similar experiences, commissioner collins, my children have made their own lunches for the last five-plus years. they have no interest in engaging in the school lunches. particularly in the elementary and middle school level. i think similar to what commissioner norton raised, i'm concerned there isn't a plan "b", so i will be voting to support the contract tonight, but i do want to accelerate the plan of how we're going to move on from the vendor like revolution foods if we're not seeing improvements, particularly around performance. i know a few years ago there was operational concerns, where food was not delivered and teachers in the mission district were having to ask on social media, please bring snacks to the classroom because my kids are going hungry. so i'm intrigue and wanting to see how we can scale our own

plans of providing food that we're cooking ourselves or preparing for ourselves and what that model is going to look like. again, really looking at acceleration, because we've known about these concerns for many years. and it's time. >> i just have a quick question. so i know there is an event surrounding student nutrition on may 17. i was just wondering if that will be taste-testing and if there is room for input? >> so that event on may 17 is for the school food advisory. and there is not a moment for taste-testing in that. that is when the students who have been participating in the school food advisory present their projects. we have other opportunities for taste-testing, though, that students are actively engaged in right now. and has continued to be

throughout the year. >> first of all, as a student who ate school lunch for the past four years, i do really see the change over the past four years. and i do have to say that the food has changed for the better since. but it's not to its best state. in my opinion. and my question here is, if we are to improve the food and what is specifically being improved? and is this only applicable to elementary and middle school, or is there high school specific? >> so we're working at various grade levels on different initiatives based on the grade level. as middle school and high school, we're having the continue fresh program, and we're continuing to expand with

more freshly prepared meals. we're opening essential kitchen there, and hopefully this fall. from there, we're going to be selecting elementary schools to remove from the revolution foods program. and start providing the meals for them from the soda campus and that will be our test kitchen for not only high school, but also for the new elementary menu as well. so that will start taking place, depending on construction time lines, january of 2020. >> president cook: commissioner norton >> ms. norton: thank you for the comments. if this is really a priority for us, i heard last year it was and hearing this year it is, let's work with staff for a way that the -- we control the agenda. it's our agenda. if we want to have a couple of times at board meetings throughout the year we're

looking at this and asking for progress on options, we can do that and we should do that. it's not just the responsibility of staff to bring us issues. it's our responsibility to tell staff what we want to hear about and what we want to monitor. i would just suggest that if this is a priority, then let's look at this with enough time over the next year, so we're in the in this position again if people are really feeling like it's taking too long and it should get better. and there will be tradeoffs, right? it's $11 million, this contract is $11 million. the price point for the food, you know, is pretty -- i mean $2.50 for a lunch is pretty tough in san francisco to have a fresh locally sourced food prepared 30,000 units of it prepared and delivered on time every day. so the price point is really tough. i wish that we got more money for that. maybe we're willing to pay more

money and put that in our budget, and that's a tradeoff, but that money comes out of the classroom. maybe that's worth it, but let's have that discussion and give the staff enough time for us to have the discussion and give them input on what the tradeoffs are acceptable to us and what aren't. >> thank you. i wanted to echo some of the comments that commissioner norton just expressed, but largely just to say that the team, their colleagues and student nutrition services, are extremely clear on the feedback that the board, the sitting board and the previous board have provided on this issue. i can personally attest to the high level of attention and concern that is placed on the overall topic. it is not -- i mean, just to try to clarify, there is not an

underappreciation for the level of concern. that is not what is happening with respect to this topic. on the issue of board engagement, i think that is something that might be helpful in the future in terms of maybe a committee-of-the-whole discussion as commissioner norton mentioned. we did have a number of committee level discussions. that was the subject of a recent buildings and ground committee. i think it was in march, i believe. and we've been providing a lot of sort of detailed updates through the weekly bulletin that you receive. and that may or may not be effective in terms of conveying

the number of proactive strategies that the team is working within, but as you've heard, some of them tonight, trying to really ramp up the pace on the development of a central kitchen, trying to increase the portion of meals that are provided by staff, and reducing reliance on any third party vendor, the expansion of menu items. so there are a lot of things being done and yet we still face a dilemma that we haven't been able to resolve in terms of completely eliminating the reliance on a third party vendor. so long story short, i just wanted to speak to the level of proactive steps that the team is trying to pursue as quickly as they can. >> vice president sanchez: thank you. i feel like it's deja vu. the same conversation we had last year. i do agree, the board, we need

to have continual updates and i agree that staff is taking this seriously. i know as the principal at cleveland, the amount of food that was thrown out on the daily, not even tasted. kids going through the line, picking up food, going to the waste bin and dumping it because it's inedible to them. and that's not every meal. there are quality meals involved. but it's alarming. when we do have the number of the waste that is going on, i'm sure it will be alarming for everybody. what is the deadline for passing this contract? >> it expires on june 30th in order to find a new vendor, assuming there is one, we would need to go out for rfp to solicit new bids. so that is usually about a

90-day process. >> vice president sanchez: then we have a pass on the consent calendar, million dollars for cisco as well. >> this is for the next school year. the contract also expires on june 30th. that is for the school year for 20 schools that serve our refresh menu. and that only covers a portion of what is served at those schools. >> vice president sanchez: your school is sf international, is that a revolution food school? >> yes, it is. >> vice president sanchez: i'm glad to hear you like the -- so, i just maybe if it does not pass today, there is no reason we couldn't bring it back before the end of june. >> there is no legal reason you couldn't -- i don't know how the

vendor would respond, so there is a risk there. and we could be looking at no meals in june for students. >> i'm saying we could come back and have the contract ratified by the board before the end of june. >> right, so i'd have to defer to ms. o'keefe as to how much lead time the vendor needs in order to perform in june. >> got it. >> commissioner, are you asking between now and the end of june, we can do rfp -- >> vice president sanchez: no, i'm say if the board doesn't ratify the contract tonight, can it be brought back and voted on again. and council is asking how much lead time revolution foods needs to have before the summer programming for meals.

>> i think they would need at least 1-2 months to be able to procure the food and make the necessary arrangements with labor and those different types of things. that would be my assessment of it, just based on my experience with planning for summer meal programs. >> vice president sanchez: is there are representative from revolution foods here? >> there is. >> commissioners, we've already just -- the logistics, i think that's what you're asking. we've identified the sites and started planning for staffing and done the menu development for summer. that work is in process. that's to give you a sense of how many months in advance you have to do it. we couldn't next week start planning for summer. we're like 90% there so we can deliver on time. >> vice president sanchez: got

it. thank you. >> just a couple of comments. i just want to piggyback on what deputy superintendent lee was saying, a couple of board members, commissioners have said, it's deja vu, we're in a similar place, but i want to tell you from staff perspective, we're not in a similar place. because of the comments and the concerns from last year staff took those comments very seriously and there are two areas i just want to highlight. one is in the quality of the food. we heard from the student commissioner over four years, that the quality has increased, especially i would say over the last year, we've been working directly with revolution foods around the quality. and they were here in the audience at the meeting and know the issues. we know we've been working with them on quality, but the second one is that -- one of the commissioners -- commissioner lam talked about not having a plan "b", but you were able to

hear ms. o'keefe talk about the fact that she knows to have a company that could deliver 30,000 foods, she knows that is not in place right now because we've looked at other options. we looked seriously at what other options are available currently and we know at this time there aren't other options which is why the recommendation is made tonight for revolution foods. so we hear -- we've heard last year. we started working with them knowing there aren't the other options, that's when we really turn to improving the quality of food and increasing the number of meals that we're making in-house. so we're moving toward making more meals in-house, moving toward increasing the quality because we know we don't have the other option out there. we're going to continue to move in these directions, but we want to make sure it's clear that we are hearing you loud and clear that the quality of the food that we're receiving now has to

improve and that's what we're working with revolution foods on and our own ability to produce meals in-house. >> i just want to say when i started teaching, you write essays. one of the things you want to fix about school, it's the lunch. that's since the dawn of time. and so this is not a new issue. i guess for me, this comes down to, you know, when it comes to food quality, we're in san francisco, right? we're in the bay area. we're in the foodie mecca. and yet, you know, we're having these issues and i understand that it's challenging. we've set very high standards for nutrition. my daughter is actually lobbied with their peers against chocolate milk because of essays they had to write and they

learned about how much sugar, so they all decided not to drink chocolate milk. but ultimately, our budget and us realizing this, you know, for students, is a -- our values kind of, you know, show in how we meet the needs of students and specifically this is an issue that impacts low-income kids. because my kids opt out because we either have the money or i have the time to make lunches and the children that are most impacted are low-income children. and so, whatever is decided tonight i encourage us as a board, i don't believe this is an intractable issue, i just believe it's one that we need to fix. we need to be creative, make it a priority. and it's enough important that it keeps coming up, but i think we need to make it important enough to solve the problem.

you know, your experience is like the food you eat. i think about my next meal. i love food. i think kids do, too. i think it informs the experience in school. we want them to be positive experiences. so i encourage the board to work with you, whatever is decided, to fix this problem so we're not having this conversation next year. thank you. >> so i completely agree with you. i think that's a huge problem, is that kids who have other options opt out of the food program and it does create two tiers and i think that is -- my own kids did and will tell you the food was disgusting and they hated it, and they're not in our schools anymore, i'm sure they would think it was better now. but i wanted to ask you, vice

president sanchez, what would change if we brought it back? let's say that the contract is not approved tonight, you asked staff could we bring it back. and we could, but what would be the point of us doing that and what would change for commissioners if people vote no tonight, it's not like -- i don't know what could change in that short amount of time. >> vice president sanchez: i was trying to do vote-counting in my head and i didn't know it would pass. >> i've been doing it. >> vice president sanchez: we have revolution foods here as they were last year. and a no message is a big message. and i do believe that staff is taking this seriously. i'm not as impressed as i want to be around the waste count. i think that's something we thought of a lot less a year ago. so i don't know if that's been, you know, taken as seriously as we want, but moving forward with

our own ability to provide our own meals that we prepare, is a good move forward. we need to accelerate it. as commissioner lam was asking. and i'm just trying to give us a way out -- >> yeah, i appreciate that. i just think -- i guess what i'm trying to advocate for is, let's do a very serious look at what our options are, which i guess i'm saying it's a little bit on us. we can't say, even if -- last year we were mad because it came to us in june and we had no time. now it's april and maybe it's unfair to say people are mad, but we're expressing concern again about being presented with an option that people don't like. and so let's give the staff some time to develop what are the range of options. and maybe a little bit -- maybe it would have been helpful for

everybody to hear the process that you all went through this last year to explore other options and why you landed back on this one that many people didn't like last year. so maybe that is feedback for staff. i guess i'm just saying, as to -- i appreciate commissioner collins' optimism, there is always creative solution and tradeoffs to those solutions. we owe it to our students and to the people that voted us into office to really be thoughtful about what are those tradeoffs and not just say, we don't like this so we're going to blow it up. i think that would be the effect of a no-vote tonight, that's all i'm saying. >> so from what i heard right now, a vote on renewing the contract, or having a new food provider. and as a student delegate i want to err on the caution side and

say there is food in the cafeteria, regardless of how good or bad that is. i'm not saying i really like that food. it tastes okay. i can eat it. i can put it in my mouth. but there is definitely improvement available over there. and from the student perspective and i also want to check in with my constituent and my peers who are consuming them, because i imagine if we say this, our contract is not renewed tonight and we have no provider, what should i tell my students? sorry, yeah, that's the battle we're facing there. and also we would like this have a time line on the improvement, if we're renewing this contract, to see, by what month we're going to improve what? by when, we're going to do what? and kind of having that time

line is really a good way for us to see the progress and believe the support of the work. routing back to the food waste thing, we'd like a time line to see where we are at and how we can improve with that. >> if you wouldn't mind me adding a little bit. if you would indulge me. is that okay? okay. thank you. i couldn't agree more with everything that was said here today about the concerns of the meals that we're providing to our students. i'm new to sfusd, i worked in oakland unified working to improve the school meals over there. and just like in oakland, we have students that need the food, the families that rely on the food, and everything that we can do, we can do better. we need to be able to work with revolution foods to improve the

food quality that we have right now. and i have been working a lot with them and putting in strict guidelines about what can and cannot be served to our students. and looking at the performance. to the point where we have performance language new to this contract, that puts fines on them if they do not report and do not do what they're supposed to be doing. we've done extensive menu development with them, so that the most popular items as mentioned in the past, are being served. we've put in new ordering guidelines to ensure that the most popular items are available to students throughout the year. this work really started in january, so a lot of the impact, it hasn't been seen yet. we're going through the process of really having our partner, revolution foods, own the issues and so they're going out to school sites where we've had the highest complaints and getting feedback from the students and

talking about the improvements we've made. also reaching out to parents to have those conversations as well. we need to do better for our kids. and we can do better. we need to put in the infrastructure so that we can do that. and we are dealing with a system where we want to do better with our facilities, but we just haven't paid attention to them in several years and now we're starting to. so we will see improvements. we've already started to see improvements. and i'm making a xhiment to you that we'll see more improvements as we move forward. we really need to feed our students and we're in the situation where if this does not pass, we do not have plan b as has been said. and the first priority is to provide good meals to our students. and i think revolution foods is now poised and understands what the expectations are of them, and we will continue to see those improvements moving forward into the next school year. thank you.

>> president cook: the final thing i'll say before we call this for a vote. or if they want to -- the schools that are the students that need the food the most. when i ask them about their engagement with the cafeteria, especially around the popular items, it's the same kind of discourse. it's the stuff that i really wanted is gone by the time i get there. so the students, all the food they wanted to eat was gone. so we still have the same issue around the most under served students not having access to food. or students, instead of going to the cafeteria, getting hot cheetos and soda from the corner store down the street, which you'll see at a bunch of middle schools across the city. because this is like -- i'm at

these sites, talking to these people, seeing what they're eating. our young people, seeing what they're eating. and so if anyone is especially sensitive to people not eating, especially the most vulnerable students, it's me. and the complaints are coming from them. so you know, this pitting that we're doing around this discussion around who loses if we vote no and what is happening around the food, it seems, you know, not having all the information that we need to make an informed decision here. and knowing the urgency, that vice president sanchez and i had around the contract, i think it's actually on staff to be in constant communication with us. is it a surprise i want to vote no on this? right? especially knowing this is how i came at this discussion last

year? so i think -- we talked about this in previous meetings. so the idea that there was engagement on the issue throughout the year is not honest. you guys knew this was coming from me. we talked about this in the past. that i wanted to see more from this department around this issue. and now we're in the same place. so this is -- i mean, this is what i'm going to predict happens if we vote yes. is that next year, we're going to say, rev foods is all we can do. we're going to see the same thing we saw last year. if there is no other plan b, it allows me to believe, if you can find one in a year, you won't be able to find one by next year, unless something else changes about the policies that we have

in terms of who can be a vendor for school lunches. so you know, i'm actually really torn about this issue. if you would have told me you loved the food, i would have said, okay. it's not all on you. i won't put it all on you. [laughter]. additionally -- go ahead. >> i just want to say, it may be -- you might be right. i hope you're not right. i can hear the frustration in your voice that you expressed all of this last year and here we are again. and it may be true that next year they come back and say there is no plan b, because we do have very high standards, nutritional standards, which we should have and we have a good food-purchasing policy which puts constraints on where our food can be sourced from and we should have that. we do -- i meant to ask this --

what is our general fund contribution to student nutrition services this year? >> it's $6 million. >> okay. so we're putting $6 million from general fund already into the food program, you know, above what we take in and what we get from the state. so i mean, it's between a rock and a hard place. i do think there is a conversation to be had. and we've had it at various times, you know, about what are we willing to tolerate in terms of a shortfall? what are we willing to pay out of general fund additionally than we already do to move the needle on the problem? or maybe there is other philanthropic help we can get. under the current constraints of we have a certain amount of money and we have certain standards, yeah, we get what we've always got, because there are very few vendors that can

meet our needs. i think what we're hearing from staff, and i have to reason to disbelieve it, that there aren't any other vendors that would do better than what we have right now. so i'm just arguing for, then let's really -- if this is what -- if this is a top priority for us, then let's give staff the time and hold them accountable. put it on the agenda. you know, i mean, you as the president of the board, you can put something on the agenda any time you want, or four board members can put it on any time we want. let's put it on every agenda. i'm not really saying that [laughter]. but we can say that we want to hear at every board meeting, monthly, or every other meeting, what are we doing different to change the paradigm of this problem? and i think that would have over the long-term far less damaging effects on our students, quite

honestly, than throwing the whole system into chaos and saying, like, we don't know where the food is coming from. now maybe the students you're talking from, they're buying their cheetos and soda at the corner store, but we also owe something to them. i'm looking to solve this problem in a way that is thoughtful, rather than that is because we're frustrated with what we have. >> commissioners, sorry, commissioner, president cook, can i clarify something about plan b? we actually do have a plan b. which is to bring it in-house, to remove our reliance on outside vendors and we've taken a lot of steps as the superintendent mentioned today, one being reducing the number of

meals we're purchasing and increase the number we're preparing ourselves. our first cooking kitchen is going to open up in august, but if not, by january of next year. that will be extra 3,000 meals a day that we'll be able to produce in-house. so we're troubling down op the -- doubling down on the plan b, which is to remove reliance on an outside vendor. that takes time. we cannot do that overnight. we're also investing a tremendous amount of time in school food advocacy through our student voice. we've taken students to d.c., sacramento. they meet every friday. our change in student nutrition services is driven strongly by student voice. i love the idea of a forum where we can share more. i would like to take commissioners out to see?

some of the changes we've done. to see the food from local farmers. there is tremendous work happening. but changing it to scale, it takes multiple years. we'd love to take each commissioner out, one on one, and show you and introduce you to the students that are informing the change. i'm not saying that to say we are where we need to be. i know we're nowhere near it. but we're motivated and it's a equity-focused drive that is behind the work. we have plan b that is going to take longer to implement and hopefully we'll have a cooking kitchen by august, if not, then by january. >> ms. collins: do you have any data showing improvement in food quality or in terms of student survey or parents feedback? with you today?

>> no, commissioner, not with me today. >> i just want to say that i find that problematic, because i feel like, it's just -- i don't know, i just -- i feel like we're being asked to vote on something and we have no data as commissioner cook is saying. i'm hearing things but i don't have anything to see improvement, so what i'm hearing is anecdotal. so i just -- it would be great if that were more readily available. >> thank you, commissioner. we've given two presentations to the board. and tonight we didn't even know if we were going to be asked questions. we're more than happy and eager to provide presentations. we've also, as mr. lee said, been putting in regular updates to the board as a way to respond to the questions that came up last year, because we wanted to -- and bring this back as early as possible.

we were prepared to come even earlier than this with the -- with this dilemma and this request for approval. which we believe is the best recommendation given the context that we're in and the constraints of the context. >> president cook: what is next? >> we're voting on the consent calendar. [roll call] >> clerk: it fails. >> section d, consent calendar

resolution for consideration. section e, proposal for actions. there are none tonight. section f, public comment on general matters. we already did that. section g, special order of business. there is none tonight. section h, discussion of other education issues, dr. matthews. >> superintendent matthews: tonight we'll have a presentation regarding kindergarten readiness, this is presented by our chief of early education. good evening, commissioners, president cook, dr. matthews. i'm here with my colleagues. i'm going to let them introduce

themselves as well. >> good evening, i'm michele, from the research planning assessment office. >> good evening, everyone, my name is betty, i'm executive director of the early education department. >> hello, i'm pamela, budget director for the early education department. >> so we're here to give you an overview of kindergarten readiness. we are proud to be a pre-k to 12 school district and in that, preschool is evidence-based approach to kindergarten readiness. and because we now have data, it informs our practice. it informs our instruction. and that data we can look at longitudinally, so we're going to talk about what that looks like. when we talk about kindergarten readiness, this is our landscape. just very quickly. there are -- we serve about 1500

preschool students. we serve 400, a little over 400 transitional kindergarten students and 4,000 kindergarten students. they make up the students we talk about when we say kindergarten readiness. i'll quickly draw your attention to the composition of pre-k. we highlighted our focal students even though our numbers are low, we serve a high percentage of african-american students, english language learners and subsidized. and as you know, preschool is not free. one day it will be, but until then, families pay tuition or their income-eligible. many of the families we serve are income-eligible. in addition to preschool being an evidence-based approach toward kindergarten readiness, it is also important to keep in

mind a preschool to third grade framework, which we support in sfusd and that framework is aligned assessments throughout each grade. aligned instruction throughout each grade. and that supports college and career readiness. that is something we've been doing actively in this district. now i'm going to show you data. historically, the way that we have been assessing and learning about our students' growth and informing our instruction has been through an early literacy lens. you have data that is from 2012 to 2016. using an early literacy lens. the blue bar is all of our pre-k students. the orange bar are students who have been in pre-k for two years.

you can see the advantage of being in preschool for two years or more. the second is our leading kindergarten readiness indicator. so whereas before we were just looking at preschool readiness through a literacy lens, we're now adding a social-emotional and cognitive lens. so it's a more robust way of looking at school readiness for pre-k students. again, you see the purple is all students and the orange is students who have been with us for two years or more. i'm going to break that down a little bit more by demographics. so that same square that you saw, this is a little bit more information demographics-wise, so you can see again, for each ethnicity, there is all the

students and then for each ethnicity, two years or more, and in all cases, you can see that the two years or more has benefitted the pre-k students. >> in addition to our leading indicator, we also have a lagging indicator that is administered at the beginning of kindergarten to our students when they enter sfusd. beginning in 2017, we have implemented a kindergarten entry assessment, known as the kri. this measure acts as lagging indicator for all the students in early education across the city of san francisco. in addition, it informs practice and instruction for kindergartners as that he move forward in our -- they move forward in our system. this is used for goals and targets for our children, our

families. and city-wide improvement planning. it also encompasses the whole student approach, which incorporates social, emotional learning, math and literacy as well. we can see here, this is the kri performance on sfusd students who attended our program. there is upward trend from last year to this year, for african-american students, asian students and white students. we have a negative trend for latino and hispanic students. and we'll continue to look at this data and use them to align practices for pre-k to 3. we have more information around the kri in the appendix, because we had a presentation about it last year, too. >> we also wanted to pay

attention to our absenteeism rate. we know that students have to come to school in order to be successful. and so here we have three years of student absenteeism data. the numbers they top are the percentages. when we took a more critical eye to look at this data and understand what is going on, we were able to discern a few things. one is that sometimes when parents are sick, they can't bring their kids -- pre-k kids can't come to school by themselves, there is parent illness. also we know during flu season we have lower enrollment. and then we have students with chronic health conditions. i wanted to give you those percentages. 43% of our students have some kind of allergy. 31% have asthma. 6% from seizures.

and 13% have other health issues. these are things that we're looking at that we believe have impacted our attendance rates. so looking at our data that we just presented to you, has moved our department, early ed, to put into action strategies and we aligned these ideas to transform lives in the strategic plan of the district. in the classrooms we wanted to focus on the pitch sites. out of the sites identified by dr. matthews, we're in 12 of them in pre-k or tk. we started a curriculum. we're looking with intention to develop more oral language with our children. we're also incorporating a curriculum for social-emotional learning and looking at tier one enhancement in our sites. and then in schools, we're

strengthening family partnerships. we're lookingality professional learning opportunities for pre-k. and we have high scope curricular approach. i want to direct you to the photograph. the top one is the history study core. this is from the unit one, which is focused on self-in society. especially cultural diversity. in this particular abdul baset egwilla -- example in the top, they took the text we provided, which is titled the color of us and she did an intensive project with the students about skin color. that was very exciting to see it

displayed in the classroom with lots of dictated stories and such of what they thought about their skin color and of the others in the classroom. the photograph down below is from early education school and you'll see the child shark there. and the shark program is based on the positive behavior, intervention and support program that has to do with developing behavioral expectations. and so shark and itself, stands for safe, helpful, awesome, responsible and kind. and this one child is chosen monthly to don the shark costume and pass out certificates to children who are embodying the shark characters in school. in addition to the classroom and school-based strategies, we also work with the district internally to deepen the pre-k to third grade supports and

efforts. we work in planning at the school summit on ongoing basis with staff. we work to align with the preschool foundation and the curriculum and one of the areas is the study where we started off in preschool, and it's been expanded to kindergarten, first grade and hopefully next year to second grade as well. we work with various universities. we did a ready for k study where texts were given to parents and guardians for english. spanish or chinese. and they provided parents and

guardians with tips and activities and literacy and math and social emotional development. we've also had steadfast support from the foundation fund. they've been good thought partners and funded us consistently to support our quality efforts in preschool. and lastly, we partner with community agencies, one of which is the mission promise neighborhood, and they've supported our efforts to help families and kids transition from preschool to kindergarten this year. and i believe all of you have a transition to kindergarten booklet and that's one of ours that comes out this year. we wanted to leave you with one final mental image. a young pre-k student. her name is tillia. she goes to john mclaren early

education school. she can write her name. she can identify 20 upper case letters, 16 lower case letters. she knows many nursery rhymes, even extended versions of the verses. and when she was reviewing her upper case letters, she was stumped on the letter, r. so she took her index finger. she traced the letter and she said, i'm going to look at it and i'm going to remember it. >> president cook: thank you for the presentation. any questions? thank you, i do have public comment on this item.

teresa, ingrid, and maatta. before you get started, i'm going to excuse our student delegates. >> good evening. my name is teresa. acting executive director with first five san francisco. happy to be here this evening. first five has partnered with the district on the kindergarten readiness assessment process since 2007. so we have a long history of doing this work in san francisco in partnership with the district. it's been an invaluable source of information for us. and our community partners to understand not only children's readiness, but also those factors that both bolster readiness and also hinder readiness.

this enables us to better organize our programs around these results. and enhance our impact toward this long-term goal. so it's been really critical for us. i'm standing here tonight to just applaud your efforts and say how pleased and supportive we are. that under your leadership, this assessment process has been annualized and you're here tonight hearing the data and reflecting on it. you're still among a relatively small group of districts to be doing this around the states. to have incorporated an annual process, we applaud you, thank you. we look forward to continuing our partnership in the administration of the assessment and the dissemination of the results as a benchmark of the success for the community initiatives. we share a common goal to give all children the best possible start. and every opportunity to be ready for school and successful

throughout their educational pathway, but we though this is an ambitious and complex goal. it's achieved not just by any one initiative, but a combination of initiatives, that address family support, education, health, and quality programs overall. and so, we really need this kind of data point that provides the nexus of all of these things that come together to better understand the impact. we want to stress that you continue to utilize this tool and we'll continue to support you in whatever way we can. thank you. >> good evening. my name is ingrid. i'm newly appointed, by mayor breed, director of early care and education. before that i was the director of first five san francisco. and so i've started -- i started

actually with first five san francisco, one of the program designers and implementers of the universal preschool system in san francisco. back in 2005, i started the partnership with the district and in 2007, we helped design the first gender readiness assessment. [please stand by] [please stand by]

>> held -- hello, everyone. i wanted to talk a little bit about the booklet that you all have in front of you. we support it, too, the spanish translation for our families. and not only that, we are also giving this booklet within the family portfolios to support our families from the transition from prekinder to kindergarten. having our families be ready to go to kindergarten and partner with the district to continue to support their children. i believe that early childhood education is the base and foundation of our children. i believe the children is our

future. i'm talking about this from a parent perspective because i have two kids in the district. i appreciate the work we do collectively not only supporting our children, but also our families. thank you. >> good evening, commissioners and superintendent matthews. i'm susan solomon, president of united educators of san francisco and a preschool and kindergarten teacher for many years. so the first thing that i wanted to mention is there are a whole lot of acronyms in this powerpoint. there are like six or seven on this one screen, and even though i do this work, i don't know what they all stand for. so if you want people to understand, you should spell them out. that would be great. so we're also talking about developmental practices, and young children. i always felt that one of my

responsibilities as a preschool and kindergarten teacher was to help them learn to love school. they have to have a good time. i'm a little concerned about the number of assessments that are performed with pre-k and kindergarten students. but well rounded education includes play time. they need play time. i think we need to make sure that as kids are developing -- it's a pretty wide bell curve, not all kids learn and develop at the same rate, so we have to make sure that kids who aren't kindergarten ready never make sure like they're failures. maybe they haven't gotten there yet. i had an incredible student, jay lynn, when i worked at john

sweat. she tried writing letters, but she just wasn't getting it. she was living in poverty, but by first grade, she put it together. the last thing i want to say is we all need to work together at the state level to make kindergarten mandatory. it's not yet mandatory, and this would be very helpful for families. >> thank you for everyone who commented. i have commissioner norton and commissioner collins and commissioner malia. >> so thank you very much for the presentation. it is exciting to everything we're doing, and i think this has been a long road and we've made a lot of progress, so you know, a lot of positives. they are -- i have to say i'm

still -- i -- i was a little shocked to see we only have 25 inclusion classrooms out of 79 early ed classrooms, and th that -- i've said this before, i think it's appalling. the vast majority of kids with disabilities in early ed would thrive in classrooms. they are in restrictive settings, and they are in the minority. i can't believe it's taking us so long to have full inclusion in early ed, and i don't know why that is. >> yes. so thank you for that question, commissioner norton. actually, all of our pre-k classes have students with i.e.p.s. when we talk about inclusion classrooms, what we are talking about is a partnership between early education department and the special education

department to actually staff classrooms with special ed teachers and paras and regular teachers and paras. so means there's less kids and there's a higher adult to kid ratio. because preschool is not free, whenever we do that, we -- and we don't get money from the state to supplement that. we're actually doing pretty innovative work, but we could be doing better. we drawdown the general fund that supports that model, but we don't get reimbursed because many of the families are -- they're middle-income families, so we don't get money, but we staff it that way because it's the right thing to do.

so -- and we used to not have any. we used to sdbc pre-k and general ed pre-k. so now all of our schools have students who have i.e.p.s. maybe they need their environment for some reason or another, or their i.e.p. says that. >> and thank you for clarifying that. i feel better. but i would -- so what is -- i mean, in the past, and admittedly, my knowledge is old because i haven't looked at the pre-k situation in a while, but in the past, there was much more demand for the inclusive classrooms in early ed than there was space