is there any thought to that? >> in regards -- jen and i we work closely with andrew who is our intern and in regards to the findings -- next time we'll bring the survey -- the way he did it is went to each after-school program and he had different locations in regards to where parents may want afte n after-school program. and with families with two-parent households or sentence parent households where they're working and we want to make it as easy as possible for the families as well so we're trying to meet that middle ground where we can find something central in san francisco. but we found -- i don't remember the percentage of it but we did find that some wanted to stay with inclusion for after-school programs. but we had some that also wanted a therapeutic setting. so we would continue with inclusion but we wanted to have an option for a therapeutic setting after-school program.

so it's still in the beginning process of it but those were the findings that we had in regards to it and i would say probably -- correct me if i'm wrong, 70% to 80% were requesting for an after-school program. i don't know if you want to child in and add more to that. >> i think that it was maybe even a bit more than that. and the reason i think that the few percentage that said no was really because they were satisfied with the current offerings for them for those specific families. and the whole takeaway from that project was really the quantitative data that would allow us to talk to our department to show them the importance of it. and so that we could have our families really with the testimonies and the requests captured and that was the big baseline and takeaway from that intern project. it is easier to talk within our department when we have an intern work on something sometimes. so sometimes we like to try to steer our accessible goals towards intern projects so that

the department can notice it more. >> and we also know that there's a great after-school program at promoy after-school program and so if we have another after-school program on the other side of town to where if palmroy has a list for after-school programs we can kind of connect and partner with each other in regards to that. but, again, as jen mentioned some families are okay with inclusion after-school programs. so, again, we don't want to have them rule out that option and just also to have another option for them. >> okay, thank you. >> co-chair sehaux: thank you, council members. and council member orkid sassouni. >> yes, thank you. hello. i will try my best to summarize and to get right straight to the point. you know, great in terms of services and the san francisco area, but i know that there's --

that, you know, the playgrounds are worn out and they tear easily and they're in disarray. how often are they actually attended to and repairs take place? i notice that there's quite a bit of holes in the rubber and the swings are, you know, just not quite hanging properly. for example, in delores park there's one example. you can see broken swings and, you know, i -- i am concerned that children are playing on that without supervision sometimes and just having a ball out there. and get a little wild and with the equipment in disarray. so it concerns me. there's no ranger or anyone coming in and having a look at safety checks on a regular basis. so that is a red flag.

and let's see, coret park is great, good. and bishop -- excuse me, mission playground is a great playground and it's a little more work because of the gate -- the gates add an interesting effect. you have to get through the gate and turn knobs and things to get through. and there's others that i can't name. i would say that, yes, a little more work is needed in those parks. in terms of being in touch through email what would be an estimated time of response? how long of a period before a response would be expected? that's one question. well, sure, go ahead. >> specifically for playground maintenance on the parks -- or the structures -- >> any of the -- yes, yeah, how often is that actually repaired? is there a budget for that or anything? >> yeah. so one of the challenges with our department is because we have over 200 parks i and

different play areas and i was trying to remember how many we had and trying to see for maintenance and things like that. internally we have a work-order system that helps us with crea creating -- not updates but addressing safety concerns for playgrounds if it's the swing that is broken, and the slide is cracked and things like that. and so typically if there's something like that and the person is concerned with that and let the staff know we notify our internal system and we're currently streamlining our processes for our maintenance system. i cannot remember what the abbreviation stands for. but we are working towards that and we're working towards ways of communicating to make sure that our parks are being maintained in the best and the most efficient possible ways. but keeping in mind that we don't have people working full-time in every park because it's a variety, a group effort. so if you see something, please

tell us so we can report it. >> to add to what jen said about our internal process, the great thing is that we have someone new that works for this internal area and he's been with us i believe for a month or two. and his process is to have a sticker. so if somebody from the public calls and says this needs to be fixed he'll put a stick or it so the public don't feel that they're ignored to show on the sticker that we hear you and it's going to be fixed and it's in the process. and so the public is aware of it. >> brand-new idea. >> okay, excellent. and then if someone was to email you, what would be an average response time? is it three days? i mean, i can't expect it to be immediate but what generally do you think would be good to say? >> if you email our office we will try to get back to you as soon as possible and we really aim to get back pretty much in a

week unless we have a lot, a lot of emails. so we can notify you but we're not sure on the actual turnaround time. in terms of priorities for fixing areas in the parks and playgrounds, the number one is really a safety concern. so if it's generally something is completely unsafe it's going to be attended to faster than something that just a cosmetic complaint or inquiry. yeah. >> okay, excellent. one last thing -- the registration online, you know, it's a tad complicated and just some input, it's not a fun experience to go through. there is -- you know, the summer programs that you have that you offer, camps and everything, i kept trying to look for those but they fill up so fast and i just wish that there was a ran

rank -- excuse me -- that rec and parks would expand the program for summer offerings because it seems very limited and they fill up so fast that a lot of people are not able to get in. and there's only a one or two-week window to even deal -- you know, to get in on it. and so for myself son, we end up paying more for other private summer camps and, you know, so, you know, we'd just like to see the parks and rec grow their summer programs. now one last thing... okay, and next, lastly, the adults in delores park. there's a concern how it's used. do you have any concern or comments about that? maybe they could just -- there's adults with no kids, you know, that are pretty much everywhere but is there a possibility of using weekends only? i'm seeing what is common is

that there's a lot of use on the weekends. and i feel, you know, that they're playing in the kids' playground so then the children aren't able to access it. and the adults are using the playgrounds. any comments on that or insights? >> delores park is one of our most popular parks in the city. oh, um-hmm. >> yeah, it's the adults, just to clarify it's the adults, interpreter clarification, yeah. we noticed that definitely happening at delores park where the adults are using the children's playground. they have a right to use it and the adults like to play also but for me it's a concern because what about the children and their time playing also and so any -- can you shed light on that? >> so the delores park is one of our most popular parks in addition to golden gate park and things like that. the way that the park is designed there's not quite like a fencing around the children's play area so it can be a little

bit confusing for people accessing the playgrounds. i'm not too familiar with that park specifically because we don't work out of that office. but all of our parks do have signs regarding the rules of the park. so i'd have to check in to see what the signs are for the rules of that because a lot of our rules in general for our parks are no adults without children present with them. but that's more of an overarching thing. we do often have park rangers out there and so if there's a concern where you see something that isn't right and you don't feel comfortable addressing it we also have a number it our park patrol accessible to the public. you can always call and they can always step in and talk to people if you feel that it's not safe for the kids there or in general. >> that's all of our parks. >> thank you, council. i appreciate everything. last but not least our co-chair jim blacksten.

>> good afternoon. i have learned a lot from your presentation and from the questions that have been posed by colleagues here and i think that the programs that you are putting together here are excellent. so i as a person who is a disabled person in the business world i'm always interested in finances. i'm just wondering, can you -- i don't know if you're in a position to do this, but can you tell us how many families are being served to date? and how that might look like in six months, to a year? >> we haven't gotten to the numbers yet, jim, but every year our numbers increase. and jen and i have both been with the department for only three years. so in regards to the actual number we can get back to you and how it looks like from last summer. if we could email that to you is

that something that you'd be interested in. >> yeah, that would be fine. so now are you saying that you have been involved for three years, is that as long as your program has been going or does it pre-date that? >> it pre-dates that. i don't have great dates memorized in my head, i wish that i did, but our department has been offering programs for people with disabilities at some capacity for quite some time. we do a lot of our programs for asl community as well as people who have autism, kids, all ages and things such as that. in terms of capturing the numbers, emily, myself and lucas tobin have been working hard with our -- i can't remember the area in the department -- but we're working on really capturing the numbers in a very concrete way. we're currently implementing that for our spring numbers as well as fall. excuse me, as well as summer. for the actual registrations. but, again, a lot of it is

communication and there's so many people utilizing our services that we don't know about. and we can't capture the number of people just dropping in at the park because we don't have people sign a waiver to enter the park. so we're trying to capture as much as we can in formal registrations. once we master that we're hoping to take a bigger picture look at really who our -- the numbers of the people that we're serving within the whole department but right now we focus on registration. >> that's fantastic. so does most of your funding come from rec and park? or does it come from other areas? >> emily and i work within the department. so our programs are ultimately funded with whatever the budget of rec and park gets from wherever we get the budget. do you know, emily? >> in regards to the budget just to add on, jim, we're currently -- so we primarily serve kids with disabilities but we also have opportunities for adults and seniors. we're currently in transition

for our senior program. so we have a program who are seniors, adults and seniors, who have visual impairments and another program is for adults and seniors who are deaf or hard-of-hearing and then there's another population to where they're deaf and blind. so that's a program that we're currently in transition for. and we also partner with the school district for our access programs. i believe that, helen, you had a question with partnering with school districts. access programs are something that we actually partner up with san francisco school district. and these are transition adults who are 18 to 22, and we provide health and fitness classes and we partnered with harvey mill cultural arts and they have funding through the san francisco school district for these access programs. so it's our first time dabbing into that budget. >> i'm glad that you brought it up and this is the last -- the final -- but i'm glad that you brought up the seniors'

disabilities, i am blind and hard-of-hearing so i'd be interested in how that really develops to be sure. i went for the longest time and thought that -- well, you get to a point where you do become a senior and so just keep us informed. >> definitely, thank you for your questions. >> co-chair sehaux: thank you, council members for your questions and comments and input. over to staff for questions and i know that our director can add a little information about this information item as well. >> director nicole bohn: thank you very much for being here and i want to thank you both for being willing to field questions that were out of scope for what you were prepared to talk about today. [laughter] thank you for being good sports. is i want to encourage the council to consider putting this item back on the agenda when both of the a.d.a. coordinators for recreation and parks can be here to really talk about the process for housing and for

physical accessibility and i will say it briefly so that we can move on is that whenever there is any kind of renovation or new project in a park or a playground that there's a full vetting process that happens at multiple phases of the process. so all the way from design to implementation to site visits that look at all of the accessibility components, accessible paths of travel, and also accessible features. so what i'll say in general terms and, again, i encourage us to invite the professional staff who work on this on a daily basis, but what i will say in general terms is that the city does know which parks are accessible and which parks have features. the issue and the matter at hand that would potentially be given to a graduate student is to figure out a way to best take

this information and to present it in a public way. so i don't want to give the impression that we don't have a sense of what the accessibility of our parks and playgrounds are like, because we truly do. and the matter at hand is how we take what we know and then present it in a way that is easy for the public to use and the public will understand. and one of the way ways to do tt is to go to do site visits and cross-check the features. the other thing that i'll mention is that -- if lose as were here -- lucas were here he'd mention this -- they do a survey around the different representatives from the parks, the professional staff, complete about the access iblghtd of their features and that information is taken and they use that to help to make improvements. the one thing that i will say though is that i think that the

council may want to consider helping recreation and parks by expressing your support for this continued work so that appropriate funding can continue to be implemented towards these programs. they're happening but any supports that we can provide to -- especially around helping to work within the playgrounds to help the public to know where the accessible features are, if the council is going to write a letter of support i know that would help in the allocation process. so that is one very concrete thing that the council may be able to do. and, again, i think that it would be a good idea to consider if you want more information about accessibility, reasonable accommodations outside of the therapeutic programs, to invite the a.d.a. coordinators and the folks doing the assessment and also the folks in charge of our grounds and facilities to come and give a presentation

specifically about that. so hopefully that's helpful. and thank you again. >> thank you, nicole. >> thank you. >> co-chair sehaux: thank you. any other questions or comments from the staff at this point? okay. >> public comment. >> co-chair sehaux: i want to thank our presenters for being here and we'll go ahead and -- thank you for your presentation. >> thank you. >> thank you very much. >> co-chair sehaux: so we're going to open up this information item for public comment and i understand that we have -- >> aaron brown. >> aaron, you have three minutes on make this comment. >> absolutely. >> thank you. >> okay, guys we'll start with eagle side park, okay? lots of bodies are buried over there behind the police station.

engelside park has a mass graveyard of bodies near the track over there, okay? golden gate park as well, where there's wadden house top of the hill and always have mass yards of bodies in there. i have discovered a lot of crime scenes, believe me. and it was caused by an isis terrorist that you know of, joanne, and nicole, the girl that i meant to complain about to you guys who also assassinated mayor ed lee. and their picture is at joint venture kitchen. london breed, bernie sanders, bree comol and mayor ed lee and i saw their faces at st. mare's' hospital -- st. mary's e.r.

>> director nicole bohn: do you have a comment to share? >> did you do anything about that complaint or share my information? >> director nicole bohn: thank you for sharing. >> co-chair sehaux: any other public comment at this time? is there anyone on the bridge line? okay. thank you. thank you. we're going to go ahead and move on to information item number 7. which is the presentation on department of children, youth and their families investments to support children and youth with disabilities. i would like to welcome our presenter maria su, the director of the department of children, youth and their families. and thank you for being here and waiting. >> good afternoon, council members, and directors. should i use this microphone

here? >> if you're comfortable. >> either/or. >> okay. so i'm going to -- great. so good afternoon, council members. once began my name is maria su, the director of the department of children, youth and their families. the my honor to be here today to share with you what we have done over the past year in our department. and it sounds like today the theme is around communication coordination and collaboration. so i do want to acknowledge that and to say that i take the conversation that just happened to heart and definitely will be contacting my colleague phil

ginsberg and perhaps even the school district to come together to figure out how to better work together. so i already thank you for your feedback when i was sitting here earlier. so just very quickly i want to share with you who we are. we were established -- i'm sorry -- let's see -- so we are the department that works with other city departments to serve children, youth and families from birth to age 24, transitional age youth in our city. we are the stewards of the children and youth fund. it is a special fund that was created through property tax set asides and we bring together the government agencies, school districts, community leaders, and other stakeholders to strengthen our communities so that everyone in our community can lead lives full of

opportunities and happiness. we believe that if we work together that we will be able to make san francisco a great place to grow up. and we are a strong voice for our children, youth and families in the city. so the fund was created in 1991 through advocacy by a number of children advocates that went door knocking. you will see our little wagon there where they literally had residents of san francisco sign petitions and they put them into these little rea red wagons and prowt them into city hall to demonstrate how the citizens and the residents of this city wanted the city to have dedicated funds for children's services. since then the fund has been re-authorized twice, first in 2000. and then again in 2014.

in 2014, during the re-authorization we were able to increase the allocation of the funds by a little bit. we also increased the age requirements for the funds. we allowed the fund to serve young people up to the age of 24. because we know that there are young people who do not successfully make that transition from being a child of 17 to an adult of 18. the re-authorization also extended the life of the fund which allows us to do our work for 25 years. so the fund requires, so it's part of the city charters, and it requires us to do a very extensive planning process. so part of the planning process requires us to do a needs assessment in which we go out to

the community and we talk to our residents and we talk to our community leaders. we talk to department heads. talk to school districts. talk to teachers and parents and young people. and really ask for what the needs are and where the gaps are to serve our residents. and then after that we take that information and we do research and we really think about the best practices on how to serve and meet the needs of our community. and that document then turns into a request for proposal. and that is where we are. we just completed a request for proposal. and july 1, 2018, of this year, we started our five-year funding cycle. before i share with you our c.b.o.s that we ended up funding i do want to speak to what i call our "d.n.a.." what our staff, my staff called

our "strategic pillars." i like the term "d.n.a." more because i feel that this is core to who we are and our identity as a department. and we believe that we are stra teamic funder -- strategic funders, first and foremost. however, to be strong and good strategic funders we need to have quality programs and services that we are funding. so we allocate a lot of funding for professional development and technical assistance to our non-profit agencies. we also believe that you cannot fund non-profit agencies without having your -- your eyes and your ears to the ground and with the people. so we believe that we are the entity that engages with our san francisco community. that we wil would like to be the voice of our residents to serve our children, youth and families. and we also believe that we can't do this alone. we have to do this with other city partners and other

community leaders. as a result we believe that we are that collaborative partner. we want to be that connective tissue for our city government to come together. with that we believe that in order for us to truly realize that every young person, every family, every resident in san francisco, in quoting our late mayor to be successful and thrive in our great city, we need to have a commitment to equity. and so with that we have established our equity framework in which we want to prioritize all of our funding and supports to serve our low-income neighborhoods, our african americans, latinos, pacific islanders, children, youth and families. and our disconnected transitional a.g.u.s. and we always believe that there are specific characteristic needs that also need to be highlighted. and one of which are children

with disabilities. and so our vision in establishing the request for proposal is to achieve these four big goals. number one, children and youth are supported by nurturing families and communities. number two, children and youth are physically and emotionally healthy. number three, children and youth are ready to learn and to succeed in school. and, number four, children and youth are ready for college, work and productive adulthood. through the request for proposal we ended up funding 300 -- yeah, 300 applications for the total amount of $76 million per year for up to five years. it is a significant amount of money and we believe that

through these allocations and through this funding that we will be able to meet those needs and achieve those goals that i had previously mentioned. i want to take the next couple of slides to drill a little bit deeper into our c.b.o.s that we believe are serving our children with dis disabilities. this is not an inclusive list. this was gathered by our data team that went through and read work plans and looked at code -- like how people coded their work plans. so i truly believe that our c.b.o.s, that there are more c.b.o.s that serve children with disabilities but these are the ones that have specifically mentioned children with disabilities in their work plan. i do recommend that i read this? >> director nicole bohn: yes, to clarify a c.b.o. is a

community-based organization. >> community-based organization, i apologize. i will read them and this is not an exhaustive list but it's broken down by categories so my first grouping of categories is a group of education support programs and i'm going to read the agency first and then the program name next. so the agency, chinatown ymca and the program they provide to children with disabilities is called chinatown y learning center. and the agency, hunter's point family and the program name is literacy support. and agency, mission neighborhood centers. and the agency program name ged, general education diploma prep program. and the agency, richmond district neighborhood center, and the program name, richmond district neighborhood center

academic response to intervention. from middle school and for high school. and agency name, springboard collaborative. program name is springboard after-school and summer. the next slide highlights a program called the chinatown -- at the chinatown ymca. i apologize that this is a lot of text and i'm beginning to realize this is not -- it's a little too much text. >> director nicole bohn: you can summarize verbally what is on the slides, that's fine. >> okay. so the chinatown ymca has funded a program for kindergarten to fifth graders that serves the chinatown community. in this particular program they serve children on the autism spectrum. so they have additional support staff that we pay for that will reduce the ratios of student to adult staff, but also staff that has specialties in serving

children who have limited abilities in speech and physical mobility. and this is an example of us understanding and knowing the need of that community and allocating additional resources because as you know that professional staff is expensive. and the next grouping of c.b.o.s are the enrichment leadership and skill-building program. these are community-based organizations that serve the teenagers, the middle and the high schoolers. so we have agency brava for women in the arts and they run a program called "mapa at brava," i don't know what that acronym is. and another chinatown ymca program and this one is specifically for their teens and it's a program -- an agency called community works west. for a program called community works west theatre ensemble.

and agency jewish community center of san francisco. the program name -- i can't pronounce this. hava youth center after-school program. and agency jewish vocational services program stem which is science, technology and engineering, math. and item motive technology. and the agency palmeroy program, and the name is something success. and agency project level, program name is project level. and agency queer women of color, media arts project. the program name is film and freedom academy. and agency the marsh, the program name is marsh artists in the schools. and agency treasure island sailing center, and the program name is treasure island sailing center summer sailing camp progression program.

i don't think that i need to highlight palmeroy recreation center but we pulled this out as a program that we believe is serving the needs of our children with physical disabilities. we're very excited to be funding pomaroy this year and they'll be serving a very large group of young people for us. they'll be serving elementary school kids as well as middle and high school children. and so moving along our next group of service area is our justice services. and these are young people who are in the juvenile justice system or in the adult system. and so the agency name is -- each one, reach one and the program name is adapt. a dream and a plan for tomorrow. and agency 5t school and

programs. and the program name is transitional a.t.u.s, resiliency. and there's a duplication. and agency name legal services for children. program name is legal services for children, justice services project. and the agency mission neighborhood centers. and the program name is home detention. and agency mission neighborhood centers, program name is young queens on the rise. and agency the beat within. and the program name is the beat within juvenile justice center workshops. and the last groups which is a long list are all of our out of school time this is our after-school programs. we had a lot of discussion about rec and park after-school programs so there will be overlap here. (please stand by).

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million p >> -- population of 18 to 24 year olds. i do want to talk about other investments that we do that supports our disability community is our investment in technical assistance, and we have two programs that we fund to provide capacity building and professional development to nonprofit agencies around how to serve children with disabilities. one is -- it's called a special needs inclusion project, which is run by support for families. and another program, which is a statewide program called help me grow, which right now is managed by first five san francisco. we partner with other city departments to ensure that there is cross coordination and

collaboration. so with the department of public health, we jointly fund a number of behavioral health services. we find all the -- the wellness centers in all of our public high schools, and we partner with department of public health on supporting i.e.p.s, the individualized education plans for children, anden to sure that the 50 -- and to ensure that the 504 plans with implemented. we also partner with the department of public health to fund their transitional age multipartner team, and the richmond area multiservices center. we partner with first 5 and the human services agency to support funding -- to provide funding for the family resource center and specifically for the family resource center at

support for families, and then we work with early childhood education to provide funding for subsidies and scholarships for children who would like to participate in our preschool program in the city. so that's a very quick snapshot of what we do, and i am open for discussions and answer any of your questions. >> thank you. i'm going to open up questions for council members. for time constraints, let's keep it short, please. council member alex madrid. >> i just have one question. how does it work for families and persons that don't know

about your services, how do they know that you guys exist? >> that's a great question, council member madrid, and i am going to have to look to you for guidance on that because i think we need to do a better job with outreaching. right now, i have staff that attends a lot of community events, and we try to get out word out, but if you can share with me other ideas on how to reach our children and families with disabilities, i am very open to supporting that work. >> thank you. >> thank you, council member madrid. council member orkid susounni.

>> yes. i'll get a pamphlet fore the summer camp thing. it's interesting, and the information's there, but the one thing i can't find the access, the accommodations piece. it's not included, so then, i have to start asking others who i can contact say, about having an a.s.l. interpreter for that event. i do have a son that's hearing, but i, to attend with him, would need the sign language interpreter. so i have to start down a journey trying to access who would know the answer to that question. and so i -- i'm -- i don't know if your office, the dcycs -- did i say that right? dcyf would not be familiar with asking for sign language interpreters or how to answer that question. so that's the vulnerable part of that organization. we have a very small, underrepresented group of deaf people in san francisco. there's a lot of deaf parents

with hearing children, and then, you have deaf -- deaf children -- or hearing parents with deaf children. those are the mixes, so that's where access starts to become impossible. it's a lot to investigate and uncover to get to the answer of the question around accommodation. they're not able to get the services of your agency unless they access another agency for the support to unfold how to access your service. does that make sense? so if we could figure that out, that would be awesome. that's all. >> yes. thank you for that question. and i apologize that you were not able to access our summer resource fair. i will say that i would love to, once again, work with council. perhaps -- well i don't -- i don't know how to do -- how to

highlight an accessibility question, but maybe we could host a summer resource fair that would serve children with special -- children with disabilities. i don't know that it is of interest to you and the council. >> just to say, you know, deaf people in particular don't, you know, bode well with the disability community, it's a language difference issue. the program that offers spoken chinese or spanish is a different language thing with the a.s.l. community. and disability, you know, is talking about physical access. so there's -- there's one point about how it's diverse within the disability community and how a.s.l. is particular because of the sign language. >> i acknowledge that.

and once again, i would turn back to you to ask for guidance on how to do that, and i will definitely have my staff come and work with council and work with staff to make sure that happens. >> thank you. we'd definitely be interested in that. council member cochair jim blacksten. >> yes. excellent presentation. so i know time's moving on. i'll be brief. i'm really interested in people who are hard of hearing and visually impaired, and you had mentioned something about you're addressing hearing and speech. can you talk a little bit more about what you are doing with hard of hearing and blind children. >> so in terms of -- of the -- the specific program for -- that we're funding with hearing -- hearing and speech,

is that your question, cochair? >> yes. does that include children with visual disabilities, too? >> it -- i don't know the specifics of their actual work plan of hearing -- hearing and speech's work plan. i can look into that and then get back to you on that. >> yeah, that would be great if you would. thank you. >> thank you thank you. council member had he len smolinski. >> i think in terms of getting out the work you're doing and the resources that are available for families with kids with special needs, disabilities, a good idea is partnering with sf unified in

more ways than you're already doing. i understand you're partnering with the transitional level -- is it 18 and older, 22 and older, kids who are transitioning out of the school district. >> we actually work with them from kindergarten through high school. >> you do. just in terms of something i see among kids who have special needs, ones who require a paraprofessional with them throughout the day is what happens with that para after school hours when, for a lot of families, they still need that after -- they need that after care aspect, but the school district kind of says no, your para's done for the day. so who is that child's para in the after school programs? and a lot of times, the school district just says that's not us. that's why that would be a nice

overlap if your programs and rec and parks were thinking about after school programs for special needs kids. i think a good place to start it with the district. >> that's a great -- >> to identify those kids. >> that's a great suggestion just in terms of how do we support continuity of paras from school day to after school. i think that's a great suggestion, and i would be willing to have a conversation with our school district and with other city partners to figure out whether it's a funding piece or whether it's a -- it's more of an authority piece. >> and that's the sense i guess, that it's kind of like, well, we're sf unified, and it's a lot of different players without kind of thinking well, let's all do this together. because, too, you know, i think the argument is that a lot of parents would like these after school programs that are often hosted by the schools themselves to be on-site.

just make the school's own after school accessible to their kids, too. >> yes, and we hear that a lot. we've done surveys with families and parents have said overwhelmingly that if they had an option that is at the school, that was of high quality and would meet the needs of their children, they would keep them at the school at night, and that's why we started partnering with the school to ensure there was a high kwaul, inclusive -- quality, inclusive program. i'm sorry. i wasn't aware of the para issue, but i think we can have a discussion about what happens to a person who's there during the school day, transitions into the after school hours, how do we ensure continuity for that to happen. >> i know personally speaking, my daughter has a para. she has a para beginning with

her bus ride in the morning to her sf unified moderate severe class. she's going into second grade, but i've never considered what i would do if i needed that after school care because she needs her para. she's completely dependant on someone else for all activities of daily living, you know, so i -- i just know of the experience of other parents whose kids aren't as severely impacted who had to fight and it's been on a case by case basis with the school, with the principal, to get a para or someone else from the school assigned to their child. so i'm glad to make you aware of that and thank you for your attention. >> yes. we're going to move onto questions from staff or comments. >> thank you, maria, again for being here. i'm going to keep my comments brief. i know that our captioner and interpreters need a break, and we're beyond our break time. so with that, i just want to

offer that one of the things that these meetings can do with the city being such a language organization is giving us the opportunity to connect, so i want to thank the council for inviting you, and i really do want to work with you and with recreation and parks and have a conversation about how we can help each other. we definitely have information, mayor's office on disability that we can share with you and make some connections in regards to the events, so i just wanted to say i'm really excited about the collaboration. >> thank you. >> thank you very much for your time and presentation, and we look forward to working with you in the future. >> thank you so much for having me. >> i'm going to go ahead and open public comment for this information item only. do we have any speaker cards? is there anyone on the bridge line that would like to make a public comment on just this information? none? okay. we're going to go ahead and close public comment. my apologies. we have a full agenda, so i'm

kind of shortening everybody's break, sorry, to ten minutes, so please be back in ten minutes. thank you, everyone, for your time and patience. >> -- and our technical people, so thank you for your patience. just want to make a quick announcement. i understand our next presenter needs to leave at, you know, 3:30, so i want to make sure we give the presentation a chance, council members quick, and we want to hear public comment. i want to thank and welcome our next presenter. information item number eight, the arc of san francisco, and i want to welcome kristin peterson, chief of education, workforce and inclusion. sorry you had to wait and thank you for your patience. >> no problem at all. i oversee all of our education

and workforce development programming in san francisco, san mateo, and marin. the arc has been around for over 65 years, serving adults with developmental disabilities in the core areas of education -- post secondary education, workforce development, and health care and housing. and today, 'cause most of you are familiar -- i know we know alex well, and kate, but wanted to share with you, and maria did a nice job of teeing it up, our focus on participate aged youth. over the past three years, we've really been focused on diversefying our revenue streams and looking to the city as more of a key partner. we are primarily federally and state funded. and over the last few years, office of workforce development

and children and youth services have both partners with the arc for the first time to look at our different programs and how we can best serve individuals with developmental disabilities and individuals who have similar needs, whether or not they're regional center funded. so this year, for the very first time, department of dcyf, department of children, youth and family services, has funded a transition aged youth program. and what we will be doing is working with the variety of access transition classrooms throughout the city and partnering with a minimum of 50 individuals who are in transition to do career exploration, gain some exposure to our workforce immersion internship programs, provide some career preparation curriculum, as well as take a small cohort onto our caseload and work with those individuals as they're leaving the school

district and coming into adult services. and what we've found is that historically, a lot of transition aged youth when they're coming to us, the work experience that they may have had in high school may not translate that well to the market currently. we also want to make sure that individuals are making really informed choices about the organizations that they're going to and the services that they're seeking. we find so many times when we sit down with parents that it's the first time that they've heard about our project search internship or heard about the eight workforce immersion internships that we're offering, and the city has really been a key partner for us in that. in addition to the -- or as part of the transition aged youth program, a few of our internships will actually fit under that grant and under that programming. specifically our internship with california academy of sciences. they've been a huge supporter of ours over the last six or

seven years, and we have a very unique structure with them where there is an access internship, so transition aged youth are interning at the academy. when they turn 18, it would become a full-time paid internship and that eventually transitions into full-time employment. the other program that we're very excited to share and we'll be launching this year will also kind of fall into that transition age youth sector is our partnership with the public utility commission and web core, the biosolids project in hunters point bayview has created a community benefit fund which has allowed us to structure another paid workforce structure immersion internship with the contractor companies, so they'll be working with web core and some

of their subcontractors under the guidance of the p.u.c. which is wonderful, focusing specifically on neurodiversity, so those with the autism spectrum and others, we'll be using the tay as a basis line. and paid internships are pretty new for this population. we're very grateful that the regional center has been able to allocate the funding to allow for us to pay our interns. that historically has not been available which makes internships really complicated if people with working for free. it also changes the pipeline. we have so many people who have been in entry level jobs for a very long time and have a high skill set, but for financial reasons are not able to exit their current job to go to an internship and upscale because they need to eat and pay their rent and do all these other things. so now that we're able to pay a

competitive wage for those internships, we're opening the door for a variety of individuals to learn more skills and blaze a meaningful and long-term career path. so if there are specific questions about transition, we can talk about that. i want to be respectful of everyone's time, but i know transition-aged youth is sort of where we were focused today. >> thank you. first of all, i'd like with regard to paying your interns and as they start on entry level positions because of their higher skill set, they're evaluating going into something a little bit higher, not just an entry level -- not that there's anything wrong with entry level position, but to see them as people who actually have the skill set and want to go beyond, but at least that gives them a foot in the door. so that's one thing i'm very excited about. it was more or less a comment, not a question. i just wanted to open it up to

council. >> and just a quick response, if i may. >> sure. >> one of the things as freeing up entry level positions is as you know, we have graduates every year. so if someone is in an entry level positions for 15 years, there are so many entry level positions out there, so we really want to be able to create that upward level mobility for everyone and make sure that we continue to have those openings for individuals who are just entering the workforce, as well. >> thank you. council member alex madrid, do you have a question? >> hi. >> hi, alex. >> nice seeing you again. couple of questions. is it one -- i understand that most of your clients are gdic clients. do you guy work with the department of rehab, and can you touch upon that?

and the second question is how do you guys -- can you guys check with the ace program and see what type of work that people can do. and lastly, is that can you touch on -- upon the jobs, what people are doing right now. >> sure. so the first question was whether or not we work with department of rehabilitation or if we only work with individuals who are funded by the regional center. so just a little bit of context. we run prevocational and post secondary education day programming. so all of the individuals who participate in those programs are regional center funded. within our workforce development umbrella, we