking and public transit. actually we do have -- the numbers aren't bad. at least for high school or ninth grade 64% walk or bike or take public transit which i think is a really healthy number and roughly 38% -- 35, 39% looks like kindergarten, fifth and sixth grade and there is a dip at fifth grade but looks like there is an increase in carpooling so i am curious about what has worked in increasing walk and bike mode? i mean bike is clearly struggling the most as a mode to get to school, but what has been successful in getting more of our families to walk and bike if that is a choice for them? and what have
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we been doing to educate families that have to walk and take public transit to school to make sure they're safe doing so. >> i will invite anna up. >> good afternoon comrs and supervisors. i am anna and i manage the non infrastructure part of safe routes to school so to make sure i capture all of the elements of your question supervisor kim is what has worked to increase walk mode share? and what can we be doing for those that have no choice but to walk? i think -- so we started our program in 2009 and launched the survey the year after and we did it right before the student assignment system had the policy changes and i do want to recognize that there are some families that get assigned to a school that frankly is so far away that walking and biking
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is not realistic. we do have almost 25 to 35% which is actually really high comparison to the state. the walk mode share is around 15%. i don't have comparable numbers to other cities but that's where i think san francisco is doing really well. one of the things that we do in our program is establish -- help parents establish walking school buses and bike trains at participating schools so -- and i want everyone to understand we're not asking children to walk to school by themselves. it's with families, an adult chap ron or a volunteer from the school. we have rock and roll school day and bike to school week and this is to show families this is realistic. i recall in 2011 we did it at marshal elementary when it was part of your district and now it's your
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district and we asked the kids to go to a certain location and they couldn't fathom that location and literally three blocks away and parents said it's so easy and so close and i don't -- parents -- i am a parent myself. lead very busy lives and i am not sure they consider the options until we launch it and they can own it themselves so those are some of the examples. i think biking still has a long way to go. part of it what we hear in the parent comments honesty they don't feel safe with the volume of traffic and the infrastructure to put the younger children in the streets. i do see an increase i think in the preschool ages because they are attached to their parents' bicycles but when they're on a stand alone that's when parents
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start to feel uncomfortable and we have a long way to go with that. i feel with the advent of electric bikes that makes it a lot easier with our topography we have in san francisco but that is for those that can afford it and -- electric bikes are not for everybody. what we're doing for the families that have no choice but to walk is that we want to increase the safety element of that because for example gene parker. they have well over 60% of their student body walking because they honesty live there. they have no choice to walk there, but it is not the safest environment and the example of the broadway streetscape is what we can be doing to make sure it's safer for those families to do so that is where vision zero comes in to help focus because the young families and i am
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proud to say that so far no child on the way to school has been hit or injured so i am very glad to say that. i'm a sap. i am sorry. so -- >> we love the emotion and just so you know this is a board that cried a lot at board meetings together -- >> [inaudible] >> we're very used to it. >> [inaudible] >> we cried so much on the school board. >> really? >> yeah in public, at public meetings. >> that's lovely. it's on record. >> [inaudible] >> it's a big difference for me when i joined the board of supervisors. >> [inaudible] >> supervisor yee it happens still but -- >> i am very happy to say that
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no school children have been part of the data for vision zero. let's leave it at that and i would like to keep it that way. i will excuse myself now. >> no. thank you so much for that. actually and sorry anna i'm going to bring you back up but the last question was on the carpool because i remember it came up last year trying to figure out programs to help families carpool and at the district schools and parents will continue to drive so even reducing the number of vehicles on the road helps get to -- >> there are a number of issues there. one is the department of environment at the time had a grant called school pool which is now ended, so we are trying to pick up some elements of that, but we don't have the level of funding that we once had. the other issue that i hear anecdotally is that
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carpooling is very easy for families that have children that out of the car seats. car seats take up so much space and trying to fit those all in so we as a team have not figured out how to incorporate those strategies yet. i would like to take the summer break to take the time to figure that out but ages eight and above and why you see an increase in the middle and school i think that's where a lot of the carpool opportunities we can be maximizing but we're not doing enough that we could be doing on that, and there is also -- it's just frankly i think a trust issue with families. you can't get too far away on a walking or on a bike but someone that you -- you need ton the driver in a carpooling situation so it's really a
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grass-roots organic school community building exercise that we need to build, but i think we can help provide that. >> i would be certainly interested in looking at our school district folks. i feel that's something that should also happen from win the district is some of that community building that needs to happen because the one -- school pool is great but for parents that don't have access to internet or computers at home or a smartphone they're not going to figure out how to get families together for those that drive which there are many so it would be great to work with the school district to see what are home grown solutions that would work within the school s and the successful models that work and bringing them out to other schools with similar populations. commission fewer and then supervisor yee. >> sure i wanted to mention that the school board is considering amending their
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