>> president cook: this is the regular meeting of the board of education for the san francisco unified school district. tonight is february 26, 2019. miss casco, roll call, please. >> clerk: thank you. [roll call] >> clerk: thank you. >> president cook: we're going to be having a memorial adjournment tonight, but i just wanted to start our meeting with a moment of silence for

public defender jeff adaci. i'm going to open up tonight's meeting with a quote from tony morrison, who said, if you surrender to the air, you can ride it. section a is accessibility information for the public. section b is opening item. number one, approval of board minutes for the meeting of february 12, 2019. can i have a motion and i second for approval of board minutes. >> so moved. >> second. >> president cook: okay. so speaker cards for the agenda -- regular agenda and for closed session are necessary if you wish to address the board of education. member of the public are reminded that an individual can complete a speaker card prior

tot item being called. they are presented to our executive assistant, miss casco. members of the public have to minutes to address the board or the time set by the president. important, accordingly, speaker cards will not be accepted for an item before the board. and just so it's -- we've also made this announcement, starting the next board meeting, we're going to move up public comment to earlier in the meeting, so we'll make another announcement about that in the future, but starting next board meeting, the public comment is going to be moved up to earlier in the agenda. can i have a roll call vote for the minutes of february 12, miss casco. >> clerk: thank you.

[roll call] >> president cook: number two, superintendent's report, dr. matthews. >> good evening, everyone. i'll try that again. good evening, everyone. this past saturday at mission high school, teachers and opportunities gathered at the 39th annual oratorical music contest and stomp competition. students competed by reciting famous and original poems, speeches, and singing and playing instruments and performing step routines in a stomp competition aligned with this year's theme, african

american millennium, chiefing greatness with an attitude of excellence. this annual competition encourages students to develop, memorize, interpret, and deliver poems and speeches in addition to provide a platform for students to showcase their talent while honoring african american culture. this week, students across the country including more than 40 strict elementary, middle, and high schools will participate in various digital learning day activities. the day will include using digital design tools, to encourage positivity, learning about twitter tech from twitter volunteers, a stem night for students and family, a workshop about augmented reality for education, and unique, professional, development opportunities for educators. the day aims to transform how students learn college and career skills to help them

thrive in the 21st century. saturday, march 2 is the annual school planning summit. families and staff are expected and encouraged to help their schools set priorities by participating in the school's planning process. attend the school planning summit for an opportunity to work together on your school's balanced scorecard, academic plan, and budget for the 2019-'20 school year. talk to your school's principal about attending and other ways you can help in the schools planning process. and finally, next week, we're celebrating national schools breakfast week. it's march 4 through 8. three san francisco unified school district schools are participating in a challenge to increase breakfast participation by 30% during the week. the schools are ortega elementary, everett middle school, and presidio middle school. so cheer on one of those three

schools. we'll see which one or hopefully all three can increase breakfast participation by 30%. we are excited for you, and we hope you achieve your goals. mr. president, that is all my announcements for this evening. >> president cook: okay. thank you, dr. matthews. number three, student delegate's report. mr. mai and arumiss aruiano. >> thank you to representatives brown and board members for coordinating this meeting. >> we were able to build our

bond as youth leaders and learned a little bit more about the s.a.c. and goals of real world. >> last night, laustudent lead in the s.a.c. created posters for the youth summit. >> we would also like to remind everyone that the applications for next year's student delegates is open. it's a great leadership opportunity that enables a student to represent sfusd student voice and help stuffed. if you would like to apply or know of anybody that would like to apply, see your student delegates or reputation.

the deadline is march 18. [inaudible] >> our next meeting will be on march 11 at 5:00 p.m. in the third floor cafeteria. the s.a.c. is a public council and anyone is welcome to attend our meetings. if you would like to attend, make a presentation or would like a copy of our upcoming agenda, please contact mr. salvador lopez barr. >> number four, recognition of commendation. there are none tonight. number five, our rave awards. dr. matthews? >> good evening. we have two sets of awards. the first rave award for our distinguished service award is

for hoover middle school technovation team. there will this will be presented by gabriel baker, the assistant principal. mr. baker? >> okay. good evening, everyone. i'm gabriel baker. i'm the assistant principal at hoover middle school. i have the displeasure of recognizing two students work as part of the technovation team at hoover. in addition to all the work that they did in their own

classes, and some of the details that were mentioned by co-workers that nominated them was just seeing the ways that they collaborated together, the ways that they collaborated with outside organizations, including salesforce, and just specifically their relationships that they built with their students. i'm thrilled for both of them. yesi, and jacob, congratulations. [applause] >> good evening, everyone. my name's yesenia, yesi. i go my yesi. i am the founder and creator of

castle, which it stands for cultural arts, science, technology, literacy, education, and it started off as a philosophy and now has gone through two schools. it started off at hoover and now expanding the program at everett middle school, which i'm very proud to be at everett and our social justice mission. i'm very grateful to have met mr. aringo in graduate school, where we both attended our credential program as well as our masters in instructional technology, and we've been working since. thank you all so much. [applause] >> thank you, fellow colleagues. i was just at salesforce at p.d., and in an era where our technology industry is

dominated by white and asian americans, there is a need to change who we are focusing on. after experiencing this work with the s.c., with work from our computer science department, from our wonderful volunteers, and our tech leaders woman of color, this is an opportunity to change the status quo. we need to provide outlets of self-expression and voice, and when our young women has voice, they have the power to make changes in their own lives, and potential globally. computer science has the power to do that, and we've seen that in our techknowvation class. thank you, gabriel and elizabeth for embracing this idea, and in the words of chris hogan, we are focused, but not finished.

thank you.

[applause] >> the next rave special service award goes to jennifer kababi. she's a special education transition teacher at access sfusd, the arc, and this award will be presented by ka kakar kara shanella. >> hi, everyone. my name is kara schanella. i am the administrator for access programs in san francisco. for those of you who may not know what they are, they're access programs for our adult students 18 to 22 years old. it is a great pleasure and honor as a program administrator of access to announce this month's special

rave recipient service award winner. jen was nominated by a co-worker for her dedication, compassion, creativity and developing the confidence and skills of our adult students with disabilities. it takes immense dedication to build and sustain a successful community based program like access san francisco arc. jen has shown us all firsthand that she has the dedication and drive to not only build successful relationships with her students and colleagues and their families, but also our many san francisco community partners. jen, it has been an honor to work with you. congratulations and thank you for all that you do for san francisco unified school district, our students, and our

families. [applause] >> hi, everyone, and thank you. it's just a great honor to be here. thank you. i'd like to thank the board and dr. matthews for this special recognition. of course i wouldn't be here today if i didn't work with such an amazing team of educators at access sfusd the arc. i'm lucky to work with just an amazing team of educators, heidi, alongside me who i know nominated me for this award. i wouldn't be here without you. but teaching in san francisco is such a joy, and i love working with my students out in the community. i work at the most fun and most amazing school, and seeing them learn and grow and face new challenges and achieve their goals and learn from their mistakes and discover all the things that san francisco has

to offer is such a joy, and i look forward to continuing in education here in san francisco. thank you so much.

[applause] >> president cook: again, congratulations to our rave award recipients. number six, advisory committee appointments, and appointments to advisory committees by members. report from the bilingual community council. >> good evening, commissioners. my name is kristina wong, special assistant to the superintendent. we have a brief presentation for you, and we're going to -- both myself and also the b.c.c.

members before you are going to be copresenting. so on my left is kara lima. and then also on my right is myrna vasquez. she is a very active parent on dlac, elac, coleman advocates, and many organizations. she is our chair of b.c.c. >> all right. everyone. good night -- or not good night. i mean, we're still here. hopefully good night soon. so the outcome for today is we're trying to improve the systems for y'alls. we're going to explain the system where b.c.c. is at, where we hope to be with b.c.c., and kind of share the focus with dlac, so that's kind of the focus for today. >> and in this slide, we're going to show part of the discussion topics that we have

at b.c.c. last year, and i just want to highlight it -- three of those. it's more balanced assessments for english learns, [inaudible] >> so i wanted to review what the current b.c.c. status is. it was created as an advisory group to the school board to monitor e.l.l. school boards. because it was a creation of the consent decree, this particular paragraph regarding the b.c.c. was terminated on december 31, 2018, along with 101 paragraphs. we still have eight paragraphs remaining that remain open until june 30, 2019. so in january of this year, existing b.c.c. members discussed how the b.c.c.

functions can possibly be folded into delac given the number of purpose and duties. essentially, we didn't want the work to go away. we wanted to make sure that the work and monitoring of english learners continued to live in a place that included many english learner parents. >> all right. so i'll be going briefly through the b.c.c. purpose. so the bilingual community council was established out of the lau and nichols planning committee. >> and the purpose is --

[inaudible] >> -- english learner programs and services. and the duties is from -- i just want to highlight a few of those and we want to have the continue with the delac. it's development and distribute a master plan for education programs and service for english learner. the district and plan will take into considering the schools and site master plans. that's one of the programs that we want to have continue with the delac. >> so in january and in february, we did a comparison analysis between the bilingual council and the delac and found there were many similarities. although there was some

technical differences in terms of number of meeting does, thee of meetings, there were a number of things in common. both entities, both community advisory committees both report to the board for accountability? and both actually also do types of school site visits to observe the implementation of e.l. programs and services. so in the discussion, we also looked at the bylaws for b.c.c. and delac and made some recommendations to delac. and as of last week, the delac members approved the following amendments so that there was more clarity and also some of the duties would be folded under delac. so under membership, we can provide clarification under the competition requirements. there was a lot of requirements

under e.l. parents, but not a lot of others that can participate in delac. we also wanted to maintain a greater balance of e.l. parent voice so make sure that while there is expertise like educators and researchers that could participate, that predominantly the e.l. voice was going to be front and center. so there is a requirement front and center that no more than e.l. parent may be nominated to the delac board that are not currently on elac. a lot of the focus of the meetings is to have small group work when appropriate, but we wanted to formalize that even though the current staff and former delac board support that, we wanted to make sure that was ongoing, so more opportunitiestor elac members

to use their voice, be engaged in activities, and being considered for all types of meetings, and lastly, provide an opportunity for delac members to work together to establish subcommittees knowing that there's going to be a lot of work around school visits, development a new master plan, that that type of subcommittee may be called by the chair person or vice chair person. so in essence, this is the final b.c.c. report. so we wanted to really share many appreciations to all past and present bilingual community council members for their continuous commitment and tireless service to the district's english learners and their families. a number of the b.c.c. members actually are very interested in joining delac? myrna is a very dedicated member of delac? so we're anticipating that all the members will continue to play an active role in supporting the needs of our english learners.

>> president cook: okay. well, thank you for your presentation and for your service. are there any questions or comments from commissioners? commissioner sanchez? >> vice president sanchez: thank you. thank you for the presentation and thank you for the current b.c.c. members and past b.c.c. members over the years, the wonderful work you've done on behalf of the district and our wonderful students and families. are you still a parent at -- >> yes. >> vice president sanchez: also a parent on the advisory council at cleveland, so i want to thank you for the work that you've provided, as well. >> thank you. >> president cook: we do have one speaker for public comment on this item.

[inaudible] >> president cook: okay. never mind. thank you all. [inaudible] >> president cook: oh, sorry, commissioner lam has a question. >> commissioner lam: it's more of an acknowledgement. the consent decree and acknowledgement is a very important initiative to me, and over the years in working with limited english proficient parents and really excited about the work that will carry on through the delac. so looking forward to making progress that the district is making as a whole in regards to delac and looking forward to supporting elac fully. thank you. >> so i would like to show our appreciation and formally present certificates of appreciation to both carolina

and myrna vasquez as well as other b.c.c. members that may not be present but they will also be acknowledged, as well.

[applause] >> president cook: it's picture night at the school board. b, report from district, english language learner advisory committee. >> good evening, superintendent, commissioners. welcome, new commissioners. my name is danielle yutley, an

i am the education specialist within the multilanguage input department. i have the pleasure of working with our district english language advisory or delac. our purpose is to provide information to the staff in san francisco unified school district to serve the needs of our english language learner students. i'd like to take some time to thank kristina wong for her support and guidance throughout this process. the translation interpretation unit because the work that we do is not possible without them, the multilingual departments for continuing their work to roll out the wonders, which is the new curriculum that serves the complex needs of our english learner students. congratulations b.c.c., and thank you for your hard work.

over the past several years, i've witnessed firsthand the dedication that the members have shown to ensure that the needs of english language learners are met. it is a pleasure to welcome them on board to be members of the district english learners advisory committee. i want to specifically recognize myrna vasquez. as you all heard, she is involved everywhere and part of the pack, part of the delac. she's an elac member. so having her join us is going to help connect the b.c.c. and in spirit, the b.c.c. will live within the district english language learners advisory. so with that, one of our members is not here this evening. she had trouble getting here because of the rain, but i have jeffrey lee -- oh, she made it. sorry, i didn't see her walk in. excellent. thank you, paola.

>> good evening, everyone. my name is paola, and i am vice chair person of delac, and i'm representing buena vista horizon. i want to thank janelle and maggie, too, from the multilingual pathways for creating a safe and welcoming environment for families and to come together, grow, and learn how to navigate in san francisco unified school district, and especially how to support our childrens as an english learners students. as the vice chair person for delac, i have learned to advocate not only for my own child but also for the needs of all childrens in our district.

throughout the last few years, delac members have had interactions with site leaders and elac representatives who have shared their experience and other going concerns which are reflected in the recommendations that we will share with you this evening. one of these infractions involves conversations with staff and teachers who report that they would welcome more support around access to technology for english learner students. this is purely an equity issue. one of the districts on finding if their -- while it's normalized, the parents' access to technology is through the

use of cell phones, it does not support student success. with that in mind, we would like to recommend the following. a structured after school program for english learners that provide research base standards alignment instruction. the programs should include access to technology with computer assist instructional programs that support e.l.d.s for home and a school use and provide keyboarding skills development to support the navigations of computer based state assessment. thank you.

[speaking spanish language] >> good evening. my name is marco ponce, and i am the cochair of the delac. del we often speak of equality and equity at the schools. i wonder where my students fit into the conversation.

current data shows that reclassification rates are low for spanish speaking english learner students. [inaudible] >> -- of 51%. [inaudible] >> -- at a 28% reclassification rate, a difference of 23% in the reclassification. as a latino parent, these things and obstacles are

endless for the success of our children. 45 years ago, it took an active and involved parent to create an impactful change and to take on the san francisco unified school district with what is now known as the lau modified consent decree.

why is there such a large achievement gap with spanish speaking english language learners? will it take another lawsuit, a florez or lopez such as the lau consent decree to allow spanish speaking english learning students? it is important that the district provides early programs of intervention for the english learners to foster the development in english --

it is important that the district provides early programs of intervention for the english learners of to foster opportunities at an early age to ensure equality for all. we propose an early intervention with a summer program structured for students

from kindergarten to fifth grade here english learners, a program that will provide english learning in an interdisciplinary environment focusing on support in four domains. reading, speaking, listening, and writing. [end of translation] >> thank you very much. >> good evening. my name is jeffrey lee. i am the delac southwest regional representative. my two children have attended

commodore sloat school since 2014. this is crucial for wielding teacher capacity around vital systems and structures that support english learner students. our committee wants to ensure that teachers and staff have access to and training with necessary information and materials to support our english learners. more specifically, they must be supported in understanding and carrying out the district's new english learner reclassification criteria to promote positive outcomes. with that in mine, our third and final recommendation is as follows. in december 2018, there was a change to sfusd's reclassification criteria for

the lpac. the california department of education cutoff scores based on studies first administratored in tadministra in the spring 2018. we recommend that the district implement an accountability system with a means to measure and ensure teacher and staff completion of their training modules and/or workshops to support english learners. in such a system, mandatory trainings should be reviewed at a minimum of twice yearly and should include the following: first, best e.l.d. instructional practices. second, culturally responsive

teaching strategies for english learnings and reclassification for teachers and staff teaching english learners. thank you very much. >> good evening. my name's maggie ho. i'm the community liaison. my work includes support for our chinese speaking families district wide. i'm also honored to work closely with our delac members and also welcome our new delac members from the bilingual community council. i also want to recognize our collective work with african american parent advisor council, c.a.p. for special education, parent advisory

council and youth council. stronger together, we will work to ensure our english learners and all students are prepared to meet the san francisco unified school district's vision 2025 graduate profile. we want to thank you, superintendent, dr. vincent matthew, and our board of education commissioners for the opportunity to share this recommendations. so we look forward to our continued collaborations in support of our english learners. thank you. >> president cook: all right. thank you for your presentation and for your service to the district. are there any -- we do have one speaker for public comment. you'll have two minutes, miss aleta fisher. >> my name is aleta fisher. i'm the chair of the community

advisory committee for special education. i wanted to thank the delac and speci special advisory committee for your work. we do a lot of special and stakeholder engagement, and we're honored to stand beside you in your advocacy work. a couple of points made tonight that i think are worth highlighting. a lot of what you heard here is not now. the advisory groups, we present together in may. a lot of this has come up in those meetings before? but when you're talking about access to technology, when you're talking about the equities in after school programs and summer programs, in early vention, professional advancement opportunities, some of which should be mandatory, these aren't priorities that are unique to delac and b.c.c.

these priorities that the majority of the families in this room would standup and echo. so thank you for allowing us to raise this and standing here in this room beside you, and thank you for the opportunity to report. >> president cook: any comments or questions from commissioners? commissioner lam? >> commissioner lam: thank you to the delac. i have many questions so it might preclude to have a follow up in attending the next delac meeting, but first, thank you so much for your work and your recommendations. i recognize the work that it requires of parents and volunteers to put in this work. a couple things. one is related to the after school program recommendation. is it thought that the district would do it ourselves or do we have community based partners that we're considering and are continuing to work with now?

>> the thought would be that we could partner with a community based organization. obviously, i think that would be the best intention but if the district had funding to support such a program, that would be ideal. maybe a possibility of the beacon expansion program to support the needs of our english learning students or jamestown or other programs that could potentially be tapped into to be able to provide those resources. >> commissioner lam: following up to the recommendations, i'm curious from the delac members to hear from you and staff, the role the parents and their engagement, realizing moving forward with some of these recommendations that they're structured, professional development. i'm interested to here about the opportunities that -- hear about the opportunities that

parents can engage in their students' learning. >> well, as you know, each school site can have its own el elac or english learners advisory committee on-site. so one of the ways is for parents to get involved or simply support the members and families that are involved in their school's own elac. >> commissioner lam: and then lastly, i would like to continue monitoring and understand the big gap around particularly for spanish e.l.s and that huge, again, difference of reclassification in -- and our progress as a district in how we're addressing the gap, so i look forward to working with staff in addressing the progress there. one last point of clarification. this is focused on k-5 from my understanding. i also would love to learn more about structures and options and how we're supporting older

youth, in particular, newcomers that are coming in in high school or later school years. >> thank you. we do have a summer program for newcomers in middle school, so we could share that with you in the future. >> president cook: commissioner collins. >> commissioner collins: thank you so much for your presentation. i appreciate the parents reports. i would like a copy and i think it would be helpful to come back to it when i rereflect on the language experience in schools. i guess one of questions i had is around representation? the delac represents a lot of communities, and each community has some of its own recommendations and challenges, and i'm seeing chinese and spanish, and those are the largest groups, but i'm seeing other groups. how are those represented in the delac and how do we gain

representation for arabic, viet nammese, and all the other languages in the district. >> thank you. every school with 21 or more english learners has an english learners advisory committee where they send a representative to the english learners district advisory meeting. so that said, that brings different representatives from different sites into james denman where we hold that community forum, and that is all inclusive of many different languages, and we usually have up wards of 100 attendees at that meeting at the general assembly and that happens every other month. another way that we engage other communities in other languages in our community is

through the joint advisory councils and going out for lcap task force engagement listening sessions? so there, we go into the community and are able to get some input and feedback then. >> commissioner collins: so i guess from my experience, my children are in schools that are predominantly chinese speaking, so the delac represents those families, and they tend to represent those families to a larger agree than spanish speakers and arabic speaker and viet namese speakers. i'd love data around how many of those other language groups are represented in your delac meetings? i know some delac meeting with very robust, and others are nonexistent. i'm interested in seeing how we're tracking that, because like i said, i've been at some

school where they didn't exist, like, they weren't as engaged and, like, parents weren't doing decision making and as active as at other sites? so i'd love to see how you're tracking participation from families and then kind of a diverse participation in -- in terms of language groups across the district in those smaller elacs because they don't have to go across the city, they can engage in their local schools. but in some cases, depending on the language that the parent liaison speaks, they may be able to better engage with one community over other communities. it's definitely challenging? so i'd love to see just how you're tracking that. >> thank you. so maggie and i are a team, and we both work -- we go out into schools independently, and we actually have a site audit. we have a list of the school sites that was already assessed to determine whether or not

they have a fully functioning elac, which is what you're referring to. we determine whether or not they have a roster, right? so they need to have an elected group or an elected body within the site? we determine whether or not they are actually receiving training around exactly what it means to be an elac member, what reclassification is, and e.l.d. instruction, so we do have a mechanism, and more so maggie and i are the ones who monitor and go out into school sites besides what happens at the district level? and as you said, it does vary from site to site, and language, right, is a big variant within school communities. and if there is a family liaison or someone at the school that speaks the language, they're able to build more community? so one of the recommendations for me going in is to ensure

that there is someone -- that they identify someone at the site that can engage community members that may not be represented in a large group? that's one of my biggest recommendations. and then, the other piece to that is to ensure that school site councils and elacs are separate. so i think we understand that a lot of meetings, right, these evening meetings take a toll on all of us, and so a lot of times, it's easier for admin to say we're going to hold these together. but for me, it's really important and vital to secure the space, a safe space for families to be able to voice their opinions and their thoughts and their needs. like, i'm really passionate about that, so i go into these schools, and i sometimes say i'm not here to make friends, i just want to make sure that these families have a space. and so that being said, there's still a lot of work to be done, and -- but i do have an ongoing

roster that i'd be happy to share. and also, what the parents have as far as what they shared tonight was shared with mr. judson steele, so he could share with you, as well, along with the recommendations from 2016 through '18, and what's happening now. so there has been some things that have been implemented, many of the recommendations, and we look forward to more. >> commissioner collins: and just one final question. marco had mentioned that there's biases that families have to navigate, and i'm interested in hearing what specific biases do you feel that we could be doing better to address at our schools to help lower barriers.

[speaking spanish language]

>> the advice that i see is mostly the difference in how the teachers treat the kids who are white who have european parents. at my school at least, most of the teachers are white, and i see that when the kids get evaluated, their scores are different according to who the kids are. for example, my kid, i know he's a really advanced child. i am a math tutor. i know how advanced he is, but when the results come for us and when we get to the parent teachers conference, i see that

his scores are very low. the teacher tells me that this is the first trimester, and as it goes on, he will show more improvement. my son has a little friend who's a white kid, and i know that my kid is farther up than him, and yet, my kid gets lower grades than he does. [please stand by]

>> has there been budget analysis how much that would cost to implement? >> not as of yet, no. >> so can we perhaps follow up on that, superintendent?