>> good afternoon and welcome to the may 28th joint city and school district select committee i'm jan kim, i'm joined by supervisors kim, and [inaudible]. i want to thank the staff at sf gov tv jennifer low and charles for filming today's meeting and making it available online and to our clerk, derek evans mr. clerk, are there any announcements. >> yes, thank you, please make sure to silence all cell phones and complete speaker cards, and files should be submit today the clerk. >> thank you, i also want to take this opportunity to

announce and remind members of the public that due to budget season in june where we have found it is almost impossible to find a room to hold joint select committee meeting and because of the board of education's recess in july and the board of supervisor's recess in august, we will not be reconvening until the fourth thursday of september for our monthly scheduled meeting. kevin, that was a big smile. mr. clerk can you please kale call the roll. >> call the roll? supervisor yee. >> here. >> supervisor yaoe present, supervisor cam possess. supervisor cam possess present. commissioner mendoza-mcdonnell. mcdonnell present. commissioner fewer? >> here. >> present. >> commission mer wynns present, and supervisor kim, chair kim present. >> can you please call item number 16789

>> it is the hearing on the current status and future plans for the san francisco unified school district's student crossing guard program. >> this was a hearing request from supervisor norman yee and it is a program he's been leading on belaugh o f of the city so i would like to turn this meeting over to supervisor yee to chair. >> thank you, colleagues, i wanted to highlight the student crossing guard program, i myself served as a crossing guard as did superintendent goranza and chief sir and mayor lee and commissioner mcdonnell and commissioner fewer, anybody else? but i'm realizing as i startd rolling out this -- asking this program to be rolled out again for the public schools that so many of us leadership as you went through this program when i took office,

my number one priority was pedestrian safety and i believe this program has shown to be an important in making our crosswalks safer for students in the community. the student crossing guard program was a part of the public schools many years ago, many, many years ago. but due to budget constraints, the program was defunded and never came back for many many years. for the last two year, i have fought hard to secure funding to kick start this program at three schools in district 7. today i would like to discuss the expansion of the program to all san francisco unified school district schools throughout the city in the elementary schools, that is. there's -- there -- the reason i want to do this is because of many -- there's many benefits to the student crossing guard program. basically what you get out of it is that the main thing is

about pedestrian safety awareness. with the students that participate in the program, they get basically very high levels of awareness because they go through training from the police department, they talk about it they are -- when they go on duty, they have been to be aware of what's safe and what's not safe because of the responsibilities they're taking to assist other students that are crossing. and what they also learn is leadership in this. many of us -- i guess there's a correlation as i mentioned earlier why many of us in leadership roles went through this type of program and i think a lot of it has to do with the fact that we were student crossing guards and the other thing that isn't discussed as much, the other two things are about team work, they learn to work as a

team because one crossing guard can't say go another one say stop and vice-versa, the other piece that i see other students gain is that especially younger ones, these are usually the fifth graders or the first graders that are participating, meaning k through 3 or 4, the students that actually see these students protecting them, start asking their parents questions what are they doing, and so their awareness becomes high e so it really does benefit the 20 or so from each school of students that are participating but probably all the students really become sharper in their awareness of what to do when they cross the street so let me go to that -- i started this program as

say well, let's just try -- let's pilot test this in a few schools to make sure [inaudible] and so forth and to make sure that we -- there are no other issues that we might come up with and i think we've done that. we have our curriculum down, our police department has really stepped up. the school district staff kevin truid or sallow -- lopez is has stepped up and made it work. i would like to thank [inaudible] in getting this program up and running and in particular, staff superintendent kevin truet and sallow pez who together with my staff olivia scaven worked diligently to make this

program work and grow i would like to thank chief sir and his officers officer murray and officer bara for providing the students with their available training and insight. finally i would like to thank the students parents and community for its support -- by the way, one of the other things that happened was when the program started, one principal two principals said that the parent engagement in this was at a very high level and hadn't seen certain parents be that engaged, so that's another benefit of this program that is put out parents to participate, so i believe the program makes our crosswalk surround our schools a safer environment for both pedestrians and motorists and ensures safety of families and students getting to and from the schools.

now i would like to welcome associate superintendent of student, family and community supportblessing kevin truet to start us off. >> do i have to turn this on in any way, you took care of it. see how they do that? good afternoon, thank you, supervisor yee, and good afternoon supervisors and commissioner, i'm excited to speak to you today about this program and also because this is probably the most relaxed i've ever been in front of you because you guys are all school district people, so it's flax i can blink my eyes and think i'm at 555, presenting over there, this is a good audience. i'm excited to bring to you today and talk about the pedestrian safety program that we've been embarking on with the help of supervisor yee. in the fall, the safety patrol crossing guard program -- in the fall of 2013, supervisor

yee former school board president contacted my office to figure out how we could with some financial support, how we could reinvigorate and reengage our students in a crossing guard program. this was particularly timely because in the spring of the year before, i know we all remembered we did have two back to back student tragedies in which we had a junior from lincoln high school and a second grader fra it seems to mer man elementary tragically killed both by automobile ins the spring of 2013 so the call from supervisor yee to bring pedestrian safety to our schools could not have come at a more important time for us. fast track that to two months later in the spring of the same school year we were able to get the program up and running at come door sloat, we have the president here but upon meeting with supervisor

yee and olivia scanlan, we talked all the procedures we needed to put in place and i have a pretty big department and a lot of responsibilities so i selected the person most likely to succeed at this because if we're going to be talk about the elementary student and is teaching tlem the leadership of pedestrian safety, we have the best student advisory council in san francisco and over the years, these kids have stepped up so much, their maturity, leadership and the younger kids look up to them like you wouldn't believe, you know that, the seniors in high school are their gods, so i thought this was a great opportunity for sal to kind of lead this program, get it going in the schools and to engage our student leaders of the sac in this program, so to talk you through the specifics of the program, i would like to introduce sallow pez fereraz, to talk about the

specifics of the program so sal. >> thank you, mr. truet it's a pleasure to be here, my name is salvador lopez ba r-r, and for those of you who don't know me, it's a pleasure to meet you. i'm here to talk about the school crossing guard program that we have at our student district. thanks to supervisor norman yee we're able to fiscally apply for -- fiscally pay for staff to work an hour a day to two hours a day and also order the equipment and whatever's necessary to kick this program off so on your powerpoint, i believe it's page 4, we have the safety patrol crossing guard program, and one of the key components that we wanted to do in the safety patrol program was to revive the public elementary school crossing guard program that

used to exist therefore enbacker engage students in pedestrian safety activity and is the goal was to involve sf unified elementary students to make our streets safer for pedestrians and also have student crossing guards raise consciousness of all students, the importance of developing good habits while walking to school crossing the crosswalks and any roadside safety. the whole concept of this program is for each school to be involved with selected students to act as crossing guards at their school sites during the morning hours and the afternoon hour, not all schools do both hour, some of them do the morning hours. in addition to the concept, it's to have all student crossing guards to be monitored and supervised by an sfusd professional staff which is key because sometimes you don't want to have a fourth grader or a fifth grader out there by themselves, so they

constantly have a supervising adult, and of course depending on each school, they all have different traffic environments, so it will depend on the type of safety program that is best suited for each individual school, it's not a cookie cuter program, it's something that's molded to every school culture. according to the center of disease control, on average, there's about approximately 12 thousand 175 children between the age of 0 and 19 years of age that die every year in the united states as a result of an unintentional injury and this injury as a result of a motor vehicle injury. over 9 million children visit the emergency rooms for non-fatal injuries annually as well, and between the years of 2002 will have 2005, there was a recording of 7144 unintentional deaths among the

children of aged 5-9 involving a motor vehicle death and that's about 53% of accidents and in california, traffic related injuries count for 61.2% of unintentional deaths between the ages of 5 and 9, which is followed by drowning which is 11.9% and fire and burn at 6.5%, so moving on to our city, in 2014, our city recorded a leading 6 year high of traffic collisions resulting in 25 fatalities, 21 were pedestrian and 4 were cyclists so this is something that the student advisory council takes into account, it is our city and we want to protect our students. so, what we brainstormed is the idea of preventing unnecessary injuries and the majority of pedestrian injuries can be prevented by demonstrating safe travel

behavior, looking both way, knowing the roadside safeties and the challenge is ensuring that effectively we communicate with all these preventative measures to all students so they're aware of roadside and traffic risks the more they know, the better off so we can equip them with this kind of communication, so having vision zero in mind in the backdrop, we posed the hypothetical question how do we focus on moving forward and develop a strategy that will reduce injuries and fatalities among children in our city and that's the hypothesis we embedded this program and how we wanted to kick it off. i'll continue -- i don't want to hog the mic., guys. so, when we decided to kick off the program, we conducted some research, some development and we considered many options factors to put in place and we wanted a

school based program that would have the advantage of reaching children of all socio-economic groups and provide the venue of introduction of topics as well as advancing these topics as children in our school district progress from years on, so theoretically we'd like to have fourth graders and fifth graders involved in the project, as the fifth graders graduate, the fourth graders would take the roles and the third graders graduate to fourth grade would take the roll as well. we wanted a program to address the unique challenge that is are addressed with pedestrian safety it's obvious that some students are going to be safe with different types of traffic and roadside issue than they do in the sunset or the bayview area, those are things we've consciously taken into consideration when we were researching and developing this safety patrol program, so one of the things that we did come across is the

challenge of designing and engaging a method of providing education to children at the highest risk levels, so that is what we had in mind. and now i want to introduce jessica eng, one of our superstar students from sloal. >> hi i'm jessica eng, the safety patrol crossing guard program is to be an injury preventive program to educate our staounts on roadside safety so the program focuses on educating children in the pedestrian safety area and helping them become more familiar with the details when they're crossing the vaoet and personally i have been [inaudible] through this program so i find it very helpful that i am able to

talk more on this issue and i'll be speaking later. this program focusing on partnering with the san francisco police department, sfusd school sites student advisory council representatives and supervisor norman yee, norman yee's office. three parts are made in making the program successful, one is proper enforcement so you need some people who are familiar with the program to help make sure that the program is running smoothly at each of sites. second is improving traffic control and third is public safety awareness campaign, the s -- sac makes sure these three points are going smoothly. when schools are first joining this program, there are several steps the school must take. the first step is meeting with the school principal and the team to discuss further steps with this program.

the second step is surveying the school site area for the program. ordering the necessary equipment and supplies selecting the student leaders who will be in charge of this program, and for the safety patrol and orientation training for students and staff to become more familiar with this program and finally announcing the school's kickoff date. >> now i'd like to introduce miguel tantiado, thank you, from academy of arts and sciences and school board member, if you haven't met him you will be this summer because he's going to be sitting on your board. >> thank you, mr. truet what i want to talk about first is student leadership. these are chosen or appointed students wisely by the principals to lead this

program. student leadership is very beneficial in a student's growing years what they look for in their selection is leadership in maturity reliability and punctuality about ability to follow rules and desire to help other interest in traffic safety, strong judgment courtesy respect for classmates and others. student benefits, this is what student gets out of this program, roadside and traffic awareness leadership, like i said, very beneficial as well, team work, pride citizenship and respect for law enforcement. sorry. okay. school benefits.

okay, school benefit, roadside and traffic safety awareness, peer to peer education, character building opportunities, a constructive outlet for student's energy as well as positive relationships with parents, law enforcement and school community. and it is good to engage these students in the program due to many tragedies over the years and ensure -- my brother was one of -- a close victim to being -- dying because there was an accident that happened with my mom where a car lost its brakes and it kept going ramming into my mom's car, almost going toward the school so my mom hadn't before there all these kids would have of course been very tragically been killed therefore we need this program because students aren't always aware of what's around them and they a professional to keep the awareness around them and cross these kids.

thank you. >> can you do community benefits. >> the community benefits we have safer environments for pedestrians and motorists, a spirit of volunteerism and civic engagement, positive collaboration between students, parents, schools and a law enforcement and reduction of school and traffic congestion and you know what that's like, getting some help with those crucial times is very important. we have a number of partner this is this work and sal is going to introduce them. >> thank you, mr. truet one of our partners that helps out train and provide an orientation for our students at our school site iss the san francisco police department, i'm proud to say i work with sergeant para and sergeant murray they've been huge advocates, huge supporters of this program they provide all the training safety

awareness serving the streets but most important when we implement a program, sometimes the community doesn't like to pay attention so what they do is provide the law enforcement to implement the program and its integrity and sometimes have to give out warnings to staff, so i can take this time and introduce the sergeant para and sergeant murray, if you would like to give a couple of words. >> good afternoon, supervisors, commissioners, i'm sergeant murray -- i'm sergeant para, this is sergeant murray, we meet with the principals along with sal and we conduct a walk-flu of the outside school ground when we start and that's where we determine a safe location to implement the program.

supplies are ordered, children are identified, [inaudible] are [inaudible] by the parents and once we do that, we set up a date to come in and train them, me and sergeant murray will train the chaining we use the unified school district's handout, we take the important bullet points out of there and that's what we train them with, after that, they take a pledge we have a little pledge they take and then we go outside and conduct a mock scenario in the designated area. we set off a kickoff date, i and or sergeant murray are there along with another motorcycle officer and after that, the solos will come out subsequent days and address any traffic issues or concerns. after the program's up and running, the principals will contact us with any traffic

concerns and then we send out motorcycle officers to address those. sergeant murray, did you have anything else to add? >> just the experience of having the police in the classroom to teach the children nr the positive role and to reinforce it later on out on the streets is incredible, the look on the eyes of the parents the first day they pull in on the school and see all the cones set up, and they say what happened to our drop off area and it starts the process what supervisor yee and supervisor kim has done for pedestrian and bicycle safety is great this program adds to that and it gets some of our little people, our future leader in that mindset, when they step off the curb, bad things can map to you in san francisco, it's a reality, so this program is something that when the principals find out about it, that they have to have it

at their school, so this is kind of the first step and i can appreciate that once the word is out and it's been offer today a lot of other schools, that we're going the need a lot of help getting into the schools and training some of our future leaders for this wonderful program, it's a pleasure to talk about it, we both really believe in it because that's our job, for the liltion people to get to and from safety their parents are able to drop them off safely, this heightens the awareness it gets people talk about it so when they come to the school, they won't take it for granted that there's an awareness component to it. >> thank you. >> with pleasure. >> thank you once again, officers. on our next slide, i would like to talk about what the program looks like at our schools, one of the benefits of this program is that it is designed with a uniqueness

that each school campus and traffic condition, meaning that some schools are big, some schools are small some schools have large and low traffic and it just depends on what the school needs and what the program can offer as a board, so things to consider is the size of school in the physical area and the start time of the school and the traffic conditions for the school so on your next slide, two of the typical programs that we have for the school crossing guard is the traditional crossing guard zone, this is what we historically think of a crossing guard you have the white painted streets with the big lines and you have students that step off the curb with the hand held stop sign to hold up traffic, on the right we have the safety drop off zone, these are for areas where it's highly congested in the morning and in the afternoon where it's inconceivable to have a