honorable career. we appreciate your interest in joining our team. >> we hope you decide to join us here as the first first responders to the city and county of san francisco. for more information on the job and how to apply follow the links below. started. let it be noted the house is full of educators, and union members, welcome. the regular meeting of the board of education of the san francisco unified school district is now called to order. roll call. >> thank you. [roll call]

thank you. >> thank you. section a, general information, accessibility information for the public, teleconference information, there is none tonight. do you want to do that? okay. go ahead. we are going to have an announcement about accessibility right now. >> good evening, everyone. san francisco unified school district provides free cantonese and spanish interpretation tonight for this meeting. so if you know anyone that needs a cantonese or spanish interpreter, please have them find us. we have signs up right here. we also have childcare provided over at the e.p.c. center. so if you need childcare, please head over to the e.p.c. center. and the interpreter will repeat

this in cantonese and spanish. >> [speaking foreign language] >> [speaking spanish] >> thank you. section b, opening item, approval of the board minutes of the regular meeting of

february 11, 2020. we need a motion and a second. >> so moved. >> second. >> are there any corrections? roll call. >> thank you. [roll call] >> speaker cards for the regular agenda and closed session are necessary if you wish to address the board of education. members of the public are reminded an individual can complete a speaker card prior to the item being called and present it to the assistant. members of the public have two minutes to address the board or the time set by the president. the speaker cards will not be accepted for an item already before the board. item 2, superintendent's report. >> thank you, president sanchez. this past i had the pleasure of

attending the 26th annual african-american honor roll at st. mary's cathedral. it was attended by over 800 students from nearly every san francisco unified school district school. 15 high school students were honored for having 4.0s. con garagelations to all -- congratulations to all the students who were honored and thank you to the staff who supported the event by volunteering their time. the superintendent's 21st century awards are accepting applications through this friday. and i encourage all graduating san francisco unified school district seniors to apply. this award will be granted to six seniors who exemplify a particular strength in one or more of the characteristics of the graduate profile. winners will receive a $2,000 scholarship and be honored at an event with myself and other district leaders this spring.

the scholarship is available to all students regardless of citizenship status. the deadline to apply is this friday, february 28. please go to sfusd.edu to learn more and to apply or talk to your school counselor or principal if you have questions. our district is developing a new student assignment system for elementary schools, and we want to hear from you. attend the community workshop to provide input that will help our district develop a new student assignment policy for elementary schools. the final workshop is february 27 at the l.a. hutch community center. please r.s.v.p. to www.sfusd.edu to attend the upcoming community workshop. finally, i would like to announce that the school planning summit is this saturday, march 7 from 8:15 to 1:00 at everett middle school. the summit provides the opportunity to work together as

a team on your school plan for student achievement. invited to attend are principals, teachers and other staff members of the school site counsels. english learner advisory committees, african-american aanyonety groups and other parent -- affinity groups and other parent family groups. talk to your school principal about how to attend and participate in school planning. attendees will hear about the strategic priority, programs and services for 2021. you can develop your school priorities and plans for next year and learn about funding and other sources to serve your students. there will be interpretation, multi-lingual materials, breakfast and childcare provided. again, the school planning summit is saturday, march 7, at everett middle school, 450 church street between 16th and 17th street from 8:15 to 1:00 p.m. that ends my announcements. >> thank you. item 2 -- 3 is student delegates' report. >> thank you.

good afternoon, everyone. superintendent's 21st century award, ai deadline for the scholarship is this friday the 28th. the scholarship is available to all seniors regardless of their citizenship status, who demonstrate the core values of sfusd. our goal is to encourage students in the school district to apply for this opportunity and to get all the help they need to make their college experience less helpful with this opportunity. we would like to thank dr. matthews for continuing to make this opportunity available for all sfusd students and laura for bringing this award to our attention. perspective experience program, last night at our meeting we received a presentation on the student experience program collaboration with the department. we learned more about teacher biases and the impact it can play on their students. our goal as student leaders is to take this information back to our school sites and promote the importance of anti-bias work.

we would like to thank chris lee for getting in contact with us and giving us this important presentation. >> good evening, everyone. just like dr. matthews, we would like to announce the annual school summit program is approaching. it hosts families, staff and community members planning the budget for next year. it is an important meeting where data such as attendance records, academic testing and school climate surveys are viewed to conduct academic and curriculum planning. the s.a.c.'s goal is to promote the event and share the opportunity for students to volunteer. it will be march 7 at everett middle school. and we would like to thank kia for sharing this opportunity. our last item is the student delegate application. the application for next year's student delegate is now open. the student delegate position is

a great leadership opportunity and it enables the student to represent the sfusd voice on the board of education. it is a personally, i agree, it is a fun and awarding experience where you work to create change in your district. if you would like to apply, please see your school represent representative. >> i know you will miss me as much as i will miss all of you. >> our next meeting will be monday march 9 at 5:00 p.m. in room 11 at the i lab. the public counsel and anyone is welcome to attend. if you would like to attend, make a presentation or would like a copy of our agenda, contact mr. salvador lopez bar. >> thank you, student delegates. i am for recognitions, there are none tonight. five, recognizing all valuable

employees, which is our r.a.v.e. award. >> our first r.a.v.e. award winner is the secretary at mckinley elementary school, ms. jennifer hancock, and presenting this award is molly pope, principal. so please. thank you. right there. [applause] >> all right. what a night. good evening. my name is molly pope and i'm the principal at mckinley elementary school. it is an honor to be here and to be able to introduce jennifer hancock. the mckinley community is delighted that jennifer is getting public recognition for her contributions to our district. the job of front office clerk is enormous and foundational to setting the tone of the school. it embeds the jobs including nurse, social worker, therapist, systems and budget analyst, receptionist and family liaison. she handles these roles with

such expertise that it makes her annual halloween costume of wonder woman seem more like a daily uniform. [applause] our school wouldn't function without her can-do attitude. she is driven to improve outcomes for all students and is as gifted with google docs as she is at deescalating a student, often doing them simultaneously. the coworkerrer who nominated her her work that words are inadequate to appreciate all she does each week, her positive attitude makes for joyful learning. there are no truer words. she makes a formidable job look easy, and i am forever grateful to her. [applause] >> thank you.

>> finding out i was nominated for this award by a colleague a year and a half ago was a huge honor because it meant some of the things i've tried to do over the years to make the teachers' live a little easier have worked. it helps i am the kind of person who gets excited by google spreadsheets and finding the exact perfect size of pencil box to fit both an epy pen and inn hailer at the same time. it has been in honor to work with such an amazing community. founding out i won this award a few weeks ago has left me a little bit conflict, and i feel i would be letting myself and all of you down if i didn't attempt to explain why. i want to start saying i am grateful for sfusd's recognition of my efforts to make mckinley a

great place to work for staff and a great place to work for students. i strive every day to have the office be a soft place to land. but after five years of doing this job, i'm really, really tired. the last few weeks have been full of newspaper articles about dysfunctional middle schools with challenges i'm sure most of us recognize from our school sites and e-mails laying out the prospect of severe budget cuts. remember that i like spreadsheets? i actually clicked through on dr. matthew's powerpoint presentation and got deep in the weeds about rising costs and declining revenue streams. it is clear this is a simple math problem. there isn't enough money to pay for everything our schools need to be successful. i hear that, and i believe that. and i don't know how to help fix it. i have no band-aid or ice pack that will save the day though they do work for most every other problem in an elementary school. but what i do know is that cutting funding for our school

sites is not the right answer. [applause] ten more seconds. in fact, school sites desperately need more resources. our schools are being tasked with not only teaching our most vulnerable students, but healing them as well. and for that, we need more people walking the halls and manning our wellness centers and offices. i am honored to accept this award on behalf of all of the really, really tired school staff site and our partners in central office, giving more than they get every single day and still showing up each morning with a smile on their face and a coffee in their hand. thank you. [applause] thank you very much.

[applause] >> chop from the top, chop from the top. [chanting] >> the next award is a teacher in our district. she is a teacher at frank mccoppin elementary school. this award will be presented by bennett lee, her principal, and the award winner is tina huie. [applause] >> good evening, everyone. i'm the principal at mccoppin. tonight i'm giving the award, i'm honored to be giving an

award to ms. huie, one of the hardest working teachers. just a story about how when she won this award, i told her congratulations, i'm going to come out to a board meeting and present the award, her first words were don't tell anyone, i don't want to be recognized. i go i already responded, i'm going to be here tonight. i want to proudly give her an award. but i broke my profess because i told staff, why are you going to a board meeting? and i'm like number one, to hear people cheering for needing less cuts and also giving an award to one of your own, and they were like who, and they said they were going to congratulate her quietly. one of the things that stood out is because of all the extra things she does. she's a mother of three, always busy, always rushing off to pick up her kids or get babysitting services, yet she finds the time to run marathons, and she also

started the girls on the run club, which was really, really a great community effort that neighbors and community came out, watched her as she did a relay. it was just an amazing moment where our teachers ran up to me, i'm going to nominate her for a r.a.v.e. award. i thought this is a true exemplary example of a person that really gives so much to the school and people recognize it, and we need to recognize her. and i want to recognize her student. congratulations, ms. huie. [applause] >> i just want to briefly say thank you. it's hard for me to believe that this is my 27th year of teaching. time flies by. and i want to say that i feel very honored and blessed to be in a career that i still love and feel passion for. i feel like it's not a career, it's my calling. i love my students and i love my

community, and i hope to be serving them for many more years. [applause] >> section c, public comment on nonagenda items. i'll call your names in a minute. the protocol is please note that public comment is an opportunity for the board to hear from the community on matters within the board's jurisdiction. we ask you refrain from using employee and student names. if you have a complaint about a district employee, you may submit it to the employee's supervisor in accordance with

district policy. board rules and alaska r california law don't allow us to respond -- board rules and california law don't allow us to respond to comments. we have a number of speakers. when i call your name, approach the podium. you'll have two minutes each. [calling speaker names]

i'll do the rest later. >> my name is grace, i work at a middle school. i'm a second year classroom teacher. [applause] i'm a member of this community. i have -- i wanted to say these proposed budget cuts are not only going to have real life consequences for all schools but especially our school, which you may have heard of recently. our school has three counselors for 1,000 students, and we get written about in the press as

not answering e-mails fast enough. our admin are -- i think generally feel unsupported by the district at times. and are trying their best in a hard situation and all being new to their jobs. every teacher at my school is working three different jobs in one. i'm a classroom teacher, u.b.c. rep and a head of technology department in my second year. no one at my school -- every at my school cannot survive on these budget cuts. we had probationary counselors and teachers who are working harder than anyone i've ever seen in my life. and our students deserve more. and our families deserve more. and in this time of crisis, we cannot have -- we cannot go to our schools and say here's less. we cannot settle for less. every year our schools have been funding our students with less money for every year, and our classroom teachers, counselors, clerks, security guard, nurses,

administrators, cannot continue to settle for less. and we need to show our students and our families that we are going to work together to find solutions and not compromise. so i ask you on march 10 that you vote for no cuts and no lay offs. thank you for your time. [applause] >> i'm megan, a behavioral analyst with the school district. and part of my job is going to schools, i go to a lot of schools. and i'm there to try to help them figure out how to support students who need more student, and that is an impossible task, because everybody that i work with at every school i've ever gone to is already giving 110%. if we plan to interrupt the predictability of inequitable

outcomes for our stantons, laying the burden -- for our students, leiing the burden -- laying the burden of cuts on our students is not a solution. schools without good connections like schools i've been at in the southeast side, don't have matching grants for their p.t.a.s. they are going to get left behind. so for those kids that are doing okay or at schools are lots of funding, they are likely to continue to do okay. for kids struggling at this moment who need more, struggling at reading, have social emotional needs, those are the kids that are going to suffer if we decide to put the burden of these budget problems on our school sites. it's going to be an uphill battle for every child who has more than just the basic need in our school. budget cuts are hard on

everybody. but they perpetuate the cycle of inequity we are here to stop. [applause] we cannot afford to put our children through that. i urge you, i demand, that you vote no on any budget cuts that affect our schools. vote no on layoffs. we owe it to our kids to stop the cycle of inequity, and we cannot do anything less than that. thank you. [applause] >> hi, michelle, lowell high school, i'm also a parent of a balboa, she's a junior. i couldn't remember. i'm also teaching four sections of a.p. computer science at lowell, former student. and i have some concerns that are budget-related and also personal. one is that i currently have a colleague in our shared office

who has very serious cancer. and she is afraid to take off work, because she is out of sick days from being treated a few times. in our contract we have 100 days of extended leave she would have to pay for a sub, and she can't. and so i am asking you to consider for bargaining that we don't continue this policy of asking teachers to pay for subs out of their salary. [applause] this is not a cost -- sorry. anyway. we currently have a sick bank that members contribute contribute to. i tried to go to the labor relations office and say can i give her five of my sick days, and she said no, she said have to have 100 of her own days used first. this is an old policy from the '70s. san diego has a contract that shows how to undo that, and it's not a significant cost.

it might be a fouad administratorrive hours. if you are -- it might be a few administrative hours. i want our students from our city to be able to do computer science as a profession so they can stay in the city. [applause] we currently have a company that is enabling a criminal president, a company called twitter. i'm doing it anyway. we have a criminal president being enabled by a company that gets a tax break in our city. i'm not saying that's anyone's fault. but why do we allow that? okay. thank you. [applause] thirty-seven students in a section, 47. if we have anymore cuts, where do they go? [applause] >> just a reminder to step a little back from the microphone so it is not muffled.

>> [speaking spanish] i'm a fourth grade teacher at b.b.h.m. it's a shame that i'm here. it's a shame we live in the richest city in the richest country in the world and we have poverty, homelessness, schools that are underfunded, and yet our schools still find a way to support our families. my school at one point had 60 families without housing. the district did nothing, the city did nothing. we had to pull in more people, we had to come up with the idea of bringing in a shelter to our school and giving them a house, a place to live, a place to sleep at for our children so they can learn at school. that's a shock. that shouldn't be coming from us. that should be coming from you all, the people that don't have to answer to phone calls, e-mails, teach five lessons, talk to parents. that shouldn't be coming from us. we don't have the time for us

that. and right now if you cut $26 million from our schools, you are saying that you don't support educators who are on the frontline of the things that our politicians should be on the frontline. we are on the frontlines of black lives matter, of poverty, of homelessness, of making sure the rich pay their fairtaxs. what are you doing? i demand and i urge you to vote no on cuts, no on layoffs and instead vote to make sure our students are learning. it's not school, it's not fair, and it's very simple. sometimes i think politics and budgets and all this is very complicated but really we are just asking for a basic right, that our schools are funded and that our schools earn their education. thank you. [applause] >> good evening. my name is susan, i'm the lead purchaser and vice president of the local 21 sfusd chapter.

as you know, local 21 represents 10,000 members in the bay area, 5,000 in the city and about 100 sfusd employees. most of them work in the department of technology. in the district, we are the purchasers, occupational therapists, architects, building inspector, business analyst and i.t. workers. we work with the teachers and staff, handle the purchase of goods and services, fix the computers and make sure that the networks are functioning. our goal today is to support the teachers in solidarity. we want to let the board know that we need more, no less, and that the board must promise no layoffs, no cuts. we are not asking for any special favor, just a fair living wage in this beautiful city we call home. thank you. [applause]

>> good evening. my name is david, i'm the local 21 also. and i'm in the i.t. department. i'm not good at scripted stuff, but i did want to say that when viewing layoffs and budget cuts, the word that comes to my mind is sacrifice. but i was wondering, are we really taking a good look at all the sacrifice that's already been made? sacrifices that are made on a daily basis, not only by educators, but your support staff, educators reaching in their pockets, their purses to supplement what they need on a daily basis. some of the support staff who have risen with you and supported you through the early days when we were punching holes, establishing your first internet connection, crawling in your ceilings, where there's rat feces and other exposure, those types of sacrifices. many of you will rise and move

onto your next political appointment or career advance. [applause] and i just wanted to remind you that to coin a phrase like the african-american honor roll, whose shoulders you stand on. it is our shoulders you stand on. [applause] when you do budget cuts and layoffs, certainly that's not a way to say thank you. all right. [applause] >> hi. my name is michelle. i'm a school district nurse at visitacion valley middle school. [applause] i'm also the parent of a child at burton and another child at denman. so we are all on the south side or southeast. our students, our families and

staff deserve a lot. we deserve fully-funded wellness centers including full-time nurses in these wellness centers. social workers to be continued to be funded, therapists and counselors. but we are in a district that wants to make $26 million in cuts, taking away resources that are necessary from our students and from our families. schools in the south and southeast side are going to be disproportionately affected by cuts and lay offs. as i said, i'm the school district nurse. like most other middle school nurses, the district only funds my time 50% of the time at the school site. the burden of the rest of my time to help my school site falls directly on my school site. i work with students from many backgrounds from many different countries. 40% of the kids were born in a country not the united states. 27% of those students listed english as their home language. most of my students have trouble

with housing situations, with having actual access to food, they are exposed to violence and traumas on a daily basis. in our wellness center, we strive to help the students get the resources they absolutely deserve to have. they are in desperate need of healthcare and access to the care, and the place they look for support is our wellness center. i spend several hours a week working with families and local clinics helping to navigate the system, help work our kids through medii-cal and help them keep the points. we need to show our kids that we can step up together as a community, listen to each other and keep all of our jobs and the resources our kids need. thank you. [applause] >> [speaking spanish]

i come from san juan, puerto rico. i have been living in san francisco for 11 years. and i am an educatorred person. an educated person. i have a degree from the university of san juan. he have generations of students who have been underserved. when i make the decision to join san francisco school district, i thought i was stepping beyond the paradigm. i thought i was leaving the need behind. i think it's very, very shameful that we are living in the richest city in the country, and we are begging for money and saying we are going to cut it from teachers, $26 million. that e-mail, by the way, superintendent was received on a wednesday. that was a very hard day at work. it was not very effective communication, my friend. let me tell you. you do not do that in the middle of our week.

i stand with you on the message that we need to find a way to fund this. and i agree we are having a problem but i don't like the way you took sides and separated us in this common problem, and we are all trying to do the same thing. so i urge everybody to use all this energy to tax the fuck out of the rich so we can get the funds we need to fund our education. thank you. [applause] >> hello. my name is amador. i'm working with i.t. i've been working with the school districts for a while now. i started as a para in 1990. 1997 i did a transmission to i.t. since computers are my background. having that, i know what the teachers go through. i know they have to spend part of their money just to buy

supplies. working with i.t. i go to all the schools and i see all the challenges they face. i think that we are asking for your support on saying no. i'm with local 21. i'm asking you not to put -- put yourself in their shoes. i know there's a big risk between what they do and what you guys do. and we elected many of you so you can represent us. [applause] we are asking you to not only say no to cuts and funding, we also take the next step and go beyond that and see that we don't have to go through all this. thank you. [applause] >> my name is michelle camp.

i'm a 30-year employee with san francisco unified school district. [applause] i also attended school in san francisco. i'm a native. and i work at james denman middle school, and my whole family went there. and, you know, i come from a whole different era, but what i see is worse than when i was coming up. it's really worse. don't nobody care, people forget where they come from, and when you forget, you repeat. you repeat it. and i'm a teacher and security person, but i do a lot of other things. i talk to the kids every day, i talk to the teachers, i talk to a lot of people. superintendent matthews, i remember you shared about your mother being a parain the classroom, i asked somebody one day he ought to know we don't get unemployment. why don't they stop sending they

letter out. and some of the rules and things, these are antiquated rules. they are old, they shouldn't be on the books like michelle talked about the money. that's ridiculous. you can't tell me -- this is the 21st century. those rules need to go. and for you to care, you would work on things like that, you would support your schools, when you support your schools, you support the children, the students have a lot of problems. i mean serious problems. they are not getting what they need at home. it's generational, and if you do these cutbacks, it's going to affect everybody, and especially the families and the students. and you can't tell me you care, because you don't. you really don't. i don't believe you guys care. you can't. so i'm asking you do not do any cutbacks. it's ridiculous. and that's basically what i got to say. have a heart and don't forget

where you came from. [applause] >> hi. my name is jan. i'm the president of local 21. but i'm not here to speak about myself. i'm here to speak for a colleague of mine who is supposed to be speaking here today, but he can't, as he is at his other job. but he was going to say my name is stanley wong and i work at the help desk to answer technical questions. i also have a part-time job at night. i live outside of san francisco, and i stay overnight. i'm only able to see my family on the weekends. i'm here to speak to you because i'm not not sure how you could survive with less. the work i do is important

support work, and the district cannot run without it. nobody should be facing the fear of losing their jobs when so many of us are already barely scraping by. please stand by us and promise us no more lay offs and no cuts. thank you for your time. [applause] >> good evening. thank you for having us. my name is kai king. i'm a math teacher at wallenberg. i'm losing my voice, because i care about this. and it's hard as a teacher. it's sort of like it's your magic wand, your voice in the classroom, but i take that from myself because i feel like i need to be here to fight for students. what i know is that there are

students in my class who won't get what they need. i can't teach them math unless they have what some of the supports that we're talking about cutting. so i have students who regularly visit the nurse. i have students that get psychiatric care. these students are the students that we say we are supposed to support. i'm reading the mission statement here. this is the sfusd mission statement. every day we provide each and every student the quality instruction and equitable support required to thrive in the 21st century. we are talking about cutting the equitable support. now, i know we are on the same team. this is a progressive city, and i know that you feel what we have on our hearts. we don't have a choice when we find out we got to be there, we have to be on every single day. i have two kids that my wife is

at everett middle school. 100% dedicated to these children. we know that there's money there. this is the richest, we talk about this is the richest city in the history of the world, billionaires everywhere. we have to fund education. these students are the next generation. they are the ones that prop us up when we are old and feeble, so we got to take care of them. thank you very much. [applause] >> my name is ben goodnick. i'm a second year teacher at carmichael elementary school. i'm not here tonight to talk for me. i'm here because there's a little girl i know. she has nowhere to live. my partner steals her snacks from her job so that she has some extra food. she is not the only one. there are dozens of children just at my school with nowhere

to live. there are 2,500 kids in our school district that have been homeless or at risk of being homeless. i see people in the streets that i know. it is immoral to take from these children. we like to use words like equity a lot in sfusd. but equity is not a word. it is actions. and if those actions are to take from the people with the lest, that is not equity. my student has refugees from a genocide. and you are going to tell me those kids don't have psychiatrists, that our school counselor needs to see 500 children who need help. you can't say equity without making it something you are doing. if you are not going to do it,

don't say it. [applause] we have 75 billionaires in san francisco. let's take their money. it's not just you, the city government needs to do something about this. we can no longer be a playground for the rich when our children are literally starving. thank you. [applause] >> my name is michelle. okay. i was going to start off -- is that better? i don't use a mic in real life. i was going to talk about the experience of a student. because for me the perspective of a student is really important. i think about walking through the school dog and knowing the support -- the school door and knowing the support you are going to get.

if you know as a student that if you don't feel good, there's a school nurse that can help you. i have a handful of kids in my school that have type 1 diabetes. our school nurse is imperative to them living. if i'm a struggling student that has an i.e.p. and the teacher needs extra support, the para being there all the way to eighth period is imperative to me being successful in math class. if i'm trying to to figure out the best high school for myself, i should be able to talk to my school counselor, and we have a real conversation where she tells me the choices and the schools and the pathways and the programs that are helpful for me, right? if i'm able to walk in and see the security guard and they are able to help me embrace me and calm me down when i'm having a bad day, that is important to me as a student. so i as a teacher, i'm all about us getting money and the support and services. but taking care of me indirectly

takes care of my children. [applause] think about it. when your mama is happy, and your mama is taken care of, babies can get things done. a mama that is stressed can't take care of our children. we know this is true. when teachers are stressed out, and you are living in a fight-or-flight all the time, how are you able to come to work? how are you going to tell me in march i'm going to lose my job and ask me to come every day and be my best self? that is stressful. [applause] and my time is up. the music is going to play. we don't have money. i need you guys to walk in solidarity with us and pay their dues. the people who got money, help us out. thank you. [applause] >> hi.

my name is brandy bowen. i'm an organizer at coalman advocates. [applause] i'm just here because at coleman we have had a long history with this district. we have watched you sign pretty resolutions about keeping our schools safe, keeping them supportive. and we have seen this district brag about being restorative and responsive. but what's funny is the people implementing the vision are all the people in this room right now. it's our students, families and teachers. and it's time that you help them, because they can't do it alone, and they have been asking for support for so long. and the time when we should be escalating their supports we are saying we need to cut back and cut down on them. and so i think that we are at a moment right now where we know that the money is here. it's in this district, and it's damn sure in this city. and we need to be pushing for that. and we need to make sure that

our students are feeling safe and that they are feeling supportive, supported, because a lot of the kids in our organization come into our building after school buckling down in pain because they feel like they are not getting the support that they need. and that's not on school communities totally, that's on y'all, that's on this city. and that's the systemic problem that needs to be addressed here. [applause] >> hi. i'm evan, i'm a student at guadeloupe elementary school. [applause] and i want to say that it is very important for the staff members and everybody to stay, because there are a lot of students who do need it. if they don't, it's going to be hard for them. they are going to struggle. so i think it is very important

for the staff to stay. thank you. [applause] >> before -- [applause] >> before our next speaker, i'm going to read off some more names. so just one moment. i cannot read the last name, sorry. [calling speaker names]

>> my name is angel. i'm a high school senior at burton high school. one thing i really want to say is that just, like, it's hard, honestly, looking at just this entire issue, it's everywhere, news, articles, it's everywhere. and it's not something you could really ignore. i talked to staff, i hang out with teachers in my school, i talk to other students, and it's like, it's hard to see the fear that they have. like it's -- i don't know how to say it. but just our school relies on the budget, right? so it's like what happens to our wellness centers when the budget is gone? i see teachers who use the wellness centers, i see students. i use the wellness centers at my

school. it's like what happens when we don't have the funding for that support? i have -- and like i said, i'm a senior, so it's like why do i need this? i really don't need this because i'm going to be gone, right? but it's everyone else who needs it, everyone else needs the support. [applause] another thing, like i was talking to other teachers earlier, right? and they have to buy their own supplies. it's hard to see -- i mean, well, yeah, it's hard to see and hear that teachers don't even have funding to renew supplies or they don't have money for their own supplies. and it's like everything they buy comes out of their own pocket, and it's just sad. and last thing i got to say, i feel bad for you guys because it's just like, it's hard to say that we -- i mean, it's hard to see that we have to make the

decision for you. we don't understand why there should be budget cuts or why that's an issue. that's all i got to say. [applause] >> hello, members of the school board, and a huge shoutout to all my fellow union members for being here today. before i begin, i want to acknowledge the many of the paraprofessionals i work with can't be here today. every para i went to today works a second job that prevented them from attending tonight. they work closely with each and every one of my kids, and they deserve to have the time to stand here and get their voices heard, but unfortunately our systems work against them being able to do this. my name is rebecca and i'm a part-time special education resource teacher at an elementary school. before this i was a full-time special education resource teacher at future elementary

school, but unfortunately in october, decisions were made that i was not consulted about that my site and those students do not deserve a full-time special education teacher. i want to speak about the potential cuts to our school budgets to our site budgets. these cuts are being framed as nonclassroom staff as nonessential personnel, but my job depends on these members, on these educators. they are essential to me. when we implement services, we speak of tiers of a pyramid. our sped services being tier 3 and our -- our quote nonessential personnel are the second tier. if you make a choice to cut the services to make school sites decide between a literacy teacher and a coach, what a fun hunger game there. you will decimate special education services in this district. you will make our pyramid of services fall apart. you have a choice to make san

francisco an example of a progressive city that funds its students and that gives them what they deserve and what they need or you can vote to make this district an example of whatnot to do. i implore you to choose what is right, what is just and what is best for our students. thank you. [applause] >> good afternoon, commissioners. my name is raphael, i'm a 37-year employee. also prior student of the school district. i've been around a long time, let's say that. i'm also the president of s.c.i.u. 1021 school district chapter. over the years one thing my bosses have told me is we provide a service. and our clients are the young students that i see up here talking today, which makes me feel proud that they are up here and got the guts to actually speak up for themselves, and not just themselves but their teachers, which makes me feel

proud to say you teachers are amazing, and you deserve the best. and i hope you guys do get the best. on the other hand, you also have custodians, clerks, student nutrition, warehouse workers who all provide a service to our students. and you know what? we can't provide that service if we don't have staff. right now, all our custodians, there used to be 700 when i first started back in '83. we are down to 300. what are you going to cut? we used to have three, four clerks in an elementary school. now we got one. what are you going to cut? the one clerk? warehouse workers, they safe us 150 sites, and there's only a handful of them. what do you cut? i work in the environmental health department. i deal with all the asbestos, led, hazardous materials. we started with 15 people in

1986. you know how many we got today? me. two of them are retiring in june. where do you cut? how do i provide a service to protect the staff, the students of the school district with one man serving the school district. what do you cut? how do i provide a service? i can't. but please, think about all the parts that you can probably make, think hard, find the funding. it's there. i know it's there. we have been told before there was no funding. magically, funding showed up. i know there's funding or that it can be got, one way or the other. please do not cut the schools. [applause] >> good evening. my name is linda. and i'm a 26-year veteran,

kindergarten teacher, and i can't believe i'm here talking about this same thing. we are repeating the mistakes of the past. that's exactly what we are doing. i feel like i'm living in a bumper sticker, the one that says it will be a good day when schools get all the money they need and the pentagon has to hold a bake sale? we are holding the bake sales. we are writing the grants. there's nothing new in my classroom that i haven't written a grant for to get in my classroom. we are holding the bake sales. the district needs to find the money. if the money is there, it needs to be in the schools, and it's not there, get it. we need the money in our schools. we cannot educate our children in this bright, beautiful city. our children are the inher tores of this i -- nnheretors of this

city, and they will not get it with these cuts. thank you. >> my name is margaret harris. and i've been a social worker in sfusd for 23 years. we live in san francisco, and our sons from groan up in sfusd schools. in recent years i have seen dedicated colleagues leave the profession and had my own children's teachers leave midyear because they can't make ends meet here. i currently spend a lot of my time working with staff to troubleshoot situations that feel impossible. teachers, as you have been hearing, are crying out for help on how to support students and families who come to school stressed because of immigration pressures, community violence, homelessness and other

accumulating pressures. they work hard to support their students through this stress while balancing their own pressure of not knowing if they will have a job next year. or if they can even afford to stay in the profession. yet they still spend their own money on supplies and work way past their scheduled hours because of their commitment to the kids. our kids. something that strikes me profoundly is how at times like these, a false narrative gets created that these type of layoffs are sad but inevitable. that while wanting to have great schools would be nice, as our vision says, we simply can't afford to pay for them. at the same time we are living in the most expensive city in the country, with the highest density of billionaires in the world.

and yet we are being told that somehow we can't afford to provide a high-quality education that our children deserve. this is a travesty and an outrage. educating young people is a challenging, thrilling and essential investment in the future of our city and our society. i invite you to stand with us. this shouldn't be us versus them. we are all in this together, administrators, staff, support staff, janitors, everybody, so we can say no to the cuts and layoffs and find money from the richest people in the city so that the rest of us can survive. [applause] >> good evening, commissioners and superintendent. my name is michelle parker. i'm a single parent of two sfusd students and one graduate. i'm also here tonight as the v.p. of legislation for the district p.t.a. i'm here to stand with our

teachers who are the t. in our p.t.a. and for our students. we have heard a lot of powerful stories from our educators and students. we cannot afford to not invest in our students. we do that by strengthening the relationship between them and their teachers and by making sure teachers -- the students who are most likely to have pink slips will suffer the most from those layoffs don't lose those relationships. we can't afford to lose hours of our paraeducators who already work hours without guaranteed pay that cause them to work multiple jobs to stay in the city. we cannot afford to remove supports that make it possible for kids to be their best selfs. our resource specialists and many others, we cannot afford to make cuts in our classrooms and we need make cuts as far away from teachers as possible. i know we are in a bad budget situation. we also have to demand for funds

from our city's $12 million budget to support our schools because the children we serve in our schools are all our children. we need to fight together to pass schools and communities first so corporations pay their fair share and our students receive the funds that they deserve. we need to demand our state legislature and governor add $1 billion as the l.a.o. recommended yesterday to pay down pension costs so our district has more money to support our schools in the way we deem best. we need to work hard to let the president who will triple funds going to title one, those students who need more access to opportunity, and we need to make sure our legislature passes a bill that will change the targets for education spending and put california in the top ten states so san francisco can pay our educators what they deserve to be paid and will benefit our students. this is a time to stand together as parents, educators and staff

and school board members to educate our children. [applause] >> my name is charmagne. i work at downtown high school, an alternative school which people don't really know about because people don't really see us. i haven't seen any one of you in mimy school building this year. i haven't seen you. you haven't come in my classroom. thank you. but i'm a little confused why i even have to be up here when i should be planning and studying for the what i'm not going to be supporting even though you were desperately asking for teachers at one point. i'm confused why we have to ask you to fight for us. why are we asking you? why? that means you all aren't doing your job. you all are supposed to be fighting tooth and nail for us, and you are not. if you send out an e-mail, you already gave up. i don't need this.

if you sent out an e-mail, you gave up on us, because you are not willing to push that. if you were willing to push it, we would have never gotten an e-mail, would we? that means y'all are not doing your job. you have not considered every alternative there is. but instead we are up here when we should be planning, getting sleep, eating, something we don't do all the time because we are trying to take care of our babies. the thing is, we are seeing the capability of y'all. i'm going to be real. some of us need to be in those seats because we will fight harder than y'all. [applause] i know we will. because first of all, i'm from d.c. if you can't understand my accent. and in d.c., we don't ask, we demand. we don't stop until we get it. i don't know if that's a policy that you all have, but i don't feel like it is. so maybe we need more people in leadership like us that are going to sit here and fight

until the end. because right now, y'all not doing y'all job for us. so we see, we not asking you, we telling you to do your job. if you can't, then it's time to step down. [applause] >> good evening, darcy blackburne, first grade elementary teacher at sheridan. i just have to say, susan mentioned this evening, this is the sixth anniversary of safe and supportive schools, which is what you put forward for our students. we are sadlied with the task at our schools, not just the classroom teachers, but everyone at the site, paraprofessionals, nurses, when we have them, the days that we do, the social workers, everyone works to make sure every child comes to our school feeling safe.

the goal of it was to keep students from being suspended. if you are going to do that, you need to provide us with the training, so therefore we needed teachers on special assignment, teachers who would provide us with the trains so we could have alternatives for -- training so we could have alternatives for consequences for the students. they need boundaries but we need to know the ways to approach them and for the students to feel their needs are met. and so i'm just putting it out there, the teachers i know, we need to have a certain amount of teachers to keep our class sizes and our coverage. but it's not just the teachers that do the work. paraprofessionals are there to help the child who has a special need who cannot get it from within the classroom context. they need someone to help modify the curriculum, someone to restate something for them. the school nurse needs to be there to address the students

who need medications. they are there, they are training us with our health services. teachers on special assignment, like i mentioned, provide all of our educators with the supports we need, the training we need to make the schools safe and supportive. it's been six years. have we all had training on how to cope with our students who are dealing with trauma? no. have we all had training on restorative practices? no. and you are talking about cutbacks? when we actually need more. we need more p.d., we need more support services. we can't just do it on our own with what we have. [applause] >> good evening. my name is elita fisher. i'm the past chair of the community advisory committee for

special education and the parent of four children who have been in sfusd. i'm here to talk about my day job which is i'm a special education advocate, so i sit in a bunch of i.e.p. meetings, and one hit me in the gut a couple months ago. we sat through a meeting at a school where a kid needs a whole lot of help, and this is his second school. he had a lot of trust and behavior issues at school and now at school number two, we have a team that is trying hard to put support in place. i walked out of the meeting with the family after what i thought was a great amount of progress. and i left something in the room so i came back, and the teacher and her assistance principal were sitting there and the principal had her arm around the teacher because the teacher was in tears and she told me, i want to do everything they want us to do in this i.e.p., i know we need to, i don't know how, we won't don't have the resources to make it happen so repromised

in this legally-binding document, but how are we going to do it? we are already to the bones in our school. in other meetings we talk about the dyslexia guidelines and now we have to put in more specializeed academic programs, and we are doing the best we can. but we need more. that's what everyone is screaming for. and the policy institute, linda darling's policy institute, i forget the name of it. there's a study about teacher retention and teacher training. and they found that it costs in an urban district like san francisco, $20,000 to train new teachers. that's above and beyond the cost of all the benefits and the cost of the salary and everything. $20,000 in appropriate training. if we are losing all our teachers, and we have to hire new teachers and pay an additional $20,000 beyond, we

are just ending up increasing cost after cost after cost. we have to support the teachers we have here now. thank you. [applause] >> hi. i'm a paraeducator with over ten years in our district supporting students with complex needs in an inclusive elementary school. san francisco unified is not meeting the needs of students are disabilities. our students are understaffed. we don't have enough teacher, we don't have enough paraeducators. in many schools in our district, students are disabilities are not getting their contract-mandated teacher instructional minutes. [applause] nor are they getting their para support minutes. we are out of compliance. and we are out of compliance of

a legal contract. my site was offered access to a non-sfusd agency for the unmet sped services our students due to staffing shortages, our principal turned it down because it was wrong. not all schools are being offered this. admins at other sites are telling teachers don't worry about giving students their i.e.p. minutes, we'll just -- we are trying to maintain. this is happening across the district. this is illegal. our staff should not be put in these awkward situations. our staff and sites need to be better funded to support our students all the way around. and with our students supportive schools and also in terms of our graduate profile. thank you. [applause] >> before you go, i would like

to read more names. >> i'll step back while you read more names. >> [calling speaker names] >> hello, commissioners. and student commissioners, thank you for being here. i am susan solomon, a kindergarten teacher working as the president of united educators of san francisco. and i want to explain for a moment what is very special and important about my job. i always want to have members

speak before i do, because they can speak in a very compelling way. they know, they feel, they experience what's going on in our schools. it's very special important about my job that i have the honor of having 6200 educators tell me what i need to do. and when i say that's an honor, i mean it. you have heard evidence tonight of what it is we need to do to make sure that our students get the supports they need by making sure that we support the educators who support them. we know that in our country and our state, in our city, public education is underfunded. we have to figure out a way to fix that in the wealthiest city, as many people mentioned, with a budget higher than 35 countries in the world, in a state that for a country we would be the

fifth largest economy in the world. we can figure this out. we have to figure this out. we don't have a choice. in the meantime, we are going to be back on march 10, and we are urging and asking every board of education commissioner to stand with us and say no to layoffs so that we can do what we need to do for our children. and i will say that the educators and their allies, our allies who are here tonight, stay as long as you want but we know you all have work to do. come back on march 10, and if it's time for some of us to go, let's stand up and do it together. thank you very much. [applause] >> i'll let them finish walking

out. >> we love you all but we got to plan for tomorrow. we got to get ready. >> good evening, everyone. first and foremost, i would like to thank the board of education for your service to our community. i'm the parent of a student at rosa parks as well as two students at havard. i'm a member of the african-american parent advisory council. i think it takes educators, parents, administrators and

staff. so i want to say thank you for your service first and foremost. however there's also a level of accountability, and we should be able to call out family when family has misstepped or hasn't done what they said they were going to do. i'm going to speak with regards to the article about the middle school students where the principal and the parents spoke. it's painfully obvious implicit bias and racist comments by the principal and parent represented in the article are disturbing and nonprofessional to say the least. i think it's time the district took immediate action to number one, resolve the issues plaguing all our children across the district, excuse me, and regards to the schools being understaffed and the wellness centers and provide the centers with the resources and tools they need to support our students physically and emotionally. you also need to remedy the damage caused by the statements in that article which made families feel like we are not welcome in certain parts of the city and because we were african-american and our families make less than $118,000

a year, which is the poverty line. and we need to stop criminalizing students who don't want to go to school because they have been made to feel unwelcome and giving them truancy stuff and prosecuting at their district attorney's office. i have an issue with the poor quality of food being served to our students by revolutionary foods. i understand the intent is to serve healthy food, but they are not doing a good job, and they are not asking for feedback, they are just asking us to taste the garbage, and they go home where we can't afford to feed them every day on our own by ourselves. that's it. thank you. [applause] >> my name is mary. i've been here before. i'm a parent of a fourth-grader and a four-year-old. i stand in solidarity with our educators. i'm an educator, i'm a social

worker, but i'm a parent first in this district. and again i stand in solidarity with everyone here. but i also can't ignore just like my colleague, my parent coleader of apac mentioned about what has been happening at our middle schools. and i want to talk about that. i know we are talking with budget cuts but we also have to talk about implicit bias that happens. and we can talk all we want about saving our budget, but if we continue to treat black and brown students the way we are in this district, our special education budgets only going to go up. we are going to see our students not feel connected to school. and we are going to see an increase of absenteeism. so i'm urging our district to work on implicit bias and how is it playing out in our district, because that is going to continue to be a problem if we don't adequately train folks and

help address and call out some of the racist stuff that happens in our school sites. i want to also highlight and acknowledge the resiliency of our black students and families. unfortunately how things went down with the article that came out in the chronicle was sad, but i want up and celebrate the black students and families that were at the african-american honor role. it was such a beautiful experience to be in that space. i want to thank the board. i want to thank everyone who has been contributing to this idea, not just this idea but the fact that we need to support black students and families, 365 days out of the year that we need to celebrate black excellence. i want to appreciate all of those who put the black history manual together so that we can celebrate black history correctly. thank you. [applause] >> hello.

i'm maya, i'm a fourth-grader. i was at the honor role last week, and it was really fun. and this is my metal. [applause] the next day my school had a black history month assembly, and i was one of the m.c.s. my class did a contribute to kobe bryant. other classes talked about people like misty copeland. others sang songs. other b.s.u. members and i got announced in front of school. it made me feel really proud to be black, and it also felt nice to be standing with other people who share my identity. thank you. [applause] >> i'm a parent of five in the

school district. and i'm also a family liaison at dr. george washington carver academic elementary school. and i sit as a coleader on the african-american parent advisory council. and today -- my many hats, i'm here to remind those in the room and the board of the recommendations from apac in regards to how budget cuts may affect them. our recommendations shortly captured or minimized, i won't read them all word for word, is that the requirement of -- i'm sorry, i'm really emotional, because it's a tough night. and because i wear so many hats, everything is near and dear to me. baa injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere. [applause] and i cannot sit by and see people fighting for money and

salary to live and be comfortable in the city knowing these cuts will directly impact my babies, and when i say my babies, i mean my black babies in this district. those cuts will for sure, for sure affect the services and needs that they have. it will eliminate some of the people like myself who work at carver who support them day in and day out and give extra hours to make sure they have everything that they need along with the excellent educators, along with their admin. it of course the as everything from top to bottom, even though we are trying to chop that top, it's a lot going on at the top that is helping my babies survive in schools. so we need to keep that in mind. back to recommendations. we need support in making sure our babies have their a through g requirements and basic graduation requirements and are set to lead in the 21st century and our c.s.u. eligible. we need to work closer with the

city and county of san francisco to address conditions outside the background. we also backup implicit bias. those recommendations were in our board presentation. please look at them and think strategically about how the cuts will affect the recommendations brought to you from the african-american community within sfusd. thank you. [applause] >> i'm christopher, i'm with the i.l.w.u. local 34 and the local northern california district council. i'm here to support every union that these cuts and layoffs would affect. many of my members that live in san francisco, their children go to these public schools, and a lot of these members that are in this audience teach those members' children. and i can't imagine how we are sitting here again in front of the school board, asking for no

cuts and no layoffs. so the i.l.w.u. will stand solidarity, hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder for no cuts and no layoffs and any other union that this affects. [applause] >> good evening, president sanchez, superintendent, commissioners and student delegates. my name is joan, and i'm coexecutive director of united administrators of san francisco local 3. i walk the line in '79. anybody here do that? six-weeks on a picket line. my first job in the school district. i didn't go into the classroom for six weeks. every paycheck was cut for the next 10, 12 months, whatever pay scale was going on at that time. i was employee of san francisco for 32 years. i was a special education

teacher. resource teacher, special education administrator, principal elementary middle and high school, assistant superintendent of middle schools, director and executive director in human resources. 17 years as a principal. and these proposed budget cuts are painfully familiar to me, personally on the strike line and as a principal trying to hold up my school and my staff. u.a.s. members are here tonight, and we are standing in solidarity with our fellow union colleagues. we are all extremely concerned about the proposed budget cuts and staff layoffs, we are asking that all schools and programs be appropriately funded in order to ensure the success of our diverse student population. we urge you to maintain the current school site and program staffing. we acknowledge this is truly a challenge. we would like to know if all departments have made cuts in order to minimize those at the site. in addition, you are being

presentd with our u.a.s.f. contracts. we do respectfully request you renew the contracts for our second one-year and three-year administrators. during this time of uncertainty, it is critical our schools and programs have consistent administrative leadership to help guide the communities through this difficult time. our members look to you to ensure the continuation of our members' dedicated work to address the achievement gap. thank you. [applause] >> good evening, delegate, student delegate, commissioners, president sanchez, superintendent matthews. my name is joly and i'm a coexecutive director of united administrators. after working for this district for 40 years, i'm proud to be part of the administrative union. united administrators is a collective bargaining union for about 300 site and central

office administrators. we are prepared to begin initial meetings with the district in order to produce a mutually efficient working agreement. concerning both financial benefits as well as improving the working conditions of our members. we believe in the district's core values and share a commitment to serving and supporting our communities to ensure that all students are learning to the best of their abilities. we strongly believe that identifying and building on students' strengths is a key to equality and are committed towards this end. in support of these principles but not excluding the sections i will mention, which may arise during the negotiations, we propose changes in the following articles. article 4, progressival rights, article 5, salary and fringe benefit, article 7, leaves, article 9, appointment transfer and reassignment, article 10,

administrator evaluation and leadership professional growth, article 11, grievances, article 12, due process for complaints, article 16, the duration of the contract, and new, due process for disciplinary actions and new, a section on personnel files. we look forward to working with you together to bring the best for our schools, our students, our staff and our families. thank you. [applause] >> good evening. my name is lope junior. i'm vice president of the george washington high school alumni association. recently the national park service approved our historical american building survey

application known as habs. it recognizes the entire george washington campus as a historic building site, hosting the finest collection of new deal art. i believe george washington high school is the only public building in san francisco with this national habs distinction. while you are delivering your $26 million shortfall, i urge you to be proactive bicepping the habs -- by accepting the designation, saving money bicepping the alumni association's six-point plan for the students that includes leaving the murals alone, mural signage, orientation for new and transfer students, education programs, new and accurate curriculum, endowments and scholarships. please join us for the students.

we also support the teachers. and please, no program cuts. thank you. [applause] >> united public workers for action. this whole thing is amazing. amazing. here we are in the richest city in the world as other people have said, and they are talking about attacking teachers and staff here. why? the same is going on at city college with 300 classes being cut. the same is going on in west contra costa county where they are attacking teachers with a deficit. the reason is that these people on the board are representing the same corporations and billionaires that run this country. why is it san francisco nancy pelosi supported $738 billion for a military budget that trump likes? $738 billion, when we are destroying public education right here in san francisco. these are some of the questions

we have to ask. and this union-busting board here, rubber stamp board for matthew vincent just contract out busing to students for an uber operation. send our students on a uber uber vehicle? putting their safety and health? the other thing this board is going don't think is -- i'm opposed to charter schools at the malcolm x be sent to the island. they are demanding that the charter school be put on the treasure island elementary school where kids have been sickened and mark sanchez knows about this. they have been sickened because it's a radioactive dump site. and that says what you are about. you are about putting children on a radioactive dump site, because you don't give a damn about these kids. that's really what it says. so what is the solution? workers in san francisco have a solution. they have power. and as people are shutting the streets down, workers in san

francisco need to shut down the city and shut down the state. there needs to be a public education strike of all public education workers to demand the money. there's a $30 billion surplus in the budget in california. governor brown and gavin newsom have been cutting public education. that's why we are behind. we have to might believize now and vote to get the money we have to mobilize now and vote to get the money by taking the power. thank you. >> hi. i'm a parent of a 12th grader at sota and eighth grader. i'm really struck by all the conversations, and it's been a crazy week to be a parent. i personally thanked the educators that work with both of my kids. they have gotten a great education there. and the thought of cuts and what it would do to a school and to the communities that need so much more help than they are getting, particularly after the loss of the title one funding, it's really devastating. so i hope you can join all of us

in supporting all the families in san francisco. but i'm here for a selfish reason. my kids are both graduating, and their promotion ceremonies are the same day and same time. i have invested thousands and thousands of volunteer hours, i have gotten to know not only by sons and daughters friends but their families, and i'm pretty gutted about the fact that i have to choose which kid's graduation to miss. i found out about this the second day of school, and i started to advocate the third day, reaching out to principals, i missed back to school night to be here to talk to you. i have e-mailed everybody that i could think of. and nothing has changed. and this is the fourth year in a row that students of sota, hoover, aptos, their graduations have conflicted, and nobody can seem to find a solution. presidio moved their graduation but hoover parents are being

told it's impossible. i'm done. i think i'm out of options. i will cry instead of being really happy to participate in this district as a partner. but please don't do this to yet another set of families next year. can you please just solve it? can you just, like back to school night, set up a topdown policy so no other parents have to come here begging to see their kids graduate. thank you. [applause] >> hi. i'm a parent of an almost four-year-old. and i have worked in sfusd before. last time was students with i.e.p.es. and so i just want to say everything that everybody else has been saying that enolases. let's not cut -- no layoffs. i saw the george washington high

school alumni association. i'm so glad you are here talking about no cuts and layoffs. a way you can save money is alumni could drop your lawsuits, and the school district can save $800,000 in defending what the students have wanted. [please stand by]

who went to san francisco unified school district. i remember in 2003 when we had the iraq war, and we came here at that time asking the school district to not have military recruiters in the schools. since then, we've been spending how much money in war? instead of fighting each other, we need to start demanding that we name who our enemies are, and our enemies are bank of america

and all the different people who support liberalism in this city. all the different people that support an economy that is based on providing corporations tax subsidies instead of providing an education for our children, instead of fighting against an alumni association that is trying to preserve a history of art and a new deal and a history of workers history in this country, workers who by the way came here today to fight for your children exam my child and for all the future children instead of fighting against the same -- that culture of workers that are represented also in those murals, in those murals. instead of fighting along each other, we need to stand together, workers and communities together, and i understand that there might be children who might be affected

by those murals. i understand that. but that's because we need to learn and we need to teach children the history, our history, workers history, black, brown, and white people's history in this country who are workers together. without the workers, we would not have a 40-hour work week. even now, we have people who are still doing 60 hours a week and working overtime, and they're still not making ends meet. >> all right. thank you very much. >> i attended treasure island development agency at the city hall about a week or two ago. i find out that sfusd is now trying to rebuild or refurbish the once closed public school, spend money to bring the school

there. i thought you don't have the money. why are you trying to build more charter school, spend the money, and more teachers needed in that school and they try to cut the public schoolteachers and the budget. that's totally don't understand it. maybe you can have an answer. [ applause ] >> all right. that concludes public comment. section d, advisory committee reports and comments. english learners advisory committee. dlac representatives, i apologize for the wait.

>> good evening, superintendent, dr. vincent matthews, commissioners. my name is danielle utley, and i'm the special education -- i'm sorry. i have so many things on my mind after that. my mind's -- education integration specialist, which is quite the title. right? but my biggest and most important job where i feel privileged is working with our district english learners advisory committee. as you know, the district english learners advisory committee, the role is to advise you all on services and programs that serve our english learners in the district. i would like to take a moment to

thank our translation and interpretation unit because without them, we would not be able to reach our communities and our families in their native language to be able to understand how to make the best informed decisions for their students. [ applause ] >> thank you. also, the multilingual pathways department for their work with us to ensure that our students have access to everything they need within the district. with that, i'll pass it on. >> good evening. my name is maggie yo. i'm not chinese families community coordinator with multilingual pathway department. i also have the distinct privilege working with delac. the members will begin the

summer of 2001 around the transition -- 2019 around the consent decree. members of the el plan leadership team working with west ed consultants and district stakeholders to help with the development of san francisco's new master plan for english learners. earlier this month, delac members met with parent leaders from all the various districts, advisories for the third annual parent a advisory alignment summary at rosa parks elementary school. thank you rosa parks community especially the principal for making us feel welcome. >> so one of our recommendations this evening are reflective of all of your parent advisories coming together collectively. the work we've done and that

friendship and bond and collaboration came through the work with the lcap. so as our members share the recommendations, please keep that in mind. >> i apologize. this evening, one of our parents that was supposed to present had an emergency, a medical emergency. we hope that she's okay. so at the very last minute, i just want to share her report on behalf. so mary ann who is the filipino language representative has a second grade and fifth grade student at bessie carmichael elementary school. i will read on her behalf. the pathways department is conducting a study pk through 8 filipino education center to

assess the practicality of having a dual language emersion program at the elementary school. fec was historically a filipino bilingual school and at present, the school does have a filipino foreign language pathway. according to 2018-19 school accountability report card, the students comprised 30.1% of the student population. educational research is demonstrated that english language learners have better educational outcomes if they master the curriculum in their primary language rather than learning a new concept and material in a different language. likewise, evidence supports that bilingual, multilingual classrooms benefit everyone. summer learning programs can help students negotiate the complicated task of keeping up with grade level academic content while developing their

english proficiency, thus reducing the gaps in academic achievement between english learner students and their native english speaking peers. with that in mind, i would like to present our first recommendation. it is a recommendation that was made last year as well. structured k through 5 summer learning programs for learners. a summer learning program that provides english language development in a supported interdiscipline air he other environment. it must be focused on the four domains of reading, writing, speaking and listening, fully funded by san francisco unified school district with programs in multiple locations , neighborhood, easily accessible to el families when a professional development component for staff and teachers. [speaking foreign

language] >> i'm the second chair of delac. i have two children, my daughter is in tk and my son is in second grade. [ speaking through interpreter ] >> my school is part of the

digital literacy pilot program supported by the department of technology, and my second grade son is currently learning more about technology integration and digital safety. i feel that technology access for students and families is crucial to prepare each and every student to thrive in the 21st century. [ speaking through interpreter ] >> and this past september, the department of technology staff came to our delac general meeting and shared their

strategy, the work, resources that are being implemented at the pilot schools, but many families share that they do not have the same access to the program that my children have at their school. this parent hopes that the children have the same opportunities of technology learning. [ speaking through interpreter ] >> for your reference, we have submitted two detailed documents outline input from families with responses from the department of technology, from our december 18th general delac meeting. [ speaking through interpreter ]

>> we must focus on equity of access and equity of opportunity with technology at all schools. [ speaking through interpreter ] >> so below please find our second recommendation. expansion of programs supported

by sfusd department of technology to all schools to increase access to technology and learning opportunities to students who are english learners, such as typing practice to increase skills needed for computerized state assessments and second, personal life learning environments to meet the needs of english learner students. third, family, schedule communication, online family portal, life family review, and fourth, components of accessible tools for families in all languages for home use support. thank you. >> good evening. my name is ann and i serve as a coach. i'm the parent of a second grade student and hope to have my daughter attend kindergarten

this fall. i have been involved with our district for over 24 years as a student, as an aunt, as a parent and now i'm a leader in my school and in my community. over the years, i have seen the dedication and love that our teachers show for our students what you have seen here today. unfortunately, i can't say the same about our school district as a whole. i feel and i know the district can do better job supporting our teachers, staff, and families. in my personal experience, i have seen teachers work long hours by arriving early and leaving late where they should be spending time with her family at the same time we do as well. right now, many teachers are translating, making their own materials, or spending their own money on teachers pay teachers. this resource has not been vetted and many are low quality and not necessarily common core. teachers spend so much time looking for research.

they waste energy that could be used to focus on teaching and planning for the students. i'm presenting our final recommendation which consists of the following: expansion of programming and resource currently being piloted by multilingual pathways at five schools this year. the spanish literacy program provides consistent scope and sequence for teachers to follow, consistent academic language in spanish, curriculum aligned with common core students. with all that said, we ask san francisco unified school district to provide the entire curriculum in the five languagee paths ways we offer to our families and students. that is spanish, cantonese, japanese. this should not come from the lcap budget. with you know that by supporting our teachers, we support our students and that is in support of our families. the role of a teacher is the

most important because they are teaching our children who will run this country in the future. let's ensure we are preparing them for that. we want to thank you, superintendent, dr. vincent matthews, and the board of education for the opportunity to share this recommendation. we look forward to our continued collaboration and support of our english language learners and we would like to know, what's the time line for a formal response to our recommendation and from whom should we expect communication from? this ensures accountability and respect to our advisory members that are here because they, like you care about students and san francisco unified school district. >> all right. thank you very much. i don't see any public comment on this item. before opening it up to commissioners, dr. matthews, do you want to respond to the last part. >> i don't have a time line, but you can expect the response from

me. i'll get back to you with a time frame. >> okay. thank you. commissioners, any comments or questions? commissioner collins. >> i really appreciate that question, and i was hoping that if we could get a list of the questions that you're going to respond to and if you could share that with all commissioners and if that would be a common practice for all the advisory committees that present, i would appreciate it. thanks. >> commissioner lam. >> following the recommendation from the delac, thank you for your presentation tonight around the summer learning. i'm curious to hear from staff if there's any discussion or planning that's happening right now around that summer learning for english learners. >> we have not specifically spoken about summer learning specifically targeting english learners. we have spoken about a partnership with the organization called springboard which does literacy intervention

that definitely serves the african-american students and underserved and english learners and students with special needs as well as black star rising and some of the work around credit recovery and avid. however, i would say the summer programming is still in discussion with c. in i. there's no final answer on that. >> similar to dr. matthews' follow-up, i would like to also understand when that timing -- ha thawhat that timing look loo. we're going to blink and it will be summer. the time it takes to implement or to plan , design, and implement a really thought out summer program. >> maybe we can put that on a curriculum committee update. >> yes. with reporting back on springboard, i know that last spring there were concerns about the relocation and closure at one site and that it would require transportation. i think it was star king or --

don't quote me on the site. but to understand what those updates are for this coming summer. >> vice president lopez. >> thank you for your patience and for your work. i'm always happy to hear from families and i appreciate your advocacy. just because we were talking about this summer learning program and this was brought up last year, is there anything you can share about the experiences your families had during the summer last year that you can report on, either through your narratives or through the staff's that was aligned with your former request? >> unfortunately, me personally, i can't report on that because my daughter has not been fortunate to be part of that extra support that we all -- our students need. so i'm sorry.

i really can't respond to that question. >> i can respond on behalf of what i've heard from my families. so that recommendation was put forth over actually collectively over a couple of years. last year was the first time we made the recommendation. as they prioritize what they want to make recommendations on to serve the needs, i do want to thank the commissioners and the superintendent in the past for responding to the recommendations, which are actually active now on behalf of delac. we hadn't heard a response from this, but what the reason behind it is they realize that their students are underperforming in terms of growing on the lpac, which is the english language proficiency because we speak

acronyms here. it's the assessment for english learner students. so what they were seeing is that over the summer, their students were actually not gaining any ground. in fact, when school started up again, they were losing ground. so instead of growing -- gaining a proficiency level in the school year, they were actually remaining at the level they were at or even sometimes showing a deficit. and so that recommendation came through the collective work at the general meeting. we've grown exponentially for 75 to 100 parents at any given time. we welcome you to join us. what that means is that at the school site, we are strengthening because they are sending a representative to the district advisory meeting and so that's where that came up as we invite presenters, especially

aao of where their students should be and their assessments, that was their concern, and they were hoping that and making the recommendation so that their students would be successful in the school year and on par to close that achievement gap. >> i also want to thank you for your work, your volunteer work for our district and our families. i just have a couple questions. one is on the lpac actually, i don't know how much the delac knows about the lpac in terms of how to administer it and how positive you feel about it or negative. if you have any comments, i would like to hear those now. the reason i ask is because i'm actually administering it in my district, and i'm horrified by it. it's way more complex than the self, which is the prior state mandated assessment, and it's got way too many moving parts. you have to have two laptops in front of you, one for the child and one for yourself, and you

have to have a printed out administrative -- what do they call? the dfas. so maybe there's some positive things you can say, but i haven't seen anything so far. >> i will share one thing. that recommendation around the technology piece was critical in knowing that the -- not only the lpac, but the state assessment that happens in third grade is all computer based. and so if we're looking at closing the achievement gap where many of our families don't have access to technology, yes, they have phones. maybe we give the assessment on the phones. the students will probably just pass it. give them a phone. test them on the phone. everything is fine. we need keyboarding skills. that's where that recommendation came up. we all learned how to type. well, i'm spea speaking for mys, my age group.

without providing that support for our students, they might be able to navigate a cell phone or ipad but they don't have that keyboarding technology. that lpac, that was their biggest concern. so they understood that second grade -- maybe i'll let anna or somebody else speak. i want our parents to be able to speak to it, but they understand that in second grade, well, kindergarten through second grade, it will be someone like you providing that assessment, and then the student will give you that feedback and then you, in turn, will have to enter that data for them. >> i think it's k-1. >> right. correct. >> second on up, the students have to get used to -- >> the keyboard. i thought it was third grade, but i may be wrong. >> you might be right. i'm just getting trained right now. it's pretty interesting. so did you want to respond? >> yeah. to be honest with you, i'm going to be 100% real, this is a joke that is offending my child and

our students in the district. why? because we're telling our kids to learn another language, which i love as well. i love my native language of spanish, but i also like to learn and explore. right? but then we're not just can testing my child's ability to speak the language. we're testing my child's ability to type. we're testing my child's ability to know how to navigate a keyboard and mouse pad. there's no information. when we had the district technology staff came to our general meeting and i raised those questions, there was no answers. i had a list of 20 questions that i shared with them, and i sent it to no an e-mail. it took her three months to respond to my questions. when she responded to those questions where i need to translate them into spanish so you can share this information

with families, you don't need to translate. send those questions to me in english because i know how to speak and read english. i felt offended. with the lpac testing, to be honest, knowing that the score went from a -- it was a 3 and then to a 4 and then oh, parents we can't do anything because the feds are telling us how to run the show here. why? why are we letting them run the show? it's our kids. it's my child. is it 7,000 students that are english learners? 15,000? why are we letting those students down? why are we letting our teachers down? when that day for the lpac testing, the teacher only gets one support person? why? why is that? why don't we support our teachers? their recommendation is providing the curriculum in the

language that they are teaching, that you, the district offer. why are we giving our teachers the curriculum in the language they're not teaching it? why are the teachers spending time and money that they shouldn't be? it's just unbelievable. i've been through the system. i know how the system works. it's really sad to see that our students are still struggling. i was one of them. i got reclassified when i was in tenth grade. that's because i'm having flashbacks. if you ask my mother, she didn't know. she probably would say -- [speaking spanish] >> student delegate. >> hi. thank you for staying here tonight. i know we had a very eventful night. thank you for still being here. i also kind of want to paraphrase what our other

concerns that the parents are having. i mentioned it a lot of times. when i first joined sfusd, i was also an english language student. i have no idea how i passed the test. all i know is that i passed it. but yeah. i also do have those concerns where students have to take the -- i'm sorry. i'm bad with my words -- the computer test because students don't understand it or it's frustrating for them. when i talk to a lot of students, they give me those concerns and think it's really frustrating for them because they don't know how to do it and it's frustrating when you have to take a test and you have no idea what's on the test. i did have -- this is kinds of off topic, but not really. every year at back to school night, it's frustrating to see that teachers do not have the support when it comes to talking

to the newcomer parents. last year -- well, last fall, i went with my family because my cousins are newcomer students. so we were in the classroom in the homerooms, and me and my sister personally had to help a lot of the parents in the classroom set up their student view and their parent view log in and password because the teacher had no support and the teacher had to personally translate the work. and a lot of information to the parents. it's difficult when it's a one teacher and a lot of parents. there's a language barrier that doesn't really help when she has so many parents and there's only one of her. so i'm wondering in a way where we can support these parents at these sites because that was one classroom. our mission asks a newcomer pathway. we have a lot of classrooms like that. i want to see how we can support these families because i had no problem helping these

families, but it's also i'm only one person. sadly i'm leaving so i can't be there next year. i want to see how we can support these families. >> what i want to clarify is, i know the lpac is state mandated. as a teacher, there are many criteria when i was reclassifying a student, i was looking aside from the lpac. so we just -- i mean, i'm already against state mandated tests in general, but if there's a way to go around that, is there work or -- that you're looking to or what that process is like? >> are you talking about besides the four criterion for reclassification? are you talking about circumventing that assessment altogether? >> >> using the criteria. we know educators know students better than what they're sharing

in this test. >> multilingual pathways offers an opportunity for a teacher recommendation. that teacher recommendation or the student if the student is eligible, the criteria, including reading at level, language arts, all of the other ones must be met and then once that teacher makes a recommendation, a conversation is had with the parent. and the teacher and staff and that potentially could be one case. so that is some of the work that we do. maggie and i are -- there's two of us in the district doing the work to do the outreach to all of our families that are parents with english language learners. that's part of the work we do to inform our families so they do understand that while it is something that is mandated, state mandated, there are other opportunities. but we do want to make sure that the student is ready and

prepared because if we reclassify too soon, our students might be frustrated. i want to thank our student for speaking. i appreciate you speaking from your perspective, not only that but supporting the families at mission because they need you. so everybody takes some time to step up. if everybody speaks another language, if they have an opportunity to do that, thank you. >> just to clarify, the teacher alone cannot reclassify. >> absolutely not. >> i wish that we could. >> yes. >> so my school, we're working on recommendations as well for the school site counselor and one of the accommodations that i connected with one of our teachers is provide our students four months before lpac testing, november november, december, january, and february because testing is in march and april, i believe.

provide tutoring for those students that we know one level to get reclassified. give them an extra push. a teacher told me i'm willing to give 30 minutes of my day or an hour to tutor those students. so there's dedication. i think if we really talk to our teachers, we're going to get and reclassify more students because they are our partners. >> so just -- i don't know who on our staff could answer this question, but go ahead. >> i just have a question for you. because you're going into administer this assessment, how invested are you? it because here's the thing. right? they have to take this assessment. but if we're not putting the emphasis or importance on it -- so if we're not talking to our teachers and our staff and our administrators and letting them know, hey, let's have this lpac

party, whatever it is, to ensure that the students at least have some buy-in and even though, you know, i understand it's one more assessment many i get that. like we assess our children to death, our students to death. but if we at least have some buy-in from the people that are assessing our students and it starts at the top all the way to the school sites so that students walk into that school and they're like, yeah, i slept well. i ate well. it's going to be different for everyone. >> i would love to respond to that as a teacher and somebody who got a six-hour training just on the speaking part of this test, the six-hour training and the people who gave us training were not invested at all. they were saying that this was like building a plane in the air. there's so many moving parts and so many missing parts already. there's so many flaws in it, embedded in it. it's horrifying.

just to get on, just for me to get on, i spent three hours trying to get online. it's all computer based. it's crazy. it's bananas. that's my new favorite word, bananas. to me, if we could get a waiver to get around it and have some other assessment that's more meaningful for us to show our kids learning, rels, i prefer to do that. i'm afraid if we try to just bough out of trying to give this assessment, we would suffer some consequences at the state level. we're stuck right now. i hope that answers your question. my last question was around in general, are we keeping track of what schools have those and which ones don't and if the ones who don't, what kind of support we're giving those sites to form them? >> so maggie and i are a team of two, and we are keeping track. one way is by ensuring that our sites are providing us with a

roster. so all school sites should be providing us with a roster. i ask for ballots. another way is through our audits. so we recently completed an audit through the california department of education for eight of our school sites where the elac must be reviewed, the roster must be reviewed, and when they actually come here, they actually interview our parents on elacs. they selectively do that. but to answer your question, yes, i do keep track. how i support them, i provide workshops and trainings. i have a menu of required trainingings. every elac should have a minimum of four meetings in a year. schools with 21 or more english learners, majority of our schools, that's a big task for maggie and i to go out and do. that's why i had to thank the translation interpretation unit because we wouldn't be able to

do that. what about all of our other languages? rosa parks hosted us for that summit so we could reach other demographics in the district. so tius are there are our partner. so we get in there with the eiu. the menu that we have, there's workshops provided in all different languages that the translation and interpretation entrancetranslated for me, for administrators are access to that and then they're able to provide that to their staff members. but there are some school sites that don't have fully functioning elacs. that's the reality. when there is a thought or when there's something found within the audits for me, that's -- i don't want to say that's a plus, but that gives me opportunity to get in there and say, like, you

know, what do you need? what is it that you need from us? what can we do and we can begin that conversation there. with youover all, i think in the last four years i've been doing this work, the evidence is in the attendance at the dlac. so when i first started this work, we started at james lick and we only had 15, 20 parents at any given time. and now that we're at another place and i've done the work to get into the schools and have conversations with families, word of mouth to build that capacity for our school sites, we've increased, like i said, anywhere 75 to 110 parents at any given time. so that's -- but there's always room for growth and always room. >> thank you. deputy superintendent. >> i just wanted to add on to my response to commissioner lam's inquiry around summer programs. although springboard is the program we have for our k-5

schools, our students, for summer, i do want to name that we have a number of programs for els during the summertime, including a newcomer program that's served over 400 students participating in computer science, salles, two middle school classes for computer signs and one of those classes specifically for english learners and taught in spanish as well as summer bridge classes for risingex ls and some -- rising els. some cohorts for schools have els. the pac has recommending programming for k-5 in this recommendation and i jump to speak to that, but i didn't want to discredit the work that is being done for summer programming for english learners. >> thank you. >> vice president lopez. >> i was -- going back to the elacs at schools, is there any site that doesn't meet the minimum was there weren't 21

students that require them but how are they receiving services if they don't have an elac set? >> what kind of services specifically? >> how are they involved in this work if they don't necessarily meet the needs -- meet the requirement that they have a need for elac? >> i just want to understand. so, for example, a school site that has ten, how are they serving the needs of those ten families? >> correct. >> those parents, those students. that's a good question. i'm going to be transparent there. i do my best to do outreach to all of our schools, but because it is only a requirement for the schools that have 21 or more, those are the schools that i'm in because even that is a task. but for the rest of our schools, we hope that our parents, by word of mouth -- i mean, there's really no mechanism to get in there, other than having conversations like we used to at

the admin institute to be able to talk to administrators and inform them to ensure that they have accessible materials at least the majority language posted at the front by someone that they could talk to, family liaisons are key. we know that they are key in doing that work. a secretary that speaks the language, but that's really, you know, the only thing i can think of. >> thank you. and i just wonder, on our end, how we can figure out that information, not to give you additional labor, but we certainly want to reach -- >> i welcome it. >> i appreciate that. >> commissioner collins. >> yeah. thank you for bringing up the question about the parent view. i think it's frustrating -- i mean, parents that speak english are having trouble getting on parent view, and i can't imagins don't necessarily use it the same way we do. so that's also frustration because the way that i look at it as a parent is very different

than the way teachers might see it. so this is a question for the department of technology, and it's been ongoing question for me is, what are our systems and structures? it's not my daughter's algebra teacher's job to get us on parent view. i would love for the department of technology to -- i mean, there should be some kind of better mechanism for making sure that families are on parent view but not just on it. they know how to use it to look for attendance. there are things you're looking for as a parent that are different than general staff say, okayment here's how you log in and they let you go. i've learned there's a lot of stuff on there that i didn't know about. that takes -- it's not intuitive. it's clunky and a lot of people are using the app on their phone, which is less functional than the website version. so finding out attendance, that's really important for middle and high school because you can see if your kids are

getting late to class and knowing where to look for assignments and knowing where to look for grades, you know, and how to contact, you know, different staff members, how to find the counselor. those are all things that are located in different places, and i would like the district to follow up on how they are getting that -- there should be some module at least or something that is in -- but additionally, even if if i'm that teacher at that school, i don't speak cantonese. so all i can do is just try to get them on, and that's probably going to be a challenge because i don't speak cantonese, but then on top of it, trying to show them why they need to get on. i think there's a lot of females not getting on parent -- families not getting on parent view because they don't know what's there. i've been really -- i'm going to be honest. i've been frustrated with how we roll out technology and leave it on site staff. i would like for site staff to have resources and clear protocols.

we may not be able to offer staffing support but more centrally based resources to help make that process easier for folks who want to -- even parent volunteers could help out more, but we don't have those resources. that's just my two cents. additionally, i think specifically we should have very clear protocols for newcomer schools. i think we may not be able to do that at 100 schools, but the newcomer schools it seems like we should be figuring out how we're supporting either site based staff or central staff coming out there to make sure that we're getting families on because it is -- wills some thee really basic information that families have access to that they won't have access to if they're not on those tools. if anybody wants to chime in. >> go ahead.

>> i'm trying to get on parent view for the last three years. my daughter is now in second grade. last -- two weeks ago, i messaged -- i went to the front office and i said, how can i get the code to get into parent view. the secretary said, i don't know. you should talk to your teacher. okay. here i go. i go and talk to my source, my teacher, and i say i'm trying to get into parent view. how do i do that? you want to go talk to the secretary. i just did that. i'm not upset at the teacher or the secretary. i'm upset at the system because the information is from up here is not going where it's supposed to go. i know there's a lot of push of parent view middle school and high school, but what about k to fifth? why can't we start the parent view from kindergarten? parents know when my child goes

to sixth grade, this is where i have the information. why do i have to wait to sixth grade? why can't i get the information now? so thank you for bringing that up. thank you for bringing that up because definitely i do want to have access to my daughter's parent view. i want to support my school so then our parents have access to parent view. so when our kids go to sixth grade, which some are graduating this year, they can be informed. there's a lot of information that you said that is there, and i know because i'm an insider and an outsider in a way due to the work that i do. but if i wasn't educated, if i didn't have the language, i would have been lost. i'm still lost, you know, and i speak the language and went through the system. so it's really frustrating. it's very unfortunate that i have to go knocking on everybody's door to get something that is so easy. why is there a code? why can't i just use my student

id number? that could be my code. just a suggestion. >> that's a great idea. >> i see, did you want to respond to any of this? you're welcome to. please turn your microphone on. >> you have made a good point about that. that's one of the recommendations here on the technology, have a component, easily accessible for families in all languages. another one that i also mentioned, parent has mentioned that if the school site is able to provide some kind of workshop about parent real training or the computer trainings so all the parents are able to get access and learn how to do it instead of throw into them this is how you get onto it. you just play around with it at home. that's something if we can work on that, that would be great.

>> my name is melissa dodd. thank you for the opportunity to come and answer some questions and thank you very much for your report and your recommendations and very forthright and honest feedback. so i really appreciate that as well as having the time from my team to come out and meet with you back in the fall as well. in terms of for our family portal for parent view, yes, we hear the frustrations and concerns and have been working throughout the year on ways that we can improve the platform, both the mobile app and westbound browser as well as how not to get the word out about it, but the resources and support around it as well. we don't have the capacity to get into every school and we would love to be able to do workshops and when schools do request them, if we can make the

date work and the time work, we're able to do that. but we have been working at providing those centralized resource that's are in multiple languages, handout documents as well as some video taught torials because we know that people access information in different ways. but getting that information out and making sure that everybody at a school site has access to it and knows where it look for it and how to reach us if they can't find that, so that's been all of the change management that we've been working on. and i know getting, you know, having your e-mail set up with the code can be really challenging. we do that to ensure student confidentiality of information to make sure that the parent or guardian who is in our system is the parent or guardian who has access to that student's information. so it does require added steps to it, but the intent of it is to ensure that the right person is connecting with the right child's information. >> i do want to say thank you to

melissa dodd because there's been requested i've personally made about things like being able to find your counselor, and she's been working with software company and it's actually now available. so please share any and all -- i'm obsessed with this, and we've been working together and we're tracking some things right away, some things take time because some things, they actually have to talk to the company that makes the software and see if it can be done. you know, but it is happening this year. there's new buttons that weren't there before. i'm like, what? i can find it now. so please share all those questions with me. i've been -- we've been having these conversations, and i would love to hear from as many parents who also have thoughts to share. >> i also want to thank melissa dodd for being so receptive when i invited her to come speak to families. sure. when? she was readily available and her team came out and so i'm

grateful for that. thank you. thanks, melissa. >> thank you, ms. dodd. >> hi again. also another thing was that the -- kind of like what everybody has been saying, the app on the phone and the website, one is very different. when i was trying to help with the parents, we try to help her log in through her phone, but you're not -- it doesn't have the language preference. so she wasn't able to look at it in spanish. so we had to actually find a computer to help her in spanish. i think that is a problem because a lot of our families don't have access to that type of technology. so if they -- if there is a language barrier, it makes it difficult because they don't have access to that technology and they have to kind of go out of their way to make that extra effort. so i know that's something that is -- that we're working on. i really appreciate you guys for working on that. thank you. another thing, we talked about how we can have the students

excited to take the test even though we don't like taking tests. i personally don't like standardized testing. but some ways that my teachers have made it in a way for me to feel not really excited but in a way where it's like, okay. i'm going to take the test. i'm going to have to take the test. my teachers personally, they like to bake goods for us or they provide us food in the morning because they know a lot of us don't have access to that type of resources at home because access to food is a privilege that not a lot of us are able to afford. so one of my teachers, when we're taking our finals, she made us banana bread because she was really worried about the students and if they were going to be eating that day and so i think it's -- when we tell our teachers that are taking these tests are in the room with these students, that it takes the extra step to feel -- to make the students feel encouraged to be if that room. so i really want to emphasize that with our teachers.

thank you. >> thank you. commissioner lam. >> thank you. i just had a follow-up related to your family and school communication. as i've been doing school site visits throughout the district, particularly when i speak with english language learner families, including just a couple weeks ago, what i heard was also a real desire and need for how do we support our parents and families around our students and young people are diving deeper around the digital curriculum that parents need help in understanding what are some age appropriate norms and boundaries. so i don't know if that's been something that the delac has been discussing, but i would love to hear more if that's something we can be more proactive in. i know that right now, in middle school, for example, my middle school at roosevelt has really leaned into common sense media

as an organization, i think as a district, but from what i'm hearing at the elementary level, particularly from, again, parents and site administrators, is that they are trying to figure out how do we navigate this with our child? my child's not getting enough sleep. they use -- when i fall asleep, they'll use my fingerprint to unlock the phone. [ laughter ] >> really -- so i think that's something i would love to hear as we move forward about as we scale up the family school communication, through applications like parent view, how are we supporting our families and ensuring that they, particularly, again, with english learner families, really feeling like, you know, what is that -- those cultural norms and how to support our students and families that are age appropriate. so thank you. >> all right. thank you very much.

with that, we'll move on and our student delegates, a little bird told me you have some exams to prep for. so you're excused. thank you very much. >> thank you. >> thank you for waiting throughout the lengthy public comment. so commissioners, does anybody have any appointments to advisory committees? none? okay. i'm going to read something in the record because we have an opening on our elections commission. so in 2001, proposition e as passed established the elections commission of which an appointment is made by the board of education. the elections commission has policy-making authority and over sight of all public federal state district and municipal elections in the city and county of san francisco and meets every third wednesday of the month at 6:00 p.m. at city hall. the commission consists of 7 members who serve five-year terms. commission duties include but are not limited to written plans

prior to each election submitted by the department of elections, detailing the policies and procedures and personnel as well as an assessment of how well the plan succeeded in carrying out a free, fair, and functional election. our current appointee has resigned and we are seeking applications. the period is from wednesday, february 26th through friday, march 27th, with interviews at the rules policy and legislation committee at the board of education meeting being held on monday, april 6th, at 5:00 p.m. with an announcement of a new appointee at the regular meeting of april 14th. send letters of interest to the board of education attention cosco executive assistant to the board. 555 franklin street, room 106, sfca, 94102.

thank you. section e, consent calendar. we need a motion and second on the consent calendar. >> so moved. >> second. >> thank you. i don't see any public comment. any items withdrawn or collected by the superintendent? >> no, president sanchez. thank you. >> if i item removed for first reading by the board? any items severed for discussion and vote tonight? seeing none, roll call. >> thank you. [ roll call ] >> thank you. section f, discussion and vote on consent calendar resolution support separate consideration. there's none tonight. g, proposals for action. board policy 6161.11 supplementary instructional materials, the policy was moved and seconded at a prior board meeting reports from committee already reported.

superintendent doesn't need to read the recommendation into the record. >> i'll have danielle read it into the record. >> our recommendation tonight is that the board adopt board policy 6161. i don't see any public speakers on this item. comments from board or superintendent? seeing none, roll call, please. >> thank you. [ roll call ] >> section 8, special order of business, none tonight. section i, discussion of other educational issues. safe and supportive schools resolution update, superintendent matthews. >> thank you, president sanchez. tonight we'll have our chief of

student family communities support division smith and her team that will be supporting her as she gives us an update on the safe and supportive schools resolution. chief, lyle smith, welcome. >> good evening, commissioners, thank you for this opportunity to present to you tonight. i almost said good morning. it is in some part of the world. >> we're a third of the way through this meeting. >> sometimes i struggle with the title chief. i wanted to say, i appreciate the opportunity to be here. i think of myself more as a servant leader for the division of student family community

support. i appreciate i'm here with my colleagues, raul chavez and our deputy superintendent. i think we also have nicole priestly. so we're excited to have this opportunity to give you an update, and we wanted to sort of start with at the presentation last june, 2019, i know that may seem like a long time ago, but what we heard from you is that you wanted to hear more of what we were doing about the district's plan to reduce chronic absenteeism district wide but particular loor foe students most impacted by the opportunity gap, our african-american, pacific islander, latinx and others.

tonight we want to share with you the data on chronic absenteeism and suspensions, but mostly we wanted to spend time with you letting you know what we've been doing to -- the work we've been doing to reduce chronic absenteeism and the baseline data we have around our implementation at school sites. interesting. sorry. it's new. we have to press a few buttons. this is the data we've generally presented, both around the 18 weeks. we're in the fall semester. we're comparing fall semesters from the last three years, from '17, '18, and 2019 which we just finished. as you can see the overall as a district, we have increased our chronic absenteeism rate in the last three falls. and then if you look over at

suspensions, that is staying pretty steady per 100 students. we do have a bit of an increase in middle schools. the next slide is going to dive into this data a little bit more. sorry. thank you. got it. thank you. sorry. just what those parents were talking about. we need tech updates. so if we look more closely at our grade level attendance, you can see that for all levels we're increasing somewhat in our connick absentee i am ratement - chronic absenteeism rate. you'll see at the elementary, middle, and high school, the data is similar to what it's been previously. >> could you justify all of the acronyms on the bottom? es, aa, ai.

>> do you see it way down there? >> i do. thank you. i didn't scroll. >> that's okay. i can give you -- now that i've been taught, i can show you as well. okay. so yeah. you have all those different -- because this is a very tiny piece in that. we apologize. we put more data in the appendix also that we aren't able to share in the large deck. all right. moving over to the more specific data on suspensions, if you look at the elementary level, it's pretty flat. again, we do see the students that experience the disproportionate rate as being african-american students, our foster youth students, particularly if you look at the middle school and the high school, that's the foster youth are experiencing more disproportionality than other students. but we have -- i mean, not good that we have these rates, but we do have overall low suspension rates. in the a appendix, it talks

about the causes, the top ten reasons, and those are steady over the last three years. the one suspension that is causing harm is about 40% of our suspensions. so those are the types of suspensions that is happening. but as a district, we have committed to not suspending students on willful defiance solely and we have almost eliminated the suspensions altogether. i think we only had two last year. so we are eliminating those, but we have others to focus on to continue to reduce the disproportionality. i'm going to turn it over to raul to talk about the early education data. >> hi. good evening. thank you. good evening president sanchez, commissioners. thank you for giving us the time. as part of our district wide

task in alignment of each and every student, we are taking on the effort to decrease chronic absenteeism. we can see it for latin x students remains about the district average. we have to note the california department of education has allowed us to adjust data to exclude the 10 best interest of the child which families will call vacation days that they can take. however, we can see the chronic rates are steady for african-american students. we believe we can meet our goal, focus on improving attendance rates for african-american pre-k students by reducing absenteeism and the same can be said for supporting latino students in our pre-k classrooms. >> thank you. and i think one of the things -- and i'm going to turn this over

to the deputy superintendent soon, but we're going to talk more about what we're trying to do to reduce the chronic absenteeism. what we're trying to do here is take a comprehensive approach to it across the district and really look if we can prevent chronic absent otherrism if we can build the muscle so that. >> good evening, in the fall of 2019, as a system, we set targets around chronic absenteeism and attendance in general. we set out to increase our positive attendance for all students and pay attention to our understanding and interruption of our rising chronic absenteeism. there were efforts toward this in previous years, i would say, but those efforts were not comprehensive, not coordinated, oftentimes not always rooted in

research based best practices. those efforts did not inform each other, and oftentimes was absent of the voice of our stakeholders. this year, our first action and service was to align our efforts, increase our shared understanding, and set clear targets and progress monitor towards disrupting the absenteeism while putting on events and efforts and strategies to make sure our babies never even reach the mark to begin with. this is the first year we have had a coordinated approach that's across lead, early education, sfcsd, and instructional departments where we have strategies to address this issue together. the visual in the orange shows -- this is end of the year for the 2018-2019 school year across grade span and subgroups. it's a reminder of the would -- of the work we have to do and how we meet in our group every month. on the right, the blue bar represents where we are as of december of 2019.

so before winter break. it's our goal to decrease from our last year's end point at the end of this school year and so we hope this visual as a reminder of where we were but also our means of progress to monitor where we are and if we're getting closer to that last year's chronic absenteeism, which is not what we want to do. our target is to reduce by 7% by june of 2020. as we know, chronic absenteeism is fixed, and i say that because once you're chronically absent even with improvements in your attendance that same year, you are labeled as chronically absent much as such, addressing it is really about prevention and intervention before the student even hits the 10% or 18-day mark. our approach is threefold. our approach includes awareness, analysis, and action. so awareness, our first role was to heighten the level of awareness around our chronic absenteeism data and attendance data in general to make sure that everyone, all stakeholders,

our leaders, our lead team, our rps, and other folks working with sites really understood the data and what chronic absenteeism is and what are those early warning indicators as they tick towards that mark. we wanted to make sure we have the accurate and appropriate data to make sure our system and leaders have the proper tools and reports to see their attendance in it different ways, in real time and on a regular basis. no longer is it a lagging indicator, but it's a leading indicator. leaders are not waiting until the month has passed or 12 weeks has passed to see where they are doing attendance-wise. they can access that information daily and in several different ways. our other strategy was analysis. now that we have, you know, more recent and real live data, we've started to engage each other in our site leaders and teams and

discussions around what are the patterns? who is absent, when, and what's the analysis? at the school level and the student level. again, we do this work even as the lead team level. we do it at the school level, it the grade level and student level. we are working to highlight the aggregate. we know there are a lot of bright spots across all the grade spans within individual cohorts that we're studying and learning from with the goal around analysis towards action to scale those efforts across the district. the lead team as well as the other members that i mentioned have worked on a number of strategies at support sites. we're going to highlight the new and targeted actions towards our goal. >> thank you. so one of the things that we're starting this semester is we are sending what we're calling two

rounds of the nudge letters. these are letters that we're working with in class today and today, you just approved the second round of letters. so ire part of -- you're part of this intervention as well. we'll be sending two rounds out. they go out to pk through twelfth grade students. it's a very -- we're working with in class today and their research showed if we hit the sweet spots of sending these letters on a regular basis, we can prevent students from becoming chronically absent. we are sending two rounds in the spring some of the somewhere looking for the funding to we can continue into the next school year. another thing we're wrapping around in this is this is the collaboration between early education, the instructional leadership, and such is that every student that receives a letter, we're taking this as an opportunity also to build family partnership from a positive way.

so every student that is going to receive a letter will also get either a personal phone call or some type of connection from their child's teacher or in middle and high school, from an adult in the school that works closely with that family. so we're also taking this as an opportunity to build family partnerships as well and increase that sense of belonging for students and families. so that is one intervention that we're starting the first letter goes out next -- the 6th. i want to say that's friday, but it could be thursday. the second letter will go out on the 17th. the great thing about this is with the help of rpa, we've been building some really great tracking tools so we will know sort of what is the ebb and flow of the students who did receive the nudge letters. and we're not under any illusion that we can send one letter to a student and thin bingo, they'll never miss another day of school. that's the reason we want to be sending them out in waves and also to be tracking the students

to see as they move. so it's a really nice complement to the work that's been already happening and the tools that deputy and superintendent was discussing that lead is doing in their data dives and their tools of seeing what is happening with our students in the schools. so that is that intervention. i'm going to turn it over to you. >> thank you. so it was pointed out our department is learning and aligning to the work that the student family and community support department is doing with support from our pa and guidance from lead. so we're working to continue to increase attendance and building stronger relationships with families by developing preventive strategy systems and practices. you can see implementing equitable attendance policies, providing access and training of

attendance principles and family support specialists to use an assistant program, assisting coaching and leadership team meetings. and part of the training has been done with attendance work in everyday labs. we also are providing family updates through the use of the nudge letters as pointed out and we're working to also send our first letter, perhaps, after the first round of parent conferences. we're also piloting the home school visits and this applies to all families and i'm eager to say the trainings took place which was the second training for some of our schools and some of those schools are stand alone. >> turning our attention to the

second thing we were asked, what is the baseline, what is happening in the implementation of restorative practices? so in the interim, what we did is we created a system to -- he we expanded the tiered fidelity inventory. we expanded it to include restorative practices in it and we're reporting back to you what the baseline data that we have been able to collect. the second thing we talked about in june is that we were goin goo develop a climate plc that will look at restorative practices, family partnerships, and we'll give you data of where we are and who's been attending those climate team plc meetings. third, i had it in my brain. i'm sorry. i'm tired. the third thing that we did was -- i'm going to go back. oh, we changed the restorative

practices training. it used to be a training -- a two-day training where it would be a teacher would come or a school staff member, but we didn't have any system that it wasn't such maybe they went back to their school classroom and did it in the absence of the rest of the school doing it. we moved to a trainer model where the folks coming, the expectation is they're working with their school site administration to go back and do at least three different trainings to teachers and all school staff, building in the professional development calendar already. so the data that we are showing you today is the restorative practices inventory was administered in december and january. so it was only after we had been able to have two trainings. so this data is going to talk about a limited number of folks who have been trained and what is happening post the trainings and we anticipate, as we go through this year and we finish

more of the trainings and collect data that some of the practices will increase. if you look on this first slide, one of the questions that we were looking at is, of the climate team, one of the requirements was that the members need to be trained in restorative practices to they can go out and train their school site staff. so what we found that 74% at the schools that we -- we basically did this nearly all of the schools, and then we found that 74% of the climate teams had a members trained in rp. we would -- so that's a good inning this. then we looked in whether they had actually attended the training in october and december. so these would be people who attended a training in previous years. so we've got 24% who have attended the rp training and have delivered at least one hour of rp training to their staff. then we have a smaller percentage who have attended the training and offered the rp

training to all staff. we think those numbers will grow as we have more trainings. then the two other things, there's more things we looked at, but we really were focusing on, i think, restorative practices. we really want to think of it as community building. you have to have a community building component. you have to build systems and strunt you'res in a safe and supportive school so that if there's a need for restoration, there's a community to restore. so we looked at two things we know support that type of building of a community. one is proactively are we having classroom community building circles where we're building community so that it's not something happens and then you don't have a community to build back. second, things that are very important in building community is are school staff trained in impromptu restorative conversations? if something happens in a classroom, are you able to address it in the moment and build the community that way?

so what we found that we've got 80% of teachers have been trained in the classroom circles. however only 22% are using them regularly. we know that's a growth area. again, as we think these numbers will increase as we do more trainings and then secondly, on the trainings, we have 51% that have less strained. so we know that's another growth area. but we do have 16% that have their school staff trained. so as we dive deeper into the training and gaining more data, we'll be able to do more analysis. i think what the deputy superintendent calls the bright spots and looking at the schools having an impact on their restorative practice and see how we can scale that up and share that across all school sites. finally, i did want to say that the data on the restorative practices and the training is really going to inform the work that we'll be doing together

with dr. priestly and the deputy superintendent in implementing the equity studies because restorative practice is a big part of this resolution. with that, that's the end of our presentation. we want to turn over to you if you had any questions. >> thank you. we have one member of the public, aleta fisher, for public comment. two minutes. >> good evening again, commissioners, superintendent, and sfcsd staff members. i want to start with one of my favorite quotes. every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets. every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets. i was fortunate enough to be on

the district wide attendance working group that was convened last spring. we met for five months, and we did a whole lot of digging into attendance root cause. it was a really robust group of stakeholders, members from across the district. it was lovely. we asked stakeholders -- we did a whole lot of community feedback, very, very robust. the three questions we asked were what is your worst fear around attendance, what are your hopes, and how would you like to see us get to the hopes? by far, almost every single person we asked, their biggest fear was that we participate in this robust system, this robust process and nothing would change. here we are almost a year later, and we came up with some great results, some great suggestions. i'm going to read my favorite

here any second, but it went nowhere. one of my favorites that came from our final representations was sfusd will move beyond compliance with education code as an attendance strategy and adopt an sfusd attendance policy that cowls for the development of district-wide protocols and good lines that are research based, positive, supportive, family centered, and quote-unquote asset based that assists students and families by providing early intervention and addressing barriers to school attendance. as a special education advocate, i can tell you babies start out wanting to come to school. then so many barriers get put in the way. letters like we're proposing don't address those barriers. so what can we really do to get to the root cause? our babies who need the most love ask for it in the least loving ways. how can we get beyond that and get them to school? thank you.

>> commissioners. commissioner norton. >> thank you for the report. i am concerned that it just doesn't seem like we're making progress and in some ways going backwards maybe. i wonder -- i mean, if felt like a few years ago we were starting to make progress on chronic absenteeism. at least in the data you presented tonight, it seems like we've given that progress back. i'm wondering if you have any response to that. am i wrong in that impression? like what do we think the root cause is for not making progress on this issue? >> can i just suggest looking at