in which they engaged multiple classes at washington high school to do education about the history and the content of the murals as well as park rangers from the golden gate national recreation area. and then, students are planning to create historical explanation sheets for each mural to provide context for those seeing the mural. that is the current state of what the proposed action is, but it is possible that the committee, when composed, will seek to pursue other avenues. >> and the goal of the committee was to go back through the ten points and to come back with recommendations around each of them, with one of them being of course around the murals. >> okay. so can we keep the community up to date on that, as well, so they know what's happening each step of the way? okay. thank you. next speaker, please. >> before i begin, i have a few

handouts. can calvin here come and pass them out? >> give them to miss casco, and she'll pass them out. thank you. >> all right. dear members of the governing board. my name is evan chen, and i will be a senior at campolindo high school in moraga, which is a city in the east bay. i've taught over 150 students? scratch programming in ordunio, which is a robot car that students assemble and program. i received grant money from the california library association to fund a class in san pablo, and i've won the contra costa youth award for the syllabus that i've created for these classes. i feel strongly that education is the key to opportunities, especially education and technology. in order to do this, i believe that technology education should start young.

there are now easy to learn programming languages based on dragging code blocks. i see that children can be very creative programmers and and are also able to design programs and gamed free of boundaries. more importantlily, many students enjoy programming and will enjoy and develop this lifelong skill. having gone to public school all my life, i know the needs of the student. i would like to be the liaison between the school board and the public for stem education. i can work with computer lab teachers to present education and share my input. i'd be willing to speak with anyone in the school district who'd be willing to start these classes. secondly, i'm hoping the governing board can promote the classes i teach by putting them on the san francisco unified school district's school

website. would you please consider my request? thank you for your time. [applause] >> thank you for joining us, mr. chen, here in san francisco. we really appreciate it. next speaker, please. >> hi again. i'm not going to take all two minutes, i promise, but i felt the need after our presentation a couple of our members who are here tonight pointed out two e egregious errors that i made in our presentation, and they were both on slide nine. we did not include uesf in the list of allies even though they have been unfailingly supportive of us in our request for professional development and many of our other joint efforts, so i sincerely apologize, susan. and also, dr. merase, we totally left you off of our allies list. you came to our awards, you acknowledges d.j. for winning

an award. thank you. we didn't mention the board as a whole, but i definitely wanted to get those two partners on the record here tonight before leaving, so i apologize, and we will update the presentation. it will be available on the c.a.c. website, so thank you. >> are you jan? [inaudible] >> okay. and are you from -- [inaudible] >> okay. go ahead. >> good afternoon. my name is sasha fu. i am a community member, and i work with college students in the bayview and their path towards college graduation. i'm here on behalf of sf one. dan had to leave, but you guys get me. and i'm speaking on his behalf and on behalf of the hundreds of parents and community members we've spoken to about the school assignment process. the school assignment process is really too complicated for

families to maneuver alone. i know that felly nonprofits have entire parts or large portions of -- fellow nonprofits have entire parts or large portions of their jobs dedicated to this alone. it speaks to just how much and how truly difficult this process is for families. moving the system on-line would be an easy way to breakdown barriers for families. i want to clarify our position. our clarification is that the position should move on-line given the current system's obstacles to participation for working families, not that sfusd create an on-line system incorporating charter apps, so currently that the -- solely that the current system reads on-line. i am honored to be reading some testimonials from parents and families? a truly inclusive school systems needs to meet the need of different families. the paper forms are difficult to use, and standing in line to

hand them in is ridiculously time-consuming and burdensome for working parents. creating an on-line education, reaching out to branch libraries to set aside computers and technical assistance for parpts who wish to fill out the forms on-line would make it much more equitiable. being able to use an on-line platform would make the school system more accessible for all parents. when technology can make our lives easier, let's use it. i believe an on-line system would not be an error prone. i can't get to an sfusd school site to drop off the forms because of my health. i'm disabled. everything else i can do on-line, and it's easy, and i don't get any -- and i get a confirmation it hasn't been lost somewhere. busy families with crazy work schedules can fill out and send applications any time. wouldn't this also eliminate the need for sfusd to enter submitted data forms manually?

it would also save money versus printing and distributed hard copies in every school. so there's a wide support amongst community members to move it on-line. we urge you to do it expediently. thank you. >> thank you. that ends public comment. section h is a discussion of other educational items. mr. superintendent, you have two updates for us. >> yes. tonight, we will begin with an update on our safe and supportive schools resolution. this update will be presented by our chief of sfusd kevin truitt. [applause] >> good evening, superintendent

matthews and commissioners of the board of education.

this is your annual report for safe and supportive schools. i'd like to start by framing this area of improvement for the implementation of safe and supportive schools. we believe that if we provide professional development that assists schools in creating and maintaining systems and structures to increase the amount of learning time for students, particularly african american students, and we support teacher-led professional learning communities around building and maintaining a positive school climate and culture as well as provide coaching by trained professionals, and if schools utilize the tiered fidelity inventory as a self-assessment monitoring tool to measure fidelity of implementation, then we will see a decrease of office referrals, suspensions and expulsions which will in

turn provide increased instruction time for student, so we will see an increase student performance, and eliminate disproportionality for african american students. so keeping with that theory, let's start with the professional development. it's important to note that the numbers in front of you do not reflect the 1,457 staff that were trained over the summer of 2017 before school started. so these are numbers from -- from the beginning -- during the school year. as you can see, safety care or as it is sometimes referred to as deescalation is the most popular training and 1,151 staff is trained. so after training, how do we know what is happening at the school sites. that's where the tiered

fidelity comes in. it's been a statistically reliable predictor of school success. if a school is able to score 70% or better than the interventions and practices in place will show the desired behavior, and in this case, the decreased behavior would be decreas decreased suspensions, increased attendance, and prosocial environment and culture. the good news, there's going to be a few of these, very few in this presentation. one of the good news is more schools are actually using the t.f.i., so this data represents a significant increase in the schools using the tool to assess the progress with implementation. as you can see from the implementation scores where we should show continued growth because of the increased number of teachers who have been trained, in the many areas i mentioned on the professional development side, we actually

saw a dip in the score from 66.96 to 66.7. and the use of data analysis at the school sites also for this year dipped a little bit from 63% to roughly 61%. these numbers, again, they're assessed by the schools, and they're not increasing tells us we should not expect to see the results we're looking for, and we're not. suspensions by grade level. total suspensions for the 17-18 school year is that at least 1,725 suspensions occurred, an increase of 201 suspensions over the 16-17, and an increase of over 500 suspensions from 2015-16. i noted here that the suspensions for elementary schools and k-8 is under reported.

we know that because when the pupil services staff has to intervene when the behavior of a particular student escalates and is in need of more urgent attention, we discover incidents that have not been entered into the system, and this that happens too frequently to consider that data reliable, so we flagged it right now, and we are in the process of correcting that. the suspensions as a total enrollment, our focus is on disproportionality, so we're always going to focus on the african american students, because it was the data, the disproportionality of african american suspensions, and a bunch of other data points are really what kind of pawned safe and support -- spawned safe and supportive schools. so we do focus on african

americans. years ago as you can see, african american students, when they represented 8.5% of the population when safe and supportive schools came into play, there was almost 50% of our suspensions. this year, african american students represent 6.4% of our student population in sfusd and they are 37.2% of our suspensions. still, dramatically disproportionate, but the disproportionality is decreasing. office discipline referrals. increases in suspension can predict an increase in discipline referrals, as well, because generally, your referrals will precede a suspension. there were a total of 26,049 referrals, and as you can see, african american students

makeup almost 9,000 of the referrals while latino students makeup over 10,000 of the referrals. they each individually surpassed the total number of referrals of all other ethnicities of the entire district. again, just being honest and trying -- not trying to hide some of the unpleasant aspects of this data, 53% of the african american referrals are for disruption and noncompliance. i mention that because though you cannot suspend for willful defiance, you can be referred out of class to your wellness center, etcetera for disruption or noncompliance. o.d.r.'s by percentage. once again, we want to highlight who is kpriez -- comprising the office discipline referrals that you saw in the broad number there. and again, as a total percent of the 26,000 referrals,

african american students makeup 34%, which is actually, as you can see, a decrease in the proportionality of the year before of 37%. latino students makeup 38.4, and you can see that that proportionality based on their percentage in the district is an increase of 3.7% from the previous year. the arrested. though we certainly have had an increase in police reporting to schools this year and police involvement in school wide incidents, we actually showed a decrease in the number of arrests down to 38. we have checked this number. mr. quesada has checked this number, and this was not under reported. as was evidenced earlier, you know i would tell you if it was, and it's not. in fact it's the lowest number of arrests of any school year

we have on record, so in 2010-11, we had 195. 11-12, we had 167. 12-13, we had 133. following year, 94. then 90, then 49. and last year, we had an increase to 79. so last year, we saw a bump up from 49 arrests the year before in 15-16 to 79; and this year, we're down to 38. that being said -- >> sorry. 195 was what year? >> 195 was 10-11. and 195, 167, 133. that being said, african american students makeup 45% of the arrests while latino students makeup 32%. both groups far exceeding all other students combined who represent 22% of the arrests. chronic absenteeism.

as chronic referrals and suspensions increase this will be a huge predictor of attendance and unfortunately as expected, we see an increase of students who are missing 18 days or more or 10% of the school year. so this graph you're going to read a little bit differently, okay? in the other graphs, when i showed you a percent, it was a percent of that total number. so when you say, for instance, african americans, 37.2%, it meant that african americans makeup 37.2% of the total district suspensions. okay. this one, you're going to read a little bit differently, okay? when you see african american, 44%, what that means is of all the african american students in our district, 44% of them are identified as chronically absent. of all the latino students of the district, 26% of them are identified as chronically absent. pacific islander, 45% of all the pacific islanders in the

district are represented -- are identified as being chronically absent or missing more than 10% of school. okay. i got through the data. all right. so in conclusion -- so this is where i'm talking -- okay. in conclusion, before you ask the questions, i already know them because i have many of the same ones. this is truly a sobering report, and it is a call to action. i know for me, my immediate response is to use this report to prompt some very thoughtful conversations with my colleagues and lead. what do we need to do collectively to call attention to this data and return to a pattern of diminishing suspensions and referrals and strengthen our school communities to be welcoming, safety and supportive schools for all students? thank you. >> thank you, mr. truitt. >> i made my time limit, too.

[inaudible] >> you did. good job. thank you. so we have some public comment on this item. vice president cooke, do you mind calling out the names of the -- of those folks. >> let's see...for public comment, we have susan solomon, alda finic -- >> sure. >> okay. aleta fisher, kevin bogis, ally kopp. >> first, i'm a member of the african american parent advisory committee, so i'm going to read some comments on behalf of the aapac. we are excited to see the work being done at m.l.k. was highlighted in the data tonight.

however, when you look beyond the number, m.l.k. has built a culture in partnership with staff to address the racism and barriers that prevent our students from achieving. to highlight m.l.k., we must also address the unspoken issues that many of our students and families feel unsafe as they first enter the schools. the district's own data show that 25% of our students don't feel safe in their schools. in addressing the data around suspension, we would like to know what data has been collected around students being sent out of the classroom, voluntary home suspension when the parents are being asked to keep a student home, how many times have police been called to sites for students? how can we capture the entire picture of what's going on at our schools with less than complete data? lastly, we would like to highlight the need for more representation of african american staff in the classroom and in supportive role does the our school site.

a safe and supportive community can never exist if it doesn't hold a place for everyone in the community. and these issues were raised back in may when the joint advisory committees all reported here to the board of ed. just every single advisory committee agreed for the need for more implicit bias training. i went on-line for some data. we ha we have over 4600 staff members, yet only 1,000 people have been trained in safety care, and only 310 have been trained in implicit bias. that's 6.7% of our staff, and we wonder why 40% of the office discipline referrals are for disruption? direct correlation. we need to do more around

implicit bias. >> so my name is allison collins, and i'm so glad that lee said that because i'm looking at the same numbers, and i guess i just want to add onto that. at my daughter's school, there was a lot of -- i think at the school last year, we were the highest in suspensions for african american students in the district. we had several lockdowns, and we also had the police called on students to take them out of the school. this year has been a complete turnaround because we have a principal who's worked very hard to build relationships with staff and families and has also supported the staff in coming up with behavior plans that are consistent across the school. so it's been basically night and day. and parents are reporting that they feel welcome, and teachers are also reporting that they feel supported. but it is concerning to me, as well, that when we see african

american, african american, african american in terms of the data, in terms sts disproportional -- of the disproportionality, it's based on positive behavioral support, it's behavioral management, and it's not actually focused on i say ra, class and culture which is -- it's not race, class and culture. this year, they had -- all year, they read books by white female authors until i brought it up to the principal, and then, there was some changes made, but this was curriculum that's been in place for a long time. and last fall, their friend -- well, in their math class, a boy said black kids are dumb in the math class when there was a subthere. this is in a class that my daughter loves.

the teacher has great classroom management. kids are coming in with stuff in middle school, and there's no consistent proactive way that the schools are making black students feel welcome, and i just wanted to add, as well, about the underreporting, i'm hearing from a lot of black parents that when their children with victimized, they are -- are victimized, they're not being called. it's not being reported in the system, and it's also not being reported to parents. so i would like black families to be informed when their children are hurt or harmed, and i would like track of of when students request safety transfers. it's a lot of black students that i'm hearing are transferring from schools, and i don't know if we're tracking that currently. thank you. [applause] [please stand by]

>> during the preservice week of august 14th-17th. we discussed this in our union district parent and support of schools committee. we were assured that whole schools would be able to go to trainings and be provided the training. and now we are finding out it is not true. it is important to have everybody trained. in terms of the climate team, this is actually pretty annoying and possibly a contract violation. during negotiations kak we spent a lot of time on creating two committees. the labour-management health and safety committee and we added to that to address the safe and supported schools policy. that is article 14.5 end date certificate of contract, page 43. we also created a space community committee that includes parents and districts

and union. article 21.10. page 66. the climate team was never brought to the bargaining table. it might be a great idea, but the letter that i reference that was to show administrators included a described climate team's purpose, composition, duties and function. it feels like possibly an end run around the contract. it also could be possibly a parallel structure. a structure outside of the contract. if we are going to have a climate team, let's make sure that it's part of the plan and is not duplicative, nor does it take away from committees that we work very hard and it negotiations to create. thank you pick one more thing, sorry. i just want to point out the district data, which i, -- it is

something we have to take extremely seriously. pick looking at the budget again and priorities, these items have to be prioritized. >> good evening commissioners. my name is kevin. i'm the political director at the advocacy for children, as my teacher displays. what i wanted to highlight is slide six that you all have that shows african-american students enrolment versus suspensions as a percentage of total enrolment. i think this really indicates the place we are at right now as a district. we have some progress and we have seen things kind of change for the better from the dark places that they were at when we passed a resolution. we were spending what seems like thousands of african-american students for no real apparent

reason. we have to figure out how we will get over the finish line. we've been able to successfully change the policy and reallocate dollars to go into better places and helped create this change. we are still not seeing the results we want to see. at this moment when our public school system is under attack from charter schools, data like this makes it really difficult to encourage black families or latino families to send their kids to s.f. usd to get a high quality education. i would say that we appreciate the work that you have done. we appreciate the efforts that you put forward, but we want to see more. we want to see this be successful. we do not want this to be an example of a good policy that never came to be a reality for families and schools. us at coleman kak we are working with the close the correct -- close the gap group and committed to make this change

happen and be an equal partner to continue to push forward. what we really want to see is we want to see this change. we understand this isn't just an s.f. usd issue, but it's a regional issue and as a national issue. whether you're looking at oakland, across the county, other states. we are seeing black students are not getting the quality education they deserve. what my call is for you, is to join us at the next school year and be at school sites throughout that first week and getting the word out this is a priority for the district. that we are committed to that and black families. we will do what it takes to get us there, even though we know we have a long road ahead of us. i wanted to share with you some graphics that we created about black lives in san francisco and in the region. i will pass these for you. thank you so much. >> okay.

that ends public comment on questions. any comments or questions by the commissioners? thank you for that very -- did you want to come up? do you guys have comments cree. >> okay. thank you for your presentation and for your work and to the whole team who is here and everybody i know. it is very difficult and important work. thank you for advocates for everybody here who has been part of this. you know, obviously this is a very, very concerning. i think this is the second year in a row where we have seen very dramatic progression almost to where we were when we started this resolution, at least in

terms of the policy. and in terms of where the numbers are. i just want to impress on the superintendent and on everyone that this is, you know, we need dramatic intervention for ourselves in terms of how this is working, and what sort of resources are needed, and structural changes are needed. the first thing i wanted to ask is, what is the next steps? i'm aware there are some structural changes in how we are thinking about and implementing this in the central office. what does that look like and what happens now? because we really are seeing a regression that basically is almost back to the norm of where we were, at least in terms of what the numbers look like. the suspensions, in many ways are even worse than that because

we eliminated suspensions in a wilful defiance, which were, at the time, 40% of the overall suspensions or roughly there. even despite eliminating that as a category for suspensions, to get almost back to where the numbers were at that time, what are these suspensions for at this point? you know, we were operating from a foundation that suspensions are not an effective intervention. all of the data shows that they don't actually help a student or help a school. so why are we back to a point where we are suspending that many students? what are we suspending them for? if we have a behavioural intervention matrix that is supposed to have suspensions or even referrals as a much lower option after a number of interventions that are supposed to have taken place, why is that not happening cree where is the

disconnect there? and with that, when suspensions are happening and referrals are happening, we want to make sure that it's not just a suspension. it is not just a punishment. there is actually something positive happening for the students. whether they are receiving additional counselling kak whether they are being put into some sort of other types of support or program, saturday school, there was a whole range of other interventions that were supposed to occur, even if the numbers are up. is not happening and are we seeing some type of positive results from that or are they still just mostly punishments that don't have any other associated piece to it? i will stop there because i have a couple of other things. >> with respect to the data, i want to point out the 1213 data

since we are reverting back to that, we know that that data was highly underreported in all aspects. we don't know what our 1213 data was. we are very confident in the middle school and high school data as being recorded because we paid so much attention. we are not finding those cases of unreported that we used to. the data is more accurate for middle school and high school. i don't think we really can't compare and say we are almost at the 1719 mark. it was not anywhere near accurate. that being said, i think that the past couple years, the day to be more accurate and us showing an increase. so we have, you know, these we need to have some individual conversations with several of the schools that we see things happening with, you know? i could bring up some examples, you know, where we are looking at bay since and looking at the

interventions and we see other punitive measures and not one intervention. that's a conversation we need to have with the school. i'm not calling out any particular schools, but interventions going down at the elementary school level is increasing quite a bit. using base is quite a bit to record exactly what you are doing. not so much later on. we see students coming in, and thomas can speak to this too. one of the things for instance he mentions the other day. it was in reference to something else, but we were noticing for african-americans there were several african-american boys who had failed every class in high school. i pulled up the data on every african-american boy in high school with a gpa below 1.5 knowing that, these were students who had significant discipline issues. and we looked at what was in place for these particular

students. so they should have an individual learning plan. while at the query that happened at close session prompted me to ask, what is happening with these particular students? if they are failing all of their classes, and they are -- discipline is stacking up and they are just the next expulsion waiting to happen? what are we doing about that? we are digging a little deeper into some of these issues where we see individual cases where there is no interventions at all and having to ask those questions. when we see students, one after another with a very low gpa failing every class in high school, at the junior level, but very -- only with freshmen critics, what are we doing with those students? we look at the fact that they have significant behaviour interventions. we are just kind of, in other words stacking up one incident after another and being asked, you know, how many things does

this kid have to do before we transfer him? and we need to shift the conversation. not to transferring the students to another school, back to actually changing the interventions. trying different strategies. i've had, you know, we are reorganizing and we are doing some reorganization of people services, locate? and i've surveyed all of the staff there. they given me feedback over what is working effectively with the schools, and also where their challenges are. i have all that feedback. i also surveyed principles as to -- and asked them. several principles responded and asked, what is working at people services? what does working most effectively and where do you find the challenges? i'm not going to share the results of those right now in open session, but i will tell you they are very enlightening. what the staff are staying at people services with respect to discipline and behaviour strategies and safe and supportive schools and what the schools are expecting from

people services are very different narratives right now. we need to be more clear about what people services an is providing and what we can provide. in response to -- i wanted to mention, in response to susan solomon's inquiry, she is absolutely correct. if we call it a cult -- we will fix the language of culture and climate change. it could -- it should be the safe and supported schools team. we cannot provide a whole school professional development to every single school in this district. we can't. and our teams are finding that the culture climate, we can discuss this with you in more detail. we have found that that culture and climate team, or the safe and supportive schools team, we need to get clear with the language, are the most effective people as feeling the pulse of what is happening at that school and telling us what is happening. that was an approach to actually

penetrate more schools with a significant team. saying that we will train a whole schools, all schools, every year and with the turnover we have, is crazy. we have also had several professional development trainings and the number that we shared tonight, the 1,051 for de-escalation and safety care, that is just this year. it was 2,000 the year before and 1500 the year before that. there's been thousands of people trained in de-escalation. we do have a lot of turnover. we had a couple professional developments this year with a staff telling me that due to the shortage, we can have trainings of 35 people and we have subs that only showed up for five. meanwhile we have two trainers. >> i also want to add that we don't see this as solely the responsibility of students of

community services. this is the responsibility of other departments to make sure we are offering culturally relevant curriculum, engaging and culturally responsive and structural strategies and also support and accountability for schools to make sure they are collecting accurate data. we're looking at data on a regular basis and in a granular way at the school level and not just rolling it up into district level data as well. my commitment is to work closely with others on this next year as part of a more coordinated approach. >> the question about what the suspensions are for but we had the break down to the referrals but you didn't share it for the suspension. >> we had a limit to the projects that we have there but i can get that for you. >> do you have any sense of what the biggest category was for suspension? >> nobody should be suspended

for anything. are they just being suspended for a different category that is basically the same thing? >> i would defer on this and get back to you on this. it is a very controversial area. i suspect that is an element of what you're talking about but i would kak for it and prefer to get the complete analysis for you. >> in terms of the structural changes, and how we, you know, to move forward, i do hope that we are, you know, really working closely with groups and others who have it, you know, very deep knowledge of what is happening on the ground here, and what is needed to address what we've seen and what is the challenge here. the other thing i wanted to raise is the support and training that's given to new principles. it seems that some of the, just

looking at the school by numbers, some of the more dramatic changes in the numbers maybe because we are bringing in new school leaders that are necessarily, you know, deeply trained or supported in this approach. and you showed the principle that he has been here a while and he has not worked closely with the staff and sort of note was the program. that may not be the case for other school leaders. it seems that where you see these huge jumps from year-to-year, you know, is that a part of it and what are we going to do, what do they need to do to be supported? there's a certain way we do things and they may come from another school or another district where you suspend when you have -- when someone does something wrong you are going home for three days. we've come to the understanding as a school district that that

is not how we create a safe and supportive environments and there is a lot of bias in that in certain students are targeted with that. and our educators also have agreed this is not the way to create classrooms that are well-functioning in schools and support educators in ensuring students are having their needs met, and not being cycled in and out without getting the supports they need. you know, what are we doing? in that sense, i do think we nude -- that does not just on you all. when you bring in a new principal and they come in and their first or second year and they quadruple the number of suspensions, clearly they are not coming in with a good philosophy about how we operate here. >> we are putting in place a two year curriculum for new assistant principals and building upon good work that has already been done with very

experienced educators providing that support and consolidating that support from a network of 26 mentors to four so we will have greater coordination and greater -- greater quality control. there are some mandatory trainings for all site administrators that we are looking at forms of certification as well so we can assess the knowledge that they have. and in addition within each of the cohorts of schools, principles are, will be engaging in databased improvement projects around specific targets, goals and targets and arenas of culture and climate as well as academics. there are significant disparities and that would be a focus for the assistant superintendent and directors and also where we've seen significant part positive

progress, is models to be studied about exactly what were the strategies kak like the pushing strategy and a significant reduction in referrals pick what were the conditions that need to be put in place at the leadership level and ongoing support for that to be effective? that will be some of the areas of what i described as a coordinated approach. >> thank you. you mentioned the challenges of collecting data from the elementary schools and the majority of our schools or elementary schools. why have we had a challenge with that? and are we suspending first-graders, what are the numbers looking like for very young children? this is a huge concern if we are sending these children home and we are not keeping the data. it is also a big part of this. how are we changing that, anyway?

>> so the biggest issue for elementary schools is the interface, the synergy interface where you do suspensions. the middle school and high school folks do more suspensions so they are more comfortable with the system but it requires a lot of windows opening and closing and understanding of the flaws. i think the fact that they don't have dedicated folks to do discipline at elementary schools, for obvious reasons. they only do one suspension every so often and what we have found is typical. one suspension is not done correctly. if they started we can pick it up and fix it. we can see that they started it. sometimes they don't even startestartit and we find out lt something happened. we see the kid was suspended three times. so we go and fix it. that is how we came to this

understanding. is a difficult line because essentially you are training people on something that is something they want to use very often. and it is something so confident -- complicated you kind of have to use it often. we use it in order to get good at it. that is one of the issues that comes up. we are trying to figure out a way to provide direct support and give them the understanding that they must put in the system, even if they don't do it correctly, they have to call us so we can fix it. >> last one. you know, we are five years now from when the policy passed, you know, there is obviously the snapshot of what these numbers look like and that kind of thing. there's also a tremendous amount of data we've been able to collect that i'm sure, on a day-to-day basis, can't be fully

analysed or reviewed. for example, the idea was always would be able to look at what interventions we were using in a positive way and see what was working and replicate those. do we have the capacity or a plan to more deeply analyse that and implement the learnings from that? and who would do that? i feel like, you know, from years now of having individual students who we have tracked what we've done for them and now many students, what has worked and what has not worked and how are we using what we are learning not just into the immediate pull the data of who wears the need and what is happening for one student in our school, but now as a way to improve. >> i will just say, we have

members of the people services team here right now. i will definitely definitely say that their knowledge base of intervention, they are looking and focusing on the basis on the intervention with schools and looking at case after case of individual students. i think that their knowledge base about effective strategies is certainly one that i -- the feedback i get about the staff from schools, and the support is that they are great. they are wonderful. i need the more, i need them every day. they can't be at every school every day. so i think that building the knowledge base of the intervention centre, i believe the stop is looking at that data and is building that knowledge base. they are able to identify key strategies and interventions that are working and they provide that advice and guidance to the school. >> so, one success that is very

good is there are -- they are using the system to track interventions across the system. kevin mentioned a few state -- few cases where we are disappointed with people not using it. in general, the usage of the system is up and i don't know other districts that have a sophisticated system like this. when we have a case like this, we can exceed what the schools tried in realtime, and in some cases we can follow it day by day. we have a good system for that, commissioner. more and more people are using it. the only thought that occurs to me is when you see schools with radical drops in disciplinary disproportionality, it's about a full-scale commitment of that school led by the principal, and it is priority number 1 that they get it sorted out. you do see that commitment.

or something in the collective commitment to the work that makes a larger effect. >> yeah. i just wanted to disclose that we are concerned about the numbers because of what is underneath that, and we know of the relationship that it has two creating safe and supportive environments for our students and our educators, particularly when it comes to equity, you know, to the experience of african-american students specifically in our schools. this is telling us more than just the fact that a number of students missed a lot of class time, which is also in and of itself, a damaging thing to their education and adamic -- damaging thing to the school climate. just to be clear, we are not

saying lower the numbers for anyway. that is not what this is about. you know, it's about the experience of real teachers and kids and families, and, you know, that's what we want to get right. thank you again for everybody who was a part of this. it was not easy. you all do incredible work. it is a lot of pain and trauma and all of that that you all are experiencing. i want to thank you for that. i know that we want to see -- we want to do better and we want to support you in doing better. >> first i want to start with a follow-up question. a question around accountability. i know that we talk about plans and matrix and support. and the it is in the

affirmative. when we look at data like this it is always in a deficit mode. you know, i want to know how you are thinking about relieving people of working at sfusd over these numbers? how are we thinking about people who have a long-standing track record of not being able to lead around to reducing suspensions? what are the steps we're taking to fire them from those positions? >> i will say that one of the things that my expectation is is in working with principals around the data both in the expectation of increasing academics for students in areas where we in the district have struggled, as well as in reducing the numbers of discipline referrals, and

discipline suspensions. it is usually the same body of students. the expectation is that we as a district work with principals that we use that data and having conversations with them and that as we evaluate damn, that the areas where they are strong, we support, in the areas where there is areas of growth, we identify those areas and have conversations. it assists us in moving towards them close in gaps where we see those gaps. that is my expectation. i will say though that one of the areas, one of -- incoming and, i will say this district is different than any other districts that i've worked in. in the fact that one of the things we have as a district is

a three year contract. that is different than any other districts that i've been in. every other place i've been in, administrators are year to year at work to the pleasure of the superintendent. we have a duty to work with people to grow them, but there's also an understanding that we have a contract process. >> i appreciate that. you know, so, kevin from coleman mentioned what this says to black families about whether or not you should be coming to the district versus going to a charter school. i think the thing that they mention is we actually had no idea how often chargers do this. it is off the charts. i think that the severity of the issue requires that we take a

zero-tolerance approach, and educational leaders that are constantly suspending students, that we have to -- [applause] that is how we hold people accountable. i understand that we have to be considerate of all the factors. but when we talk about saying that, you know, you are not best in this role as a school leader, you should be in another position, because your inability to do this for this community is unacceptable. and so we should be taking steps to move people out of those roles and elevate people who we think can lead around reducing suspensions and improving school climates. we know that we have administrators that are capable of doing that, as we highlighted it. year-over-year, the question for

the district, is he is successful because it is his leadership. i think there is only one of h him. it is hard for me to say that this is district leadership. and, you know, one of the reasons why i wanted to vote is to have you take this role, was because i trusted, i do trust that you can lead to the district to solve this issue. is not a knock on you, specifically, but i'm trying to get to is, you know, how do we make success like we had at mlk the norm, and not the exception? and that we don't hold schools up at mlk to say we at the district are succeeding when that is not the case happening across the district? that is the thing i want us to be able to reconcile. we haven't even talked about

sats which is equally egregious. if i am correct in looking at the data, out of 100% of all african-american students in the district, 44% are chronically absent? >> that is correct. >> nearly half of our students in the city are absent? >> that is correct. and most of those chronically absent, a large percentage of those chronically absent are severely chronically absent. which would be 15-20% of the school year. >> that sounds like a state of emergency. what are some of the top factors that are leading to students being chronically absent? before we get into that, there was a point where you talked about having the