>> governor and welcome to the. >> >> >> good afternoon and welcome to the city and school district select committee and i am jane kim and i will chair the meeting and i want to appreciate all of the members of the public here today for the hearing. we have two interesting hearing items and i want to give my

appreciation to everyone and there was a important planning commission up stairs and supervisor campos will be joining us and and i want to recognize your clerk derek evans and recognize committee members. supervisor norman yee and commissioner fewer and commissioner wynns and we will be joined by commissioner hydra mendoza and are there any announcements. >> please silent all cell phones and electronic devices and items to be included in the file and speaker cards will be given to the clerk. >> and i want to thank sfgtv for making today's meeting live on sfgtv and seeing no further announcements can we call item 1. >> item 1 is a hearing on

existing curriculum on the issues of sexual assault and relationship violence and requesting the san francisco unified school district to report. >> thank you. we are now joined by commissioner hydra mendoza and today's hearing focuses on our children and youth and specifically the adverse experiences they're going through in the city and the long-term consequences we will have to take if we don't address it today and as we recognized sexual assault awareness month and woman's month and i introduced a bill been congress today and change the way that institutions of higher learning address sexual assault on campus and i called for the hearing and what can the city to do make sure that the youth is equipped with the

tools to recognize healthy relationships and prevent sexual assault and generally what to do if they experience violence. why do we have to act now? according to the american mediatic journal of the medical association one in five female and one in 10 male student vs experienced teen violent violence and includes depression, suicidal thought, eating disorders, risky sexual behavior and increased risk of drug and alcohol abuse. 50% of young people that experience rape or abuse will attempt to commit suicide. violent behavior begins between sixth and 12th grade and we know that 72% of 13-14 year olds self identify as dating. just across the bay the civil right office launched an investigation this year questioning whether the

berkeley district responded to the incidents reported and the courageous stories that were shared were hard to listen to but a call for action. one girl said she was cornered and her breasts were groped by scbois witnesses stood by silently and another fought off the onslaught of boys doing things to her and the teacher said to ignore her and others on social media cites called the girl sluts and asked if it was aggregate want we know that knowledge is power but need to empower our youth to make sure they know what to do in the

things i have described. experts said it's great to have to have the dialogue but it's too wait until after high school to teach young people what consent looks like and what a healthy relationship looks like so the purpose is talk what we're doing at the school district at san francisco on teaching students about affirmative consent and healthy relationships and sexual assault and domestic violence. we want to hear more about the curriculum and teaching plan particularly within the health curriculum that covers these issues and how we can reach students and of course the purpose of the this city is how can we better partner with the school district if there are gaps in funding or other needs to make sure we're encouraging this type of healthy behavior, so i do want to bring up a couple of speakers today, and i do want to start of course with our school district. we have

kevin truit who is the associate superintendent of student services and kim coats the executive director of school health programs and i want to appreciate the time you spent with us educating us on the health curriculum and recognize commissioner sandra fewer and matt heaney and what is going on today with the health curriculum with sfusd and i look forward to the conversation. >> (low audio) as supervisor kim said i'm the superintendent of the community support department which over dle sees several offices and school programs and community and family engagement so this topic of sexual assault and confirming consent is very important in our department. i want to call up our executive director kimberly

coats who will share information how we're addressing this need. >> good afternoon. how do i get the slide showing? oh there it is. wonderful. thank you. i am here to provide a brief report on existing curriculum being taught in sfusd regarding the issues of sexual assault affirming consent and relationship violence. in the packet we provided to each of the supervisors and commissioners. you should have a copy of today's slides, an overview of the health education resources and california health education content standards that support these topics. it describes specific curriculum organized by grade level for elementary, middle and high school as well as some of the school wide resources and

supports which are outlined on the last page of the packet. before we get into specific curriculum i wanted to provide a framing for how this instruction fits into the comprehensive health ed program and not simply a one off. comprehensive health ed is supported by sfusd policy and this requires instruction for all of our k-12 students. specifically at the elementary level that is 20 lessons per grade level, and middle school it's 30 class periods each grade throughout middle school and one semester for high school graduation requirement. the

requirement of health education provides a pathway for this instruction and the content areas in orange violence and injury prevention mental and emotional and social health as well as growth development and human sexuality are important link to the topic of today's hearing. the other thing i want to mention about comprehensive health ed it serves as a foundational structure for supports aligned with sfusd's priorities and the next slide we're going to take a look at by grade level curriculum california health ed content standards and also highlight a few of the community based organizations that are working with us to support this effort in our schools. starting with the elementary level as i mentioned before elementary students are required to

receive 20 lessons. some of the curriculum touches on areas of identifying threat, being able to stand up for yourself, and the skills around seeking help, and although the topics of sexual assault affirming consent and relationship violence may not be thought of as a topic for students in elementary grades it's important that comprehensive health ed instruction begins early and provides age appropriate instruction and builds a foundation to the skill set we want standards to continue to develop in middle and in high school. regarding this summary of some of the elementary curriculum we do have data shows that of teachers reporting --

conducting violence prevention and antibullying lessons we show about 44% of teachers indicating they have did this work so although we vat policy in place and materials we have room to grow and we have teachers not able to provide this instruction and students not receiving it. moving on to middle school this program is facing some unique challenges that we have been in conversation with our board of ed commissioners about. it's currently an additional subject area that science teachers take on to meet the policy requirements, but we know that again not all students are receiving it. on the promising front the middle school program will pilot a health education class this coming august at the

new willie brown middle school and we anticipate that this will serve as a model to extend to other middle schools. at the high school level our high school program has recently using a program be real, be ready and developed through the adolescent work group. the curriculum is delivered by high school education teachers and in partnership with several community based organizations and agencies. the teacher is teamed up with a cbo partner and on the next slide i will outline some of the specific lessons. of this 24 lesson curriculum the areas that are highlighted very much align with the topic of

sexual assault, sexual violence prevention and healthy relationships. we have also conducted an initial evaluation of this curriculum with 22 educational health classes at five high schools showing very promising results. students are reporting increased knowledge and comfort on these curriculum topics. and additionally in collaboration with the adolescent health working group we a blyed for a grant for -- applied for a grant from the department of health and human services to do a more formal evaluation of the effectiveness of this curriculum. if funded this will also look at taking the curriculum developed in san francisco and implementing it in los angeles unified and looking at the results of that to further refine and improve. we're awaiting the award

notification for that grant in july of 2015. so one snapshot of data we wanted to highlight is from our 2013 youth risk behavior survey, and as supervisor kim offered in her opening comments when we look at incidents of dating violence in this slide we see from those students who report they are dating approximately 10% have experienced physical or sexual dating violence. however, when we disaggregate the data further and look at subpopulations of students who identify as lesbian, gay, or transsexual the rates are higher and we want to make sure we reach all students. keeping in mind that although

we make every effort for education to be a tier one support we know that classroom efforts are not enough and we need additional and intensive tier two and three supports to make sure we reach some of the most vulnerable youth. with that in mind these efforts include individual and group counseling. our program that allows youth to serve as leaders at their school. school health fairs and monthly health awareness events and some of the direct services provided through our school nurses. another critical piece of our effort to make sure students are safe and healthy and ready to learn is to build staff capacity, and that takes the form of both training for health ed teachers, training for all staff so they're prepared to respond to a crisis,

and provide support. we have been doing a lot of work for building capacity under trauma informed practice for a number of staff including social workers, nurses and high school wellness program staff -- excuse me, and then some ongoing training specific to some of our most vulnerable youth, in particular the lgbtq youth and the work with minors and youth in foster youth and just recently did a presentation last week to all of our wellness staff around human trafficking and commercial exploitation of children. so some next steps. to the question of how folks can help? how the city and school district can partner? certainly resources are needed to support

this work and build on some of the efforts under way. we are currently preparing to enter your sfusd budget cycle which will include a request to support the health education program looking to the future with the children and family first funds to sustain this work, refining our health education three year plan which we shared with the board of ed commissioners in january. this plan is resource dependent and continue our collaboration to make sure we have mous with community based organizations mentioned today to support this important work. thank you and i welcome your questions. >> thank you. thank you ms. coat frs the presentation. i should mention that we do have dr. emily morassa the board of education and two hats hit really and figuratively as the

director of the department of womens' status here as well to comment. at this time comments and questions? supervisor yee and then commissioner fewer. >> thank you chair kim. >> it's okay. [laughter] >> thank you for bringing this item forward for to give us an opportunity to discuss this and thank you for the presentation. just a few questions, comments maybe i would like to make. the way you described the curriculum for the kindergarten to 12 i guess is very good and there's lots of sensitivity towards age appropriateness in terms of what is going to be presented and so forth and how you're going to

talk about it. i am just curious i don't know what they're doing at the pre-k level anymore. i have left that field in terms of directly working in the field for nearly -- well, 14 years but when i was in the field for many years the pre-k level folks took on this issue as well, and again it's age appropriate. it's the type of reading of story books that were available for pre-k, and i know that 15 years ago there was a lot of news about some of the abuses happening in those situations. i am sure that there's still a little bit of that but not much of it, but at the same time i am just curious was there any attempt to discuss since you're a pre-k-12

district to include the curriculum that you go down to the pre-k level or is it something that for best practices they don't do that anymore? >> thank you for the question. that was my omission on the slide. it should say pre-k five and the three year plan we're developing does include early education and the cbo we mentioned on the slide number 5 san francisco's child abuse prevention center. those also provide staff training for the early education program. >> okay. thank you for pointing that out. the piece that -- so you eventually got to

the teacher training piece or the in services in terms of having teachers be exposed to the curriculum itself i guess, and i am glad you're doing that and not just turning the material over to teachers because i know from my experience that a lot of times teachers won't use the curriculum because they're not comfortable especially when it comes to these types of issues where they don't know how to talk about it themselves let alone to students so that's a good thing. i am just wondering if we're going to do truly tackle this as well as we can it would make sense to me that if we're going to work with city partners and cbos and so forth there is a good opportunity to open up the teacher training in services to cbos because we need to be consistent in terms what

we're hearing, what we're saying and treating the kids and the vocabulary they're using to describe something if it's happening and if we're not consistent it's going to hurt our effort and i think a lot of times kids may not necessarily go to the teachers to talk about this. they might go to the after school program people instead and i think it's really important that we look into this if you haven't already. maybe you're already doing this but i suggest that if we can, and i wish -- are there city departments here that are funding any of this? which city departments are here? i mean one of the things if this is a select committee where the city is trying to work with the school district i don't care what the topic is. we need representatives from the city and the school district here to engage so we do have somebody here. >> [inaudible] >> huh?

>> [inaudible] >> department of public health. >> okay. >> and i forgot to mention we did -- our office did reach out to a number of our private nonprofit entities that do this work and to recognize them we have sf war, and project survive and we have other groups here today as well as the department on the status of women and futures without violence here and they will all be speaking as well. >> so would you like to respond to that? >> yeah to that question supervisor yee i think we want to build on the model from the high school level and cbo partners are partnered with the education teachers to deliver the curriculum and we have seen strength in that on both ends of it. the cbo partner learning

from the teacher experience and vice versa and especially on the area of building comfort level for the teachers and i think we want to use that model whether doing the middle school program and also at the pre-k five level. >> yeah, i hope we do and get quickly to the elementary school level where most of the elementary schools have after school programs that are working with them and it seems pretty easy to -- because they're already working in partnership and actually share this in service training. >> thank you supervisor yee. commissioner fewer then mendoza. >> yeah thank you very much for ms. coats for this report. i have a couple of questions. while i am looking at this i am wondering you said that 44% of

teachers actually did present the antibullying education to the students and you're telling me that less than 50% across the board so have you spoken with the teachers why this happens? is there not time in the day? i know that supervisor yee mentioned about comfort level so is this actually something you have surveyed among our early educators? >> we don't have survey results from the pre-k level but for elementary k through five the mechanism we use to determine the implementation is program monitoring and every teacher is asked to report which lessons they're teaching so the data we have gives a snapshot of those returned the survey and it

was specifically accounting for lessons of violence prevention and bullying but big picture we know that each level faces unique challenges. we know that the elementary teachers teach everything and we know many of them would benefit from additional training and more time to be able to address the topics. middle school is unique fwh that it does not have a stand alone health ed class so it's a sitting in typically in the science class so i think the limited training and limited time challenges face both of them whereas at high school because it's a graduation requirement we do have the course in place. >> okay. so your data collection was basically -- do you do it or don't you? but it wasn't why you're not presenting it, but you're assuming that it is because they don't have time in the day and they're not comfortable with the subject matter? is that correct?

>> the source of the challenges and barriers come from our health advocates who are classroom teachers who serve as a liaison between program activities and the individual school sites so we survey them at a meet last month and asked for some of that to develop the three year health education plan. >> okay thanks and then i have a question about do we have any numbers of reported s sexual assaults for the schools? >> i will go to the superintendent for that data. >> oh that's great because i have another question for associate superintendent kevin truit. of whom i am very fond you have. >> especially today; right? can i look for the data on

physical assaults. i can get it from this data but i don't have it right now you. >> don't have it right now. >> i don't have it right now. i will say it's very low but shouldn't minimize the need to focus on that. >> because it's very low that's the number that is reported. is that correct? >> that's correct. >> so do we have assumptions that we can estimate of the reported ones what percentage does that actually report of sexual assaults that maybe happening on school or after school with our students? do we have any indication? >> we don't. i want to say for a lot of the data we do have -- we're fortunate in the sense that our wellness centers are very highly functioning in all of our high schools. the trust levels and you can go back to even when i was a principal and the wellness centers didn't have the strong relationship they

have now. our students' response to the trust and relationship that they have with the wellness staff every you're documented the data is extremely, extremely positive. the trust factor is there and that's really important because these are the individuals that people are going to with the sensitive information, and so we do get data from our wellness center. i will get that data. >> thank you. i think it would be great and then to follow up on another question of the coordination of city services, so associate superintendent how are we partnering with sfpd on this? >> okay. just an off the cuff thing, right. okay. no, i think our partnership with sfpd is very, very good. okay. we have an mou with sfpd. we have a point of contact now with sfpd. we're meeting with our

sros on a regular basis. we need more of them. the superintendent and i met with the chief of police in january to discuss this because we really want to build the capacity and strengthen the relationship between our officers and our school staff and our administrative staff, so when necessary this is a violation. it is against the law. it must be reported. we always have a staff member present. it's actually written into the mou that we ask the students for any of the sensitive cases. you have the right to have a parent obviously first and foremost but if it's a situation you would like a staff member from sfusd to be present who is the staff of your choosing. that person will be present in the room so you're not interrogated or interviewed by the police. often times in these cases what actually happens can go many different ways once you get into the details and yes how the police