on the autism spectrum. at our pilot program at nems that we started in july, we screened 2000 children under the age of 5 and 16% of these children were in the high risk range needing further services, assessment and treatment. first five needs to continue the work in both developmental and mental health services for kids. what first five has done since developmental and behavioral services have significantly been overstretched in the city and county is first five has browsing together a consortium of ucsf, san francisco general,

children hospital oakland and [inaudible] try to as a consortium and group address the issues of increased developmental needs within the city and county particularly. i feel that i have the experience in history to continue to work with the challenges in support of kids and families within the city and county. first five is really essential to our city, not only to support children and families in their services but through various programs and platforms such as the frc's that we work diligently with and are always looking to expand the services. my other concern with the number of kids and families that we see and the services

and programs to meet the needs is to keep young families within san francisco rather than taking off to other communities. so, for these reasons, i would like to continue on the commission. >> thank you very much. supervisor tang? >> thank you, thank you so much for being here and for your patience through this hearing. i would just say that since all of the applicants are reappointment, if you and the following candidate, if they're here, speak a little bit about the things you have accomplished in your role serving on the commission. i know you touched upon some of the things you would like to work on, if you can highlight some of those achievements so far. >> well, over the last number of years, we have been the stewards of the preschool for all program for the last ten years has been one piece of the work. the other piece has been really

looking at what are the services that we need to do to support families and tla's where the work for the different communities, it's usually the underserved communities and the

[inaudible]. i ask that you consider that. during my career, i've worked as a teacher and an executive director of community programs serving children, youth and their families. in the field of philanthropy, i worked as a chief organizational officer in a community foundation which taught me how to assist staff to work together productively and strategically to serve the communities well. now as the executive director of the me me and peter hodge fund, i have the privilege to work in and with the early care and education community to ensure that young children and their families have access to high quality services that allow children the critical start in life. throughout my career, i've been passionate about equity and social justice. i have worked and will continue to work for children and their

families, especially for those who don't have access to the educational health and social services they deserve. i've worked with a wide range of families over my career from native americans and the cape verdians on cape card to the farm workers on the california coast side, i've worked with low-income women and single parents and middle class families all of whom have found it difficult if not impossible to reach the kind of financial, emotional and familial stability. now in san francisco, i work for and for all young families and xhirn in the hodge fund as well as my position on the five five exhibitioner i stand committed to the goals that all children deserve access to high quality early care and education programs that assure they will enter kindergarten

ready and able to lansing it is a time of change and opportunity for first five as it transitions from its outstanding work in establishing preschool for all in this city as well as a body for the nation. it is a time for first five staff and commissioners to strategically reconsider our role in developing the infrastructure and program that is are needed for children 0-3 while we continue to support preschool children and their families. we stand committed to the professional development of the early care providers and educators, a majority of whom are women working full time to care for and educate young children at one of the lowest levels of compensation. i ask that you please consider my reappointment to the first five commission, know that i will work together with city departments, the school district, community based organizations to make certain

that services offered to all young children and their families will serve as a model in this city, the state and the nation. thank you. >> thank you very much. thank you for your service already on the commission and all the work you've done over the years as well. it's a great testament to the interest of advancing young children. >> thank you. do you have any questions for me? >> i don't think we have any questions. thank you. okay. this item, we can open up for public commenting any member of the public who would like to comment, please come forward. we have ms. laura humak. >> good afternoon, supervisors, i'm the executive director of first five san francisco, thank you for considering the reappointment of these three very committed women who have dedicated their time and energy and best think toing the first five commission over the last couple of years. as you know, the first five

commission sole focus is on the needs of children birth to 5 on their families, on prevention and early intervention with thinking in four result areas, improvement of child health, child development, family support and system alignment. i think we have over the past decade built three major platforms of s*frs delivery with the city, we have 25 family resource centers in all of our neighbor e neighborhoods, we have a universal praoe school program that now has 150 sites, we've done a lot of work around early intervention and development screening and support. i think we are at a changing point now, an important time, and we're considering several different roles as we go forward asbacker as funders, as we've been as investor, as capacity buildings and professional development people, we've done a lot around

professional development. as conveners, as incubators and doing evaluation and research. i think we want to go deeper and do deeper work in all of our plot forms and to do more work with alignment and i think these three women, i'm confident they will be dedicated to making that rethinking our position and going deeper into the work, so thank you for considering them. >> thank you, and thank you for your service with the commission as well. any other members of the public -- >> i just want to say unfortunately linda has a board meeting in sacramento, but i know she's made contact with all of your offices. >> thank you. >> any other member of the public that want tos comment? we'll close public comment. supervisor tang? >> thank you, again, i want to thank all of the three appointees or i'm sorry, applicants who are up for

reappointment and who want to continue i think during this transition time is really good for all three of them to continue during, again, this transition, so i would like to then make a motion to appoint linda asad dough to seat 6, suzanne injury awed dough to seat 7 and lynn merz to seat 9 and move that to the full board. . inger we need to waive the residency requirement for lynn merz. >> and that's seconded by supervisor cohen and i want to thank all the applicants for reappointment for being here and for your service and look forward to your service moving forward. i of course will be supporting the motion. i also want to put in a good word for lin da asato who's done a lot of wobbling in the field as an executive director. i also had the pleasure of my son shared daycare at a family daycare center in district 11

with her child as well, so i know she has lots of personal experiences and with the network and as well as providing a service herself, so it's a really strong contingent and we can take the motion without objection. supervisor cohen? >> thank you, before we make that vote, i just want to also take a moment just to recognize the service of linda, suzanne and lynn, i served on the first five commission for a little over a year and really enjoyed my work. i think we are at a pivotal point in our city when it comes to our early education and it's extremely important. i want to compliment the leadership of laura and her tremendous staff, they're excellent, they go above and beyond to answer parent's questions and i think we are

all unanimous in saying we all need more early education opportunities for everyone in every corner of san francisco and to make sure that we are not excluding anyone for any reasons because of money or language barebacker barriers and i am excited to see linda, suzanne and lynn continuing on in their service, thank you for caring about our city, lynn, even if you do spend more time here than in your hometown, we are very, very grateful. thank you. >> thank you, okay, so colleagues, we can take that motion -- >> it was with a committee report. >> it was, and with the waiver which was mentioned. er we'll take that without objection. thank you. you guys okay to keep going without a break? okay, so we'll go on to our next item, item number 7. >> item number 7 is a hearing

to consider appointing two members terms ending may 1, 2017 and two members terms ending may 1, 2018 to the office of early care and education citizens' advisory committee. there are four seat and is 8 applicants. >> with the number of applicants, it looks like everyone is here with the exception of adina safer who withdrew her application. the first person will be patricia sullivan. >> good afternoon, supervisors, my name is pat sullivan, i am a family child care provider in district 4. i am not a native of san francisco, i wish i was, i think what i like best about the city is the diversity, not only of ethnic and cultural

diversity but also the diversity in terms of families and the way families are constructed and i think i've been really fortunate to have lots of different kinds of families in my family child care and i think to be able to speak to their needs with a body like this would be very epic, not only for them but for the kids that i serve, i think a lot of times, the kids get left out, we are so interested in quality of querier, we forget what that looks like from the children's perspective and i also think the teachers themselves, especially family care child care providers are in a dangerous place right now. the more we push for quality care, the more chain store child care dom *f comes into

the city, the worse things are i think for our delivery system, so that's why i like to do it and i'm going to keep my comments brief because i'm nervous, so i'm open for questions. >> thank you. what's the size of your site? >> 14. >> and you have other staff besides yourself? >> two others. >> what kinds of child development -- do you ak chess in terms of knowledge or getting information around child development in terms of keeping your -- >> i have masters degree from early childhood education, and i teach at san francisco state in child development, i've been teaching there for 8 years. >> there are a lot of people in the field who actually go back to stay on with quite frequency to keep up to date with a lot

of the child development knowledge that's happening in the field. >> right. >> and that's been built into the system. >> i don't think so. i think the increase in demand for the assistant of b.a.'s for preschool teachers and more education for assistance that's prompted more people to go back to school through city college or through san francisco state, but i think there may be a plateau in that area because i think that there just isn't enough income in the field to keep teachers there, so a lot of teachers are not sure what to do with the education they just received. >> is the karis program -- does it still exist? >> karis has changed. i was a big beneficiary of karis, they probably paid for

most of my b.a. and a lot of my masters and half of my [inaudible] but when the program was changed and reduced, the stipends to teachers, probably more teachers, maybe more teachers get stipends is not a significant amount of money so it doesn't replace the time that you spend in school for -- and the cost in any way, so that was kind of a disappointment. >> why did that happen, do you recall? >> i think state funding --. er >> through the state, yeah, darn state. okay. thank you. and i appreciate your work in the field. >> anymore questions? >> anymore questions? supervisor cohen? >> i don't have questions but i wanted to just publicly state that i have to leave to go to another meeting, so i just wanted to compliment the work

that the applicants are doing and wish you good luck through this process. thank you. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> next up is kim garcia-meza. >> good afternoon, supervisor tang, supervisor avalos and supervisor cohen, thank you for allowing us to come and speak on the importance of early childhood education and our qualifications to be appointed to this really important committee for the early childhood education. i'm the founder and director of los manitas, i'm applying for seat 6.

i wanted to make sure we had high quality early education specifically meeting the needs that did not speak english as a first language. i really support bilingual education x the need for our community have an option for multieducation starting at elementary education. i also wanted to provide quality work opportunities for people like my mother who was a family child care provider for over 25 years in san jose, so my knowledge and understanding of family care providers goes way back, i am the daughter of someone who did this work for a number of years and i am very inspired by all the work that she and her colleagues have done. we as a site are very proud participants of preschool for all, we started our involvement for preschool for all a few years ago, we were recognized from preschool for all as having a high rate of families giving back their tuition credit in the form of

scholarships so we aes a small program are able to this year and last year all of a sudden have 20 thousand dollars in on a need base scholarships for our families which is amazing. we also this year and may 7th will be reck needed by preschool for all, our whole team for excellence in teaching and we are proud and honored to receive that award from preschool for all, it has been an amazing opportunity for us to access a bunch of resources for our families, for our staff and for our students. we are involved in see wages which helps us not only to help raise the quality of our program but also something really important to me and to hopefully all of san franciscans, at least increase the minimum wage for child care providers and increase the stipends or beyond, we need to be much beyond minimum wage for our child care providers. we're also part of the family

child care providers quality network which offers us amazing opportunities, we're able to access -- i think we have letters of recommendation from [inaudible] who comes on to los [inaudible] once a week to provide our education in spanish. we also through preschool for all have been able to access performing arts workshops to have dance and spanish come preschool for all, obviously we have outside monitors who come and we have received high marks in both [inaudible] and staff, i'm pleased with the staff that i work with, the families that suppt us, the quality of care and education we've been able to provide for our student. i bring to my family work and family child care a lot of experience in early childhood education, i graduated from stanford university and entered

the [inaudible] i have a multiple subject teaching credible current, i'm from san francisco state university and a masters from university of san francisco in multicultural and international education. i worked in san francisco unified in the mission district as a peer professional and a teacher for 10 years and until 2001 when i joined the rank of san francisco parents, i quickly went back into the field this time working for the reading tree as an early literacy coach for families who are in underrepresented community ins the mission district teaching literacy activities to parents in 0-3 setting. i'm proud of the work we were able to do in reading tree which continues. reading tree gives weekly literacy classes and free books to families who attend the parent education program f you graduate from our program, in

three years, you have 90 books in your home which is directly linked to school success. i am also taking a night class at city college now on wednesday nights and will be hopefully receiving my program permit, program director permit in the spring of next year and my civic involvement really reflects my focus and my passion for education specifically, closing the achievement gap in our city, we're supporters of [inaudible] we strongly believe that we need to put our money where our mouth is. if we say we're going to close the achievement gap, we need to make sure we're strong supporters for the children who most need it. as a parent, i have served in

the elac at fun elementary in leadership there which is the advisory committee for english language learners, very passionate about that. i went on to be co-chair for the bilingual community council which is a committee which keeps the district accountable to the action plan which overlooks the english language learner rights of children and families. i currently serve on the san francisco friends school diversity committee, stanford [inaudible] as an alumni which serves the chicano and latino khaount and stan fra*ns preschool group and through my work with the san francisco friends diversity committee, i was a strong supporter of our family's coalition that family friends host every year at our school. i am passionate about early

childhood education, passionate about the communities who need our most support, making sure that we are receiving the access that we need, the workforce, is receiving the support it needs and we're building capacity for the children and the families who most need it here in san francisco and i would love to hear any of your questions. >> thank you. that was pretty thorough of your work, and i've visited your site before and it's great to see your recognition for all the achievements you've been able to have there with your academic program and your achievement program, i'm excited you're interest in this seat and another very qualified person is also applying for the same seat as well which makes our decision difficult, but thank you for applying and we'll go on to our next applicant. >> thank you, any other

questions? no? thank you. >> okay, we'll go on to our next applicant. cath thee herrera-autumn. >> good afternoon, it's kathie mer reer ra autumn, i am a new voice for the community, this is my first step into something like this, that i work out on treasure island which is not really as [inaudible] as people think. we have a -- it has a child development center which i've been a director for from the last five years, it's a high quality preschool site now. we totally embrace diversity, we bring in people from the

women's incarceration program, we do a lot of inclusion work, we have a lot of children who are homeless, i add voi kate for the community, i believe in social justice, i believe at risk children being treated like everybody else. i grew up in a large irish native american family when i was the only one to graduate from college on a scholarship after living homeless in a ten through my years of high school, quality education comes from people who believe in you, i believe i have to give back and i mentored people from the academy and i mentor my teachers to the point that one of them was an award of excellence champion award winner last year as well. i believe quality education is the effective workforce and someone spoke about compensation and education, i strongly believe that early

childhood teachers are not given enough credit but they need more education so the compensation pays them well. and it's all about that relationship building, right at the core is at the heart of the preschool. i do a lot of advocating for my family ins the program, this is the first year we've gotten the families together to have a family advisory committee which was a long hall. i bring -- the experience i bring to you is i have a child psychology degree, i have a quick wit, bad humor, compassion for the children and family and is teachers in my program. i do believe following rules and ordinance that i support all walks of life. i can analyze facts and make quick decisions. i see the bigger picture i'm mri applying for the credentialing where they want to revamp the system because i see a lot of the top that needs to be corrected. i have a strong understand