it is unjust what happened to him and it's awful what happened and the event has been exaggerated. [speaking foreign language] unte unterpreter: we would like to ask you to come to our school and help us out with issues that we have, for example, communicating with our principal. thank you very much. good evening.

[applause] violletta ronen. isabel gutierrez. daisy camay. josephia riaz. graciella riaz. and myriam -- looks like encion. so those are the next speakers on for marshall. go ahead. >> good evening. i have two grandchildren, one is now at marshall. he is so genuinely referred to

-- they love him. the parents love him. and at a time when our community, our latino community is being assaulted by this current administration, daca will probably be taken away from our youngsters, we need mrmr. mr. tobar and hundreds of him because he in that school is the only one that understands what the community is all about. he's the only one that understands the parents and the only one that treats the parents with the respect they deserve. marshall elementary is 70% latino. whatever it is that happened, rough-housing, whatever it is that happened, is culturally acceptable to the latino community because i have seen these kids come up to mr. tobar, when he's out there every day making sure that these kids get to their cars safely and he says

hello to the parents and greets them and greets the kids and i'm sure whatever happened was culturally misunderstood. i've heard rough-housing. whatever that means. not even the parent of the child knows what happened. and his reputation is being put on the line. the reputation of an excellent man who has been a teacher for more than 20 years and recognized by the city. i think it's shameful. i think we need him back in the classroom tomorrow morning because threes kids need to learn. these kids are not learning! [applause] these kids are playing games, for god sakes, and we don't have substitutes, in a city where gentrification has caused that we don't have quality teachers. we have some, but not the level of mr. tobar. he needs to be back in the classroom tomorrow morning or the day after or monday because

we need 100 more mr. tobars, at the moment where our community is being asailed by all angles. thank you. mr. tobar, we want you back. thank you. [applause] >> i have three children. my boy now is 16 years old, my daughter 12 years old, little one, 6-year-old. mr. tobar is very nice people, very nice person. i don't know what happened, but he doesn't have a job in christmas and this morning, my daughter stand in the school and

i look for a couple of minutes and she's -- she feels very bad. it's like something -- if you don't do something, i will have to change school for my daughter. you guys helped to fix all the problems, i would appreciate that thank you. >> thank you. [applause] [speaking foreign language] interpret interpreter: i'm a community organizer which is a conglomerate of different organizations, about 90 of them

in the community, that includes churches and schools. [speaking foreign language] interpreter: i also work with a program that mr. tobar worked with us. he has worked there for 15 years. and i have a letter from the supervisor who provides the volunteers in this program. [speaking foreign language]

interpreter: working with the program for 15 years with mr. tobar and he did the summer school. [speaking foreign language] interpret interpreter: i received a call from a mother who said that he has been removed from his work in his classroom. [speaking foreign language]

interpreter: this has been horrible news for me. he said that it was inappropriate behavior with one of his students. that really surprised me because he has worked here so much with us. he has been only professional, responsible, respectful, not only of his students, but also the parents. [speaking foreign language]

interpreter: his professionalism has been the reason why we have employed him every summer for our classes. he's a teacher that those our culture. he's respectful and is respectful of the families and the rules and procedures for the classrooms during the summers through our program. [speaking foreign language] interpreter: unfortunately, i have to leave right now because of illness before, you i would have loved to have come and talked about mr. tobar and his

professional career and his work with us in our program. i hope this message would provide support to our colleague. if you need any more information, contact information is available. >> thank you very much. [speaking foreign language] interpreter: thank you. and i hope you make the right decision, because teachers like mr. tobar is what san francisco needs. [applause] [speaking foreign language]

interpreter: good evening. i'm from san antonio church and i have known andres even before he got married at our children. [speaking foreign language] interpreter: i fund out about this from people standing in line at the supermarket. and i heard what happened to the teacher at marshall. [speaking foreign language] interpreter: we need an

investigation. [speaking foreign language] interpreter: and i think the problem is probably easy with the service he has provided. i have a goddaughter, who was also his student and i know a lot of people that have known of this problem and they will be waiting in line to talk in his favor. [speaking foreign language]

interpreter: like my friends who don't know what is going on. a lot of people don't know and we should clarify for him and for his daughters and his wife and for us. thank you very much for letting me speak here tonight. >> thank you. [applause] [speaking foreign language] interpret interpreter: good evening. i have two children at marshall.

i just found out about the problem with what's happening with mr. tobar. [speaking foreign language] interpreter: mr. tobar is a great person. when we come in in the morning, he's always there to greet us to say good morning, how are you doing? he's a great teacher. he was a teacher for my 14-year-old child. he learned and taught my kid how to read and write and speak

perfect spanish. [speaking foreign language] interpreter: he also was a great teacher for my 9-year-old, for this kid, my child. and i'm not talking bad about the other teachers. they're good teachers, but mr. tobar has such a gift and it's not fair that he take him away from us. >> thank you. >> gracias. [applause] >> there are a couple of other speakers on this.

josepha or graciella? are you here? and i have susan solomon. >> good evening, commissioners, student delegates and superintendent matthews. i'm susan solomon, united educators of san francisco and executive vice president. i first want to congratulations president mendoza-mcdonnell and vice president stevon cook. and welcome back to brad stamp. it's been a long time. good to see you. i've come to the microphone to talk about what we all know is going on and that's a campaign to get a parcel tax on the ballot from the midst of collecting signatures as a citizens initiative and i want to thank the people who in the

front of the room have rsvp'd that they will be attending the kickoff event and training this saturday, january 13, at 11:00 at 1188 franklin. the san francisco labor council headquarters. for those of us that are in the room and listening, we have petitions available right now for folks' signatures. you need to be a san francisco voter and the most important access to this parcel tax is that it will greatly increase compensation for sfusd educators, even though we did just get a substantial raise. this city is so expensive that we know that educators and others cannot afford to stay here unless we put more revenue towards the educators devoted to our students.

i thank you, everyone, for your support. let's get this on the ballot. we have just less than a month to collect those signatures. >> thank you. that's the end of public comment. section g is a special order of business. there is none. section h, discussion of other educational issues. superintendent matthews, sfusd pathway to teaching. >> thank you, president mendoza. i will stop there from now on. >> yep. [laughter] >> this evening we have a presentation regarding the district pathway to teaching and we have our chief academic officer brent stevens and interim officer daniel menendez.

>> commissioners, good evening. i'm brent stevens. we're happy to have a brief opportunity this evening to present on a set of programs that are designed to provide san francisco unified with a pipeline of teachers, as they prepare to become teachers and enter into our classrooms. over the last two years, we've invested in a range of new

programs that permits san francisco unified to have much-expanded portfolio of pipeline options. so we hope briefly to present one of those options to you. and then we'll focus a few additional slides on pathway to teaching. pathway it teaching is a brand-new alternative teaching program that we launched this school year. we have 85 intern teachers working through pathway to teaching. what i would say, we want to talk to you about our theory of action, describe four strategies that bolster our pipeline and then conclude with a note about investments that we'll make. i'm joined to my right by several people, chris camlake,

professional development and leadership. our theory of action is that if we support aspiring teachers from and reflective of our community in earning their credentials, and then develop accessible and high-quality credentialing for these teachers, invest in new teachers with highly in effective for the first of her two to four years, then we'll build and retain a strong, sustainable work force. it's on this first point that i want to make a particular point. we have dramatically expanded our ability to recruit and support local candidates. and we've expanded the teachers of color that are preparing to be teachers with us through the portfolio programs.

you will see some of those numbers in consequent slides. >> hi, everyone. nice to see the commissioners here tonight. i'm going to talk about the residency program that we have here in san francisco. i think most are familiar with san francisco residency. we've expanded to have a second residency. i will explain a little bit about the fftr and talk about, one, similarities, and the ones with different candidates. we've been working with the residency for eight years. we've recruited s.t.e.m. teachers and bilingual teachers. we have 79% of our graduates

still teaching in san francisco unified school district. and 80% of the graduates have completed at least five years of teaching. so we have a relatively good retention rate. 66% of our residents declare as people of color compared to 55% teachers. and the residency is in partnership with stanford and the university of san francisco. and really focuses on a year-long residency is that accompanied by weekly practicum, that can look at what they're learning. and embed it into what they're learning in their site placements. they also have three years of teaching, one in their residency

year and two following that. so that's the san francisco residency. the focus is on bilingual candidates and s.t.e.m. we had initially tried to expand the other residency program, but due to some expansion issues with being able to have the universities accepting more sfusd folks into their program, we were unable to do the expansion. we went to look for other residency programs to mirror this and we found this embedded masters program with york university. very similar to sftr in that

it's a year-long residency, on-site coaching. we started with eight residents and we'll expand to 30 in the coming year. teaching residency also allows for upcoming teachers to, in addition to doing their daily teaching, have focused with one-on-one tutoring and social and emotional support for students. we want to leverage them to crow eight change and the academic that have been underserved. it's focused in middle school and it's more on single subject and has a special ed component. >> thank you. i'm going to get into some of our other pipeline strategies for the differestricdistrict. i are pair on the university

partnerships that we leveraged. and also dig in a little bit to the new program, pathway to teaching, where daniel will help me with some of our goals on that program. so to start with, it's been a statewide program, but with the coming on of the -- what do you call it, the -- we've funded other own. we find it a tool and we have 54 para educators, where they breakthrough barriers for people who are not from mainstream cultural backgrounds to get through the bachelor's degree

and pass the exams. it's a powerful community and entices people to come into our classrooms, which has a higher possible of staying in our classrooms. it's a valuable asset. another asset is our university partnerships. we serve as a hub to our institutes of higher education networks. it's a powerful resource for us, where we get to sit side by side and convening faculty and field placement folks and align our work together to make sure that sfusd is their number one friend and we ultimately attract students to come here as interns, student teachers and eventually employed in our classrooms we never want to clause sight of

that network. and then, finally, pathway to teaching, it's our newest addition to our pipeline. we have 88 teachers in our first cohort. it's a unique opportunity for educators to be in the role of preparing new educators. and we take it very seriously and excited about creating a program on exclusive classrooms, and safe and supportive classrooms. so i feel like we're able to bring our new teachers right into our programs in a very connected way. there are three pictures on the side and i want to highlight that it's the people in this. there's a heavily biased recruiting strategy that's local. and so i have many people that

are -- that we're recruiting that are already employed as substitutes and the three you see there are a special ed teacher at flynn. cynthia borjak, 4/5 bilingual teacher and so i'm going to pass it over to daniel, who will talk more about the numbers. >> thanks, chris. good evening, commissioners. congratulations to president mendoza mcdonnell and vice president cook. i'm excited to talk about pathway because we have the conviction that these pipeline programs are the best response we can have to the national and statewide teacher shortage.

we experienced tremendous success. so i will walk you through the numbers and talk about what we're doing this year in terms of the application process. on the left, you can see the targets that we set during the recruitment process for what became our first cohort of pathway teachers that are teaching in schools this year. so we wanted to get 611 applications and ended up with 824. we wanted 40% of our first cohort to be teachers of color and that went up to 44%. we wanted all 100% of our first cohort to be placed and 99% of them were hired, for the '17/'18 school year. we wanted to fill 50 to 75 vacancies and we overenrolled and ended up with 88 teachers. initially, we wanted to have 70% of folks in special education, 15% in bilingual spanish. but because of the change in

ratios, we changed it a little bit are so 52% was special education teachers. and 30% ended up multiple subject. for this year, we're looking at a similar number. we'd like to have 90 folks enrolled in total. we'll keep multiple subjects at 15% and special education should be about 55% of those 90 teachers and that's in response to historical data. we also are planning on wrapping up the process two months earlier than we did last year. so i would be remiss in my duties if i didn't say, if you know anyone who may be a great teacher, refer them to

sfusd.ed sfusd.edu/pathwaytoteaching. i believe that's why we opened at 99% staff. we're excited about the program and excited to see it grow this year. >> so i will crows with this summary slide. it's a representation of all the various programs that constitute our current portfolio for our teachers and classrooms. it provided support for the parent-teacher program. we have experienced great success to take the credentialing tests. we went to 150 teachers this year, strategy to help people get past the barrier tests. we're also dedicated to internships and exploring

additional pipeline activities even this year. we're just now beginning to explore interest in recruiting for a dhh, deaf and hard of hearing pipeline. we understand we have a shortage in that area, so right now, we're querying the community to see who might be interested and customizing pipeline support. all of this stands next to a much more robust process for teachers in their second year of employment at sfusd. we've talked about having expanded greatly the number of teachers through coaching. we run no waitlists for teachers that are seeking to clear their credential with the state of california. they can get their induction coaching here at sfusd and that was not previously the case.

all of our tsas are teacher induction coaches and it helped us to have the reach that we have to serve our new teachers. all of this provides a lot of investment. we intend to stay steady and even expand the idea that we grow our own at san francisco unified. thank you for the time and the opportunity to present on our pipelines. we appreciate it. >> vice-president mendoza-mcdonnell: thank you so much. i'm going to have a couple of speakers come up at this time. so lida blank and susan solomon.

>> good evening. just want to make a few comments. i've been following and participating in one way or another with several of the -- virtually all the pathways except the newest one, nyu, since i became president of usf. it's a subject very important to our students as well as our members. the quality of the support that we give to our newest teachers is probably one of the biggest factors in that retention rate, which we're committed to seeing improved for our newest teachers. and in particular, we're all committed to diversifying our teaching force so that it mirrors the students and particularly our students that are facing the biggest challenges. so i want to commend the district for many things. one is dedicating time, energy

and resources of staffing our classrooms fully, and to the extent possible involving the union, collaborating and informing us. it's been a different version for each of the pathways. so i am glad to know -- i just had a meeting this afternoon with helen pettycott, that the program is halfway into the school year, seems to be very stable there was a small number of people that were in the program that dropped out, really only a few, a couple of them are still teaching, but not in the program. a couple of them simply left the classroom, but for a cohort of 80 or so people, that's a very high -- i think it's very good, knowing they came in with their

intensified, six-week program. and the district has been very good about keeping us informed. getting our feedback with the rollout of the program and there will be implementation so the program is more supportive and clear with the people that are coming in. so one cause for concern. there's been six coaches for the pathways program. three are our sfusd members and three through the new teacher and we don't -- i don't have any notion of understanding why that happened. but there are double standards for our members who are committed and held to a -- if

you're coaching and a usf member and you are coaching in this district, you are expected to finish out the school year. there's a repercussion if you don't. if you are working with an outside organization that has an employee doing the same work and not held to the same standard, that's a concern for us. i want to say it's -- it's a tip of the iceberg in that the new teacher pathway program was a three-year grant and it seemed like it was the tail wagging the dog. as we moved forward it's that the district's values are values that are running the program and it's not an outside program that has a big grant dictating the terms on which we roll out the program. sftr is a gold standard program and we want to continue to see it supported.

the reason why it's been so stable, it has to do with the model and the financial support that has been brought to the residence and that's something that we are all committed to seeing continue into the future, so we don't want to see sftr diminish at the cost of the other programs. it has to be in addition to. that's what we'd like to see, since the nyu program is tripling or doubling in size. so let's continue the positive growth we've seen and not sack river i -- sacrifice one progra for another. and that teachers have full access to the information they need to be successful. and to keep us in the loop and we'll work with the extent that

we can. thank you very much. >> thank you. >> susan solomon again. i will just add a couple of things to what president blank said. jen steiner gave us the information about how terrific the retention rate is for teachers is. i think moving forward with the different models, need to look at the numbers as well to see if we can duplicate and replicate those successes. there's more intensive support than in the other pathways. there is summertime kind of boot camp and then teachers are put right into the classroom. we know they're working with many of our students that have the most need and challenges. so making sure that they have as

teachers the support they need to support those students. it's extremely important. and i do want to say how much -- how important it is that para educators are being brought into the programs. but to really ramp it up is so important because they know our students well and introduces racial and ethnic diversity, which has been a challenge, we know. as president blank said, continuing dialogue is important. we want to be sure that they get all the support they need. >> thank you. colleagues, any questions or comments? commissioner walton?

>> thank you, president, and thank you, all, for a wonderful presentation this evening. first question, i know how we fund our traditional program, but how are we funding emat? >> from our sales force grants. >> on slide 6, where we talk about support for admissions and bachelor's degree programs, what does that support look like? >> it's a -- we go with a cohort model and so we bring the groups together. there's a group where they're given an opportunity to learn

about opportunities to pursue their bachelor's degrees and also to pursue the credentialing exams. there is individual learning plans set up for each participant of the 54. and then, finally, there's some financial support that goes along for allowable expenses. >> that's what i wanted to hear. >> there is money. >> and when did credentialing authority happen? >> this is the first year. we have it in four different areas. so pathway to teaching allows it in multiple subjects, bilingual and special education. and learned to be able to clear

administrative credentials through sf plus. >> will you repeat that? a couple of years ago we didn't have credentialing authority and it's important that people understand how hard you've been working and that's why i'm excited about the direction we're going in. should be proud of that. continue to focus and work hard, but i wanted that highlighted. you talked about wrapping up the process earlier, which gives us as a district option, principals options, and i think that's important that we've gotten to a point where we want to have this early opportunity for us to bring educators and i'm excited about that. i just want it say that i think as we've had this conversation over the last couple of years, we've had some challenging conversations and pushed hard and worked hard together to get to this point, just how exciting

it is, as you look at your work and what we've been able to accomplish. so want to commend you on that and thank you for that. i am concerned if there are differences in allowances from what our partners are doing as coaches and part of the system and if that's handled differently, than our traditional educators. and we don't have to have that conversation necessarily here, but i would be interested in an understanding -- i know there is no standard difference, but understanding in terms of maybe why we have to do it that way, versus having all educators from the district, if you could shed some light on that. >> i can shed light on that. the grant that we received for the partnership to establish the pathway to teaching program is a three-year grant that partners with the new teacher project and

a similar organization that supports many programs. the model in many of the districts across the united states is to have the partner take the bulk of the work the first year while we learn from them and then slowly, gradually, releasing the model to us so we take it over in the third year. we have our own special brand of sfusd and wanted to create some curriculum to be sure that our practices are embedded. what we did for the first year, we used the federal grant dollars awarded to hire teaches and also three usfd coaches, with the idea that each year we

would be adding coaches. next year, with our partners, it makes more sense to use dollars to hire people out of our own. so this will -- i believe that they're a very high caliber and the resignation of the coach had to do with that coach. we're working to replace her and we believe we have a conclusion we can implement this week. we appreciate the hard work compliments and i didn't want to forget that these are new compliments and i just wanted to honor that as well. so thank you. >> thank you. >> thank you for that

comprehensive presentation. it's exciting work. i want to acknowledge a few folks. i want to recognize immediate past president walton. and president mendoza-mcdonnell for the sales force in this type of work. and i remember clearly susan solomon at that podium when we were having a tough discussion about teach for america and the investments that afforded first-year teachers that we were not able to match at the time and then this turn-around with our own teachers. i have a couple of questions. what are the differences between our own program and teach for america? that's an issue that this board

has confronted and had some tough conversations about. secondly, it's never too early to talk about the budget and whether you are anticipating needing additional funding and if it needs to be back filled and this is fantastic work that is filling gaps. we need to think about teacher pipelines for by -- bilingual languages and every year we hear there are classes in immersion programs or language programs that can't be filled because we have a derth, for example, mandarin teachers and i would love to see some planning going into how we can create pipelines

of bilingual teachers. >> there's a number of questions there. i will lean on you to make sure that i get through them all. i will take the question of funding first. we're trying to be thoughtful over the course of this year and over the coming years about how to devote resources and we invested in our tsas and administrators that came in to join the program and bolster its ranks. and we'll continue to do that. over the next couple of years, we'll be looking to shore up the funding for that program and our residency programs. with respect to the residency programs, we're doing work now to try to come up with more

diversified aapproach to providing cost of living stip d stipends to our teachers. it's a critical investment to make if we want to maintain teachers of color in those programs. we're looking to account for that shift and fill in with other funding sources. i'm less able to speak to the differences between tfa and pathways to teaching. i 52 know that one of the similarities that was drawn early on is the fact that each of the two programs has a summer component. and that's why the programs were painted essentially with the same brush. the summer program consists of two-week-long learning experiences. one at the beginning, one at the end. and four weeks of teaching experiences.

we had varying levels of success and then they moved straight in to a coaching relationship. perhaps one of you can describe tsa is a way that i can't and demonstrate the differences. >> i think one of the most important differences is that in pathway, we were committed to being local in terms of the pool of folks we recruited. 80% of the people that made it through pathway were local to the san francisco bay area and a number of them working in our schools as para professionals and substitutes. that was very intentional on our part. it's a national recruitment model. they take folks and deploy them to where people may not have grown up there or had connections there it's important for us to find folks that are dedicated to our schools and our students and our

city as well, in the hopes it would increase retention. we wanted folks who are interested in education as a career and teaching as a career and dedicated to the idea of working in our cities. in terms of the profile of the folks, it's one of the most significant to the impact that we hope it has to have high retention and commitment to our schools and tidz from the folks that are applying. >> and one of the critical differences is that the pathway program is more under our control. we're creating the curriculum, doing the coaching. we're selecting the folk to come into the classroom. we're really taking ownership of this. so it's an sfusd program.

>> at the end of the two-year interpship, some say and some don't. pathway program, it's one-year interpship and they commit to two years. people that stay the three years tend to stay longer and that we lose a lot of people between the second and third year and third and fourth year. so we may want to reconsider. and the curriculum they're learning is curriculum we've designed. so they're learning their curriculum through our university modules. they're not having to apply it and figure out what i'm doing related to the core curriculum being given by the school districts. so that's a big difference. >> and developing teachers in

mandarin and cantonese, none of it is an obvious opening, but we're starting to look at how a program like this can serve the mandarin program. it's another credentialing area that we haven't talked much about, which is p.e., which we run several f.t.e.s short every year, so we're trying to give thought to how to get people in f.t.e.s. >> there are seven teaching in cantonese and manned ridge -- mandarin. we were able to get them their multiple subject matter. we're providing them with

tutoring to do so. >> vice-president mendoza-mcdonnell: vice president cook and commissioner sanchez? >> commissioner cook: congratulations. i know everyone on this board and in the district was really concerned about the level of vacancies. and it was something that was being felt across the city. parents were really upset. schools were not filled up for the year. we haven't heard any of that. when things are quiet, right, knock on wood, but that's a huge accomplishment, because things looked dire. this team and district took it upon itself to solve it, with the people committed to our district. what separates the program is

brilliant, spot on. why aren't more of our parents classroom teachers? what are the barriers for that? we saw that in a lot of ways in this program. so that commitment or being able to put people in position to teach when they've been committed to our district. it's probably one of the most beautiful things that i've seen since coming on to the board. as i tour schools, principals introducing me to the pathway teachers and are now serving their schools. it's a highlight for me, seeing this get off the ground and the open enrollment and you guys going beyond your projections. all of this is great stuff that will not get talked about as much because it's positive and things are not falling apart.

so i'm really proud of the work that's been happening and i want to see it continue. i'm sure, obviously, it will be learning from what happened over the past year and i'm sure you will be on top of that, too. and i think it's important that we've been a part of the discussions with you and you've been listening to them as you've been getting this off the ground. the last thing that i will say -- i have one question. one of the pathway teachers is a person i went to high school with and she's at glenn park elementary and her daughter goes to school there. thurgood marshal is represented. so i'm personally proud of her. the question i have is if there is anything worth doing to build community with the people going through this year. so they're going through and they may be disconnected.

how are they, if at all, able to share, talk about their experience for themselves and the next class or telling people about using their stories to talk about more people coming to the program? >> thanks for that. i think that each of the programs have that cohort component. the pathway teachers this year are very close starting with the summer experience where they spent the 6 weeks together and then created a facebook group that they post on frequently. interesting to observe. and they come together on saturdays. because we know they're reliant on the coach-teacher relationship and on-line, we bring them together to integrate that and create a sense of community about every other month. so that's also happening. i think it's a good question about how do we then leverage the folks in the program now to

recruit the next group of people? we're very proud of them. i believe they've come and talked during our selection panel but there are probably other ways to think about doing that. >> commissioner sanchez: i will heap on the praise as well, thank you, guys and gals, for all the work you have done to bridge the gap to get teachers in classrooms, so we don't have that gap has we have historically. [please stand by]