the and they think it's another upcoming important and. >> do you have that. >> do you have that action? >> it would be a region. >> and we are planning to meet with the organization and design some of the questions and some of the questions that we send out to all the other groups. and so, we send these out most

by the first week of january. >> >> i'm can everybody else and it seems like a complicated and there's a lot of variables to weigh here and i just think beer going to need more and guidance have the staff on what the trade offs are and the younger they

are, generally the lessen engaging and impactful learning is so i agree with who are suffering and who are having the biggest negative impact with online learning. that's the guidance i would give. we're not talking about the amendments yet. have we gotten into the amendments? >> no. >> so those are my comments for nownow. i just want to see how the kids

come back and option one to me is where i would really like to learn towards. but again, there's just not enough information to actually make a concrete decision on what actually makes sense for us in terms of like, how we want to move forward. there is this thing around the other option of third graders and fifth graders with phase 2 with our focal students and we need to focus on our focal student but also, i wanted to say that the definition of suffering and let me just say, the current data that we were providing with and curriculum committee the other day it says there's a huge need and the learning lost and the absentees for these focal groups are high

and that i get and i think we need a strategy to figure out how to be able to, the word is reengage, right, so to me i'm just a little curious around like if we focus on our focal group, which we should, right, with is the engagement because i'm not really too sure, you know, how many of these families want to send their kids back to school and i don't know how many families are homeless families are even in contact with the idea. and so, it's hard for me to say, you know, we should go down this path when, you know what's if we do go down that path and we don't really have kids that are showing up. i think kids are going to show up but i still there's a potential to say that we should focus on focal students and focus on the students that need to be here and that are not part of the focus student groups, right. because again, like for me, the suffering and the impact on how

this is rippling through the district it's different and it's beyond. >> josh: economics and i'm a crisis worker and i'm seeing, families from a different range of communities that are impacted by covid-19 so, i really do want to know how many of these studentthesestudents are ready k and ready to be learn and be present. so that's something that i'm just thinking through. i would really like to see a mixture of that right now. i think the focuses might be too tight if we can it open it up a little bit more. i would need a little bit more information so that's just my two cents right now. i have a couple regards in the presentation but i'll focus it based on this discussion right

now. >> i have a clarifying question. >> so, commissioner, i heard you both say that you want all the babies to come in. and then say that you are also open to this idea of us prioritizing students in our focal groups but expanding the focal groups. when we talked about priority groups for this presentation, for third through fifth and our students experiencing homelessness living in foster care and public housing, are you proposing you might be ok with that second bullet if we expanded the criteria to include other focal identifiers. i want to clarify it and i'm trying to take notes on everything else. >> you hit it on the head. we should have a more general look at, you know, the

population that actually needs to be back in school, right. because t. there's all the types of families who have different issues that are currents in their lives right now and that need to be their kid back in school and there's also maybe a focal student or kids living in public housing who actually doesn't want to come back to school and thriving and striving with distance learning at their home. i just think those conversations need to be had and we're really targeting the skids that need to get back to the classroom as much as possible. >> thank you. >> yes. >> my sentiments actually align with what commissioner moliga just said especially on the point of expanding what we mean by suffering and trying to get a sense of what urgency looks like by family and who we can

accommodating so many considerations and the spirit of what i want to see happen obviously not violating any of the compliance with as much as possible related to life around public-health guidelines. we try it get as many people back as want to be back as possible and at this point we don't actually even know the real answer to that and based on a lot of the public comment, it's so interesting with these meetings and what i hear from people doing the work and how varied the responses are, hearing from educators that are doing home visits because they can't get a hold of people and i'm sure that's not like i'm

sure they're doing that, right. and hearing folks that we heard tonight that are really concerned about returning to school so this is such a hard problem and i know what we hear isn't isn't completely representative of people's willingness to go back and restart and with that said, thank you to the staff for trying to move as much as this as portable and i'll leave it to the rest of the conversation to someone else. >> all right. vice president. >> i did want to ask a few other questions and start with going back to chief kamala and a

discussion as far as some of the schools that have not been prioritized or parts of the cities that haven't been prioritized and where we are in the ability to include schools specifically in the tenderloin or chinatown or other areas of the city that have been named that are not part of the waves that we see currently. >> yes. >> go ahead, sorry. >> commissioner, i've actually, my understanding again is that the sites that were chosen for wave one and wave two have been driven by our emphasis and desire to prioritize early education students and return them to their home classrooms and i am not the person i think to comment on or provide additional context on the

history of program location decisions and that led to the distribution by -- someone is home. >> i'm going to let them finish that thought because i think we've got the same idea. >> so just to remind you all, when we were identifying our schools for wave one, we really wanted to find schools that had two or more of those priority groups and that's what she was referenced so we looked at schools that had sdc classes and early ed classroom spaces aside from this we have five early ed stand a loans that were included in the first wave so when we were identifying the elementary schools to add that's how we identified. with wasn't where you are in the city but do you have those two priority groups and then we

wanted to spread it out across the city by having at least one school in each of what we call cohorts and kind of represents the span as a city but not necessarily and so that was our first staff. one that we could learn so we started to learn and two we can make sure we were targeting those priority groups that we identified and the second wave, the same facilities was also a consideration and the second wave that criteria stay true because we anticipated learning a lot and quickly from the first wave of schools and so we weren't trying to exclude any particular school or any particular part of the city and we were trying to be strategic to make sure the school that we opened was able to dedicate and focus on the priority groups we named and give us a chance to learn and you can see schools from wave one to wave two and there's a two-week gap in between those but i do hear the communities' feedback and a lot

of the questions around the wave three schools and that was just us completing the opening if you will and just adding on all the remaining elementary school sites. i want to name that i have joya here with me on the call. one of my executive directors and she's been involved in this work and so every now and again she might chime into tell you who she was in case you are like who is this chick talking, just fyi. >> thank you. i ask that to clarify and make clear our decision-making process and two, just because in our buildings and grounds committee the question came up giveagain and it being no more n 26 sites is within our capacity for that wave but whatever school it is, is i guess up to us. that's why i wanted to just bring that up and have that discussion. and this is the idea we would be using the home school strategy. >> yes.

>> a couple more questions. if wore going back to our home schools, have they not had that we can share now or is it based in two reopening process at each site. >> >> what are our plans to bring our preparation for the future. >> yeah, to give teachers time to prep their classrooms again, get reacquainted with their space since we're going to be teaching in a much different environment. what planning is afforded to them? >> that is part of the on going

discussions. >> only named that because i think that is actually going to need more time, right, for them to -- when we all decide, as a whole, with educators, what is appropriate, i'm sure that probably is going to need a little more time to give them that. >> so that is a part of an ongoing discussion. danielle or greg, do you want to add anything or say anything? >> no, dr. matthews. that's exactly what it is. it's an ongoing discussion and we need to be clear on what is happening in the 10 days and whether 10 days is enough. this discussion points we need to get on. >> ok. >> thank you. >> and then lastly, is there any part in going back to what commissioner lamb that we can

direct to the city as an ask or question given that they've offered financial support, offered the city workers and they've offered a lot of verbal support so what can we pla layot and make clear in this plan to get this going? >> there is to anyone and all the people in this planning and we need like details asked to make to the city and. >> the support we need around testing. the city has stepped up and right now, you saw from mr. menezies the establishment

of the exploring of partnership with the latino task force and that's through discussions with the city to establish our explorers and this partnership so that was one ask and we're going to continue to need assistance we know and as more and more schools come online around testing so that is going to be support, i would say both in-person he will as well as any costcosts providing that personl and that's one ask for sure. when we get into some of the -- we're not voting on the plan they're actually like, suggestions for changes to the plan, but when we get into those discussions i'm sure, i think commissioner started down the road of saying, the possibility of ask around the ventilation so definitely if that's a add on, to the plan, then for sure we

would be asking for support in making that happen. if that's added on and we would need to talk about that or we'll talk about that when we get to the addition. that's what immediately comes to my mind. i don't know if other staff members have other thoughts around direct request to the city whether it be staffing support or dollars that are needed in terms of supporting moving the plan forward. >> did we have anna insurance we were going to get support for testing? i thought we lined that up with the city through dph? >> we're exploring that right now. dr. matthews, i might add on this was discussed at the budget and doesn't services committee last week that i believe ms. wallace actually highlighted this when she talked about the

fiscal impact that the two largest potential areas of financial costs and the timing and the configurations of how many campuses we otherwise reopened but the two and areas are custody tote wraps and secondary level and we're at a pretty early stage in terms of planning for whether all of our campuses might be reached or whether it's a subset of the campuses and that will have a significant baring on the potential need for additional custody towed y'all staff and with respect to the classroom staff, teachers, para educators

and in particular, and the instructional team in planning phase 2-a is not as i understand it it's not assume tag there will be additional positions or significant additional costs but the individual staffing plans will need to be developed based on the responses of our families and they will snow more about in short sort because of the initial survey to the phase 2a families that we requested responses by this friday so that will give us a whole lot of additional information that about whether existing staff and ftes and substitute resource that's are already budgeted and how closely those existing

resources will approximate the need we see from the individual choices we're going to share as much information as we can as i think was featured in the slide that chief wallace described on the fiscal impact and asked for some scenarios and we tried to feedback tonight and we'll keep doing that and as we get more information about the choices and staff has to make. >> >> although deputy superintendent we don't anticipate an increase in cost for staff and we knows there's materials and supplies increase and one of the things that new in this new way of doing school

is every student needs to have their own materials. there's no more wore going to all share the crayon box and so wore going to be purchaseing and collecting and configuring kits and hearing about families of ways they can help as we open as individual school sites we'll ask for families and in that regard and to help us get everything ready for the babies to come in as well as more books and more resources and to go home and school and those things to stay at home or stay at school it will be a need and a continued cost especially as we reopen for in-person and then also as we get our classrooms together don and team are going to be moving the heavy furniture at all and there's this stuff in the classroom that we're likely going to be leverage our family just like at the beginning of every other school year we're going to get the school in the classrooms reads' for the students and the staff so that's going to be a need that we'll be expressing later and we're going

to plant that seed now for folks who are looking for things to do. >> so, i mean, superintendent math use, do you have a sense of direction. we're lock at elementary decision and it doesn't seem like there's a lot of board direction going on here. >> can i make a statement to that just to the commissions before super inten department matthews' response. >> sure. >> thank you. i just think what i talked to last week and i think what she explained to me was that like some sites like brett hart has a capacity to take every kid if they wanted to do that in a socially distanced way but a school like harvard wouldn't but i really want us to be prioritizing based on students and not based on physical space and so, i just think it's, i

appreciate staff because that's the way they're thinking and i feel like it's very important for us as a board to articulate, it's not whether we want to extend an opportunity for all students that want to come back and if we can take them all back we should. we're going to to stick with a home school strategy which i support that means we have to have a priority and that means we have to prioritize based on students if we just open up a school and say first come first serve, then it's going to privilege families that are at schools that have more space and it's also going to privilege students that parents more easily fill out surveys which we talked about earlier some families are online if they are filling out surveys now and other families are harder to reach and they might be from groups we would most want to serve so i think it's important for us as a board and i'm putting this out to other board members and commissioners it's important for us to provide strong direction if we have

equity and serving students and that is just my -- and as i said, it's in line with staff recommendation and i appreciate staff in aligning it that way. >> >> we don't have enough information and or the surveys and that first wave coming back so we don't have 40% and surveys and i know there's a whole discussion maybe to be had about how to do this survey better next time and we know there's a lot of leg work from the school sites and hopefully from central offices supporting school sites and reaching the families who have not filled out the survey and we need that critical information that we found in amount surveys and accurate count of who wants to come back and we don't have that and that's why i'm reluctant to give really any kind of rel direction here because we just don't have the data.

>> the question you asked was around consensus. i definitely appreciate commissioner collins' request for providing a strong direction but i would say the consensus we node more information to be able to give that stronger direction. >> yeah. i mean, we might be able to be updated at the committee of the whole at the next meeting and right now it doesn't seem like we could give you some -- we could give you one of these bullets but it might not end up being what it is when we have all that information. at this point. >> so, we can just leave it there for rye now unless everybody and commissioner lam. >> i had a clarification just to be clear.

to superintendent is if because you are not -- you are hearing from the board, and some more information is needed and i just want to be clear does that slow down any of the planning that is in process that the staff needs in order to make sure that we hit those milestones that we put forward. >> we will come back with what we think is the recommendation or what we think and we'll move forward on what we think is best and i think this we wanted direction and we put these in front of you to try to get direction but like i said what i'm hearing is, more information is needed so we will come back with a recommendation and we'll be moving forward until so the answer to your question, i to il move forward in a direction.

>> ok. >> ask i have specific questions for staff not to answer tonight but i want them on record and they're follow-up that we can get for their meetings. >> i just wanted to know how we're planning to report to the public or to families school or classroom closures and what our plan for reporting is. i wanted to know, i've heard from staff they want to know if they want to get tested because they want to just go with their own hospital is that a possibility? and i wanted to know if this is more for the city but if we can work if staff with work in partnership with out of school time programs or dcyf or the hubs to cover students so if we're having hybrid and if they're two days a week to keep kids in a pod and maybe provide after care and so they can stay together but we can still meet

childcare needs for families that will be having trouble doing a hybrid based on childcare needs and i think families have to come to in order to do to the first day is that a finally think actually i want answered. i want to support schools that aren't responding and there may be schools that have more of those and i want to support site staff so you can get back to us off line but i want and i'm willing to support and is there a way that central office can help making phone calls and doing outreach to families so we can unburden some schools that have a lot of families they still want to reach and their surveys. >> that was a point and i hope

to get central office can support the sites that have numerous families that have not responded and these are families and i don't know if you have a response for that and superintendent math use. >> we will talk to them and we will get ways that we can support and ways we can offer to support or want to support. >> returning to commissioner collins, technically this is not something that is set a resolution that we're voting on and maybe some guidance for staff around ventilation and masking and testing and so -- >> this is the second one with masking and we have some late-breaking news and on the masking question and from d.p.h. >> yes. >> thank you, dr. matthews.

so, as i mentioned, i had more information on the face coverings. and now i am able to say that dph guidelines have updated today and they now require tk through 12 students to wear masks that all kinds and there are epps sunshines and that the guidance has changed and our goal is always to follow the guidance so our guidance will change to follow dph guidance. >> can we extend that? can we extend that to the pre-k? >> even if it's on the -- it's pk. >> can we expand it to the pre-k? sfusd? >> only age group that we could not expand it is 2-year-olds and the district and the board can

give direction and extend it to pre-k, yes. >> any comments from board members on the three items or one at a time the masking since we're already on that item is there any opposition to requiring masking? it doesn't look like there is so there's direction. >> i'm sorry. president sanchez, you say anything for and how quickly we'll be moving to that if something in the future what is our process in incorporating those new guidelines? >> yeah, i mean, as i mentioned in my presentation earlier, the

guidelines changed we're doing that constantly and i'm going to say it could take us a couple of days to be able to rechange and get things out to people but we're doing ton a constant level. this is at least the fourth or fifth changes in probably less than a week to the guidelines and we're just dodges tantly updating and pushing out information so i think we're trying to get better at and also there are a lot of different communication ways that we can do that. we continue to strive to communicate as quickly as possible. >> all right. can we move to the ventilation. >> can i read the statement that i just so that it's clear, can i read the statement i sent to superintendent matthews and

other commissioners. >> yes. >> it's ventilation plans must address air change rates censure all classrooms for air change rates and the world health organization recommends six times an hour. last week sf public of department recommended four times an hour. and my recommendation is that we provide mechanical ventilation in all schools to ensure air change rates are met in all classrooms. >> sorry. >> i'm having a hard time. go a little bit slower. >> i apologize. so provide mechanical ventilation in all schools to essential sure air change rates are met in all classrooms and in the main office or areas where there's staffing. develop a plan for outdoor classrooms in spring. i would like to see a planned especially for upper elementary, middle and high school to expand safety and capacity and also develop a plan for upgrade to hvac systems in the fall and as

bond programs allow so that's just for the future as a note. so that is my ventilation. >> ok. all right. so, maybe you want to answer this question. >> why di don't i start and donu can talk. this one, i'm going back to the earlier question of for example, will be not having a decision right now slow us down. we will go ahead and make the decision and come back but this one, if we, if it's having the mechanical mechanisms in place to have the change rates for air it will. we're not putting those in place by january 25th. so i wanted to be real.

i don't know if this is a goal. >> i was told -- if we partner with the city, this is not something we can do alone but i have spoken to mechanical engineers and window-fit fans fit into windows and some windows might have to be retro fitted in order to fit them but if we put an rfp together we could meet the deadline. it's whether we have partnerships with the city and whether we can turn around and rfp process in order to get contractors to come into schools and fit out the windows. so, i'm hearing differently. like i said, staff, you know, need support and getting the rfp process but i think this is -- i've spoken to folks in the private sector and this is physically and an easy fix. >> we have our -- >> i wasn't finished. >> sorry.

>> so, my assessment and don, you can also come in, please, is that in order, as we're trying to meet these time lines, one of the responsibilities -- [please stand by] prestidents'

if there's a good faith effort by staff and the city to provide this ventilation, and i think that there will be, we might not meet the 25th. so other commissioners, commissioner norton? >> commissioner norton: yeah, i'm in agreement with you, president sanchez. i think that this may be doable, it may not be doable. i mean, just -- i don't even know -- i mean, i'd actually be interested to hear from chief lawson, i mean, do you have any sense of what kind of retrofit would be needed to -- just

thinking about all of our school buildings, it's hard for me to imagine, you know, they're all different and the windows are all different. it's just hard for me to imagine that we could have a one solution that could be in place and, you know, in six weeks or less. >> so not surprisingly, i think that i have kind of a nuanced answer here. but it's a little bit of everything that folks have said. so from a mechanical perspective can you have a fan in the classroom, right? basically to have the standard box that is set into the window frame. can you have the exchange rate per hour improved? yes, that is true. that is viable -- you know, it's a viable approach. and it could happen. and it is certainly cheaper than

attempting to replace every building's hvac system. and create mechanical ventilation via duct work in an hvac in every classroom. the pieces that i am uncertain about at this time are really around not so much the hard costs which -- so in construction and you talk about the costs of the materials themselves and the work itself, versus the labor cost, is where i have a big -- i have a question mark that i need to work with, the heading of grounds on. most of these fans, there are off the shelf options that would work in some school classrooms but we do also to norton's point have a lot of variety in the types of windows that we have, and it is -- i think that it is less about the fan itself and

more about the labor required with the jerry rigging that will accompany the fans, right? that there would need to be other material installed to make these fans fit or to make them stable. and that piece is a question mark for me that i need to really revisit with my team. i think that the question is also, of course, around resources and to the extent that the city is helpful, or philanthropy, those resources are welcome. but it would have to be in very short order that we have that commitment made. i think that in order to have a shot at january 25th. in the january 25th wave is our smallest wave of 12 sites. so if you have the funding, you know, in place immediately, could we have a decent shot of getting a lot of these sites in wave one ready? yes.

but i -- i am -- i [broken audio] and coming together on projects that we have posed with certainty, around funding and also the band idwidth t bandwids work. we would rely on contract it's -- [broken audio] >> you were inautomobile for a t but you're okay. >> it's not your fault. >> i feel that our ears are getting better in understanding. >> i mean your concern is the labor -- is the labor resources available to, like -- and not even so much in first wave but then the subsequent waves. >> for subsequent waves that would really worry me. because, again, mostly because,

again, we have such variety of our window stock. so it is a viable way to accomplish increasing the air exchange rate per hour. it's a viable way to do it. but there is going to be i think a decent amount of customization required to really install the fans and to have them, you know, to be stable and something that teachers feel comfortable using, etc., etc. >> i just wanted to finish my comment which is that i'm not comfortable with making this a requirement. i mean, you know, it's worth exploring and it's worth making a goal and it's worth us asking the city for help. it's worth identifying money to do this. but to say that we can't open, you know, unless all of this is done just seems really, really counterproductive. >> president sanchez: any other comments? i'd like to move it along.

>> i think that i agree with what has been said, given that commissioner collins is able to predict future changes, it's one of those things where i definitely think that we should explore -- not halt the work that we've done, but to begin that conversation and r.f.p. process to make sure that our buildings are safe as possible. >> so that's why i said if it's a goal and my first call would be -- it seems like -- well, not seeks like, but it's clear, commissioner collins, you have already started doing some of the homework. >> commissioner collins: i have connections with the buildings and building engineers that build skyscrapers and i think that the chief even said that getting the r.f.p. is important but i think that it does take retrofitting of maybe some windows but it's relatively low cost and not a very difficult

construction project. and there's a lot of folks in the city who could respond. i think that this is something that we would need to mobilize the city and our philanthropy partners, but i'm committed to making sure that the schools are safe for staff and students and i don't want especially low-income families or communities of color that feel that they can't return. this is something that the equity focus for them as well. so i think that it should be -- we should make it happen. i think that if we decide to make it happen, we can make it happen. but i'm also, you know, i feel confident that we can do it, if we make a commitment to doing it. >> president sanchez: okay. so i think that is what was going to bring from a good faith effort to our staff and the city as well so we can get it done. so we don't want to hold up the opening gates. unless there's real opposition to that statement, we can move on. so the last is the testing

protocol that you were recommending, commissioner collins? >> commissioner collins: i guess that it's more of a question. i want to make sure that the staff can get tested more often. i know that has been a request of staff. so i don't know if -- if, you know, human resources staff or the chief if you can let us know if that's possible. but i'm also interested in knowing about students and i don't know if commissioner lópez with the work that you have been doing with the latino task force, if you can also talk about -- and i don't know if superintendent matthews, i'd ask you if you could potentially reach out to san diego and see if there was any clarity, you know, on how we might make testing available to students. and for me personally, i don't feel that it's contingent upon opening but i think that it's an important thing to name that we're working with the city to ensure that students and families, but specifically the students have access to testing.

>> i'm happy to take the first stab at a response. can you hear me? i'm using a new set-up right now so i wanted to make sure. >> president sanchez: go ahead. >> okay. so in terms of on-demand testing, one of the things that we're trying to do is to that in addition to setting up a test site at every school we'd like to have one central location open up a couple days a week for walk-ins to basically to answer this question of on-demand testing. i don't know at what capacity we can do it. there's an ongoing conversation that i said before between dcyf and the latino task force. we're calling it speed dating this week where we'll work together to do two days of testing, with a pilot for that more centralized model because i think that's where it could be. and if we had it up and running, any district employee could walk in to get tested, in addition to their regular testing. so we are working to have that

and i don't see why, provided that we can get support from the partnership that we're working on, why that can't happen by january 25th. because in some ways it might be the first kind of testing site that we actually launch because it's just the one that we're piloting. when it comes to student testing it is a very complicated question. i think that i can explain why we can't do it as a district. and why the answer would have to be external. and it's for two reasons. one, if you recall, the reason why we ended up procuring and doing our own surveillance testing is because we could not secure sufficient support outside of our organization to do it, right? but, second, the way that curative works is that they bill your health insurance provider and they rely on laws to be able to do that. and so basically what they told me, because i did a little bit of an inquiry, and with public health guidelines, unless the state of california and the sfdph made student surveillance testing a requirement in their

guidelines, health insurance companies will not sort of foot the bill for those tests. meaning that we would have to cover those costs ourselves. in addition to all of the operational pieces which would make it really challenging, right? because we have made lots of progress and i'm optimistic that we'll be able to test the folks that we're bringing back, but adding students, you know, times the folks that we need to test by five and that might be generous. so it would have to come from an outside source of support. i know that we talked about the san diego model or the university there is assisting and that is something that we could look into but i don't think that it's something that we could guarantee. >> president sanchez: but we need to at least look into it, right? so making those connections with ucff and other potential partners. is that something that you can do? >> so if i can also add to what was said. so in terms of exposure testing,

so different types of testing, we're definitely partnering with the department of public health and that will be, you know, students and families will be supported through that if they don't have a primary care physician to go through them, the city will work with them to get the testing through their testing sites. and we're working out systems and protocols for the coordinated care team for those types of handoffs. in terms of the surveillance testing of students which i believe that commissioner collins, i think that is what you're talking about more in your proposal. we have started having those conversations with the department of public health to understand how that might be able to happen, what would be the cost to both the city to do surveillance testing and that type of thing. so it's certainly something that we've brought up a couple of times and we're sort of working through many other issues, but it is on the list of issues that

we're working with them on. and we're going to have a conversation later this week about many things and that's on this list as well. so we can -- we'll continue to update the commissioners on where we are with that, but currently there actually is no system in place to provide surveillance testing to studen students. >> president sanchez: all right, any other questions or comments on this item? >> i did want to name testing accessibility is going to really fall on us and the fact that we're able to provide this i think is huge. it's what everyone is looking at. but even if and if they could and we can't get appointments same day. and the same thing with the majority of the d.p.h. testing sites run in the city right now.

so i think that we need to expect that the fact that we're making testing accessible and as easy as we are is going to be a sigh of relief for many of the people that are coming back to work and i just hope that we are ensuring that the quality of this testing process, every time that staff comes and they expect to get the resources backed by whoever they would have supported if somebody were to test positive and our response to that, right? but i do want us to prepare for clear u.v. accessible testing and just the way that we'll respond should something arise. >> can i respond to that? i just wanted to mention and i know that you know this, but that's why we feel really, really lucky to have the opportunity to work with the latino task force and they have

done such good work and their model is extremely high quality and even in this time that we have spent together, i actually spent a couple hours with them at the parking lot at 555, they are showing me some of the ropes of the best practices they have already established. we share a goal of having something accessible and it's high quality and it's efficient. so i wanted to do a shoutout of gratitude for their expertise and what they bring to the table because i think that it's going to help to make what you just spoke of as a reality, so it's exciting for us. >> i want to piggyback and say that i really appreciate your work as well, commissioner lópez, and all of the folks on the latino task force. and as the chief said, it's not staff purview to kind of think about students. i do think that it is our purview as leaders to really bring to the city and say that we can work in partnership with the community and with city leaders to ensure that as we open schools that they're wanting that to happen and they

also need us to ensure that families can get tested so that the families are safely returning to school. so i'm encouraging, i will bring it up at the joint select committee meeting but i encourage others to reach out to the supervisors and the mayor's office to see how we can do more of what latino task force is doing and make it more accessible to all families. >> yeah, i agree with commissioner collins. i don't think that it is -- well, let's just say, i agree with commissioner collins and saying that we should help provide the information on how to get accessible testing for our families as much as possible. i don't think that it is -- we should carry that, you know, responsibility on our own and, you know, i'll definitely talk about it with commissioner collins as well. i do want to give a shoutout to the first and foremost the covid team here in the school

district. and i think that a couple weeks ago it was one of the biggest things that we tried to solve and now we're landed and elaborated with the latino task force, which i told you guys that we should have done it and i'm glad that you guys did it. and it's great and those folks, ladies, they're all from san francisco. a lot of them have been like in the san francisco community for a long time. so it's just another example of how we invest in the city with the folks who are doing the work in the city and it just -- it's just way better when you go out to the community because they are in relationships that we don't have, so i wanted to give a shoutout to those folks and also to daniel and melee for taking charge in this covid testing, thank you. >> thank you, any other comments? >> i wanted to thanks, yeah, the conversation here, it is really important and i think that dr. matthews, you're seeing kind of the forward charge that the board is providing that guidance

and i appreciate commissioner collins of you raising these additional measures. and thank you to the covid testing team. we're pushing, pushing, pushing and we're landing there now and it's super exciting to see and taking in the feedback from both curative and the team about having -- you know, standing up those testing sites that are at schools and how critical that is and the connection and making it more seamless and comfortable for our educators and staff as they're coming back. so, thank you. >> i would like to say something. >> president sanchez: go ahead, yes, please. >> okay. sorry. i wrote it. if you ever read a book by toni morrison, then you understand that every word -- every sentence -- every punctuation and every line break has been elaborately thought out. i say this because i want to

compare it to what the staffers creating these plans have done. and in my humble opinion that's exactly what needs to be done when lives are at risk. when death is a consequence to cutting corners. so when you say chief that you are building expertise as you go, i truly applaud it. with that being said, i have been a witness for what goes on behind the scenes and as we said earlier it is an honor. but i want to use our personal perspective as students. we see the decision-making discussions, i see the tactical steps in this process. i also see firsthand experience first hand and talk about it firsthand. the real impact that comes from distance learning. i will summarize right now that each student is beautiful and unique, just as they are experiencing distance learning differently and uniquely to their circumstances. a majority of us are struggling. we all are, as vice president

lópez opened up with, so i applaud the parents on the call today for voicing your concerns. you are doing amazing and maybe that's what we all need to hear right now. with the fireballs thrown at each one of you, you are doing amazing -- staff, students, parents and everyone in between. as i see the middle ground i see that compromise is imperative but there's one thing that we cannot compromise, human lives. i wanted to add because there's a lot of moving variables and we're inventing from thin air right now. i appreciate the discussions that took place right now and i agree with commissioner moliga and not just your words but we must always focus on our prioritized groups. extending that might be something that could help this discussion. there's a lot of pressure right now, but these conversations demonstrate what we flowed in ns time -- partnership. we do that by being transparent on what places we need support on.

my specific ask with all of this is when can we have town halls again? i believe they would answer a lot of questions presented today. a lot of us have learned and transformed our opinions of how we feel about distance learning. it's important that we don't assume, but ask, the people that we're working for what do you need. and we need to ask ourselves what do we need to know about the people that we are working for to get them what they need. i don't want to pile on anymore work, but i want to highlight the importance of this, especially as these decisions are being made. and also shout out to the latino task force. >> president sanchez: thank you so much. you're beyond your years. student delegate hines-foster? >> i'm trying to keep as many brain cells as i have right now, keeping up with this conversation. i just want to make sure --

because i know that we're still talking about -- the issues and i just had a few questions that address the rest of the presentation so i'll just ask them now because that's the time. and mostly first for the survey, i know that a parent had and the majority of our focal groups. have any ideas came up as an adaptation to incorporate phone calls? i know that we talked about this a little bit yesterday to incorporate the phone calls in these surveys or home visits, you know, like census workers do, and if so, if there's an issue of people who, like the number of people who are able to do this, could people volunteer?

that's a question. >> so, yes, earlier we said that we'll look at center office and look at ways of reaching out to the board as well as the office to see if there's opportunities to assist sites in making calls. >> what else was i going to say? yeah, i also would like to uplift commissioners colin's comments about emails and how most of the routes that we're taking are most likely in favor of parents who regularly check their emails or are part of these parents splinter groups and not our focus groups. so i guess that i just have a question of engagement and how are we contacting parents as part of these focal groups if the parents are present in the students' lives?

>> i agree with you, there are many families who are not checking email or using email as a way to get information and we did an analysis for the phase 2a families we did not have on record 13% of those families, that do not have email on record. so we than there's that 13% and then in addition to that there may be many families for whom we have an email that they might miss it. so we did plan for that by having our site coordinated care teams which are made up of a variety of staff as well as some c.b.o. partners at school sites, the same teams that are doing the wellness checks so they're used to calling families, going

through a series of questions with those families and then recording that information. and those teams are getting regular lists from our research planning and accountability department, and letting them know who they've heard from and who they haven't. i think that we have heard loud and clear today and i totally agree that if sites are having difficulty with following up with families that we can enlist more people beyond those coordinated care teams to respond. so we'll be working on that. we did also provide an auto dial that went out to all families that received the survey, alerting them to the email and, again, you know, that may have increased some of the take-up, but, certainly, we still have many people to contact. >> okay, one last question. i'm sort of confused about all of the dates that are flying around. there's this date of january and january 25th that are kind of like this deadline to have more information about other schools.

am i correct? but at the same time in the format that was prohibited today it was stated as, like, no -- let me pull it up -- i took a picture of it -- no later or earlier than march -- yeah, no sooner than march 22nd. and so i'm just confused that if the board set a deadline to have more information about other schools come january, why is it taking so long for march? i don't know if i'm forming this correctly. but it just seems like -- i think that this is covered earlier, but it seems like a pretty big gap, like, that this deadline is set for january and specifically the last time that we met that it was set for those schools who aren't included in a lot of these slides which are middle schools and high schools.

and even in this date of march, that was presented today, they're still not included. so where are we as far as route? >> president sanchez: who wants to tackle that? >> i'm sorry, oh, my god, that sounded like a bunch of throw-up. >> i wasn't paying attention. >> i'm trying to keep my brain cells. okay, so there's this date of january, and i know that the last time that we met we were saying, oh, we should all circle back around january to have more information about middle schools and high schools. so i'm guessing that i'm asking with the slide that was presented today with this goal of march 22nd, is it good to

assume that middle schoolers and high schoolers won't be going back for this school year? i guess that's the clear way. because if there's a deadline now set for january and there's another date that is contradicting it, what can middle schoolers and high schoolers assume? >> okay, i'm going to try it. so, one, i think that the january date that you're referring to, refers to the direction for us to present a plan to bring back or a proposal to bring back middle and high school. so in january we'll come back to y'all with a plan specifically around secondary return to in-person and today what we tried to focus on was the elementary return to in-person. that said, there is a date of january 25th, that you likely have seen over and over in the wave, and that is our proposed date for the first 12 schools to

open for wave one. pk, 2, and that's it. and as a last thing to say to answer your question about middle school and high school, where you will see middle school and high school represent side if that phase 2b in the current plan. and we will bring those babies in based on the criteria that i outlined earlier. so that's a 3-12 strategy and that would be the way that middle schools and high schools will come in today, so i'm not going to say that we won't bring in middle schools and high schools, we bring them in based on the kr criteria that i namedr q.b. >> so by january then -- because i know what you're saying as far as the criteria that was stated in the march wave three sector that talked about the specific criteria of, like, middle school and high school students. by january, will we have another

wave implemented that will give a projected date for middle school and high school? will another wave be added on is the question. >> i don't know the answer to that yet. i think that for sure what we present to you all in january will be inclusive of what we have already mentioned for the strategy to bring in middle school and high school. but, yeah, we have been directed to come back with a more extensive plan around middle school and high school, so i'm guessing that there will be a lot more detail included, beyond the groups that we have identified as priority now. that's my good answer. >> yes. just thank you for answering my questions. i know that you guys are probably like, shut up, you know, it's not even your concern. but i think that time is dwindling down and for me as a student leader, especially where the majority of my votes come from the high school students,

they're askin asking me and i'mg you and no one has answers. >> yep. i would say that the answer can be january is where we'll do the detailed plan. but for now we're planning on bringing middle school and high school students back based on that criteria in 2b. that's for right now answer. but more details to come in january. i know that is not the best answer but that's the answer for right now >> okay, i'll take that. and also just clarification -- on the q. and a feature, i think that a couple times before we talked about how we're supposed to support people who need help seeing like the asl interpreters. but it just seems that people are giving public comment in the q. and a , so i don't know what the feature or the q. and a portion is supposed to be utilized for. >> clerk: the q. and a feature is only for the asl interpretation we use it to know when someone

would need interpretation for public comment and that is the only thing that we use on the screen. >> thank you for stating that. i hope that people will listen. >> president sanchez: yeah, me too. thank you. thank you, student delegates. so we will move on and, believe it or not, and we'll hit our advisory committees right now. to the project coming up. so i don't know who is going first. >> hi, mark, this is michelle with the parent advisory council. we were expecting that there would be something else before we were reporting just now. but that's fine. we are ready. let me just make sure that my

team is together. >> president sanchez: apologies. i wasn't clear about that. we'll do -- after this item we'll move up the student assignment policy. >> okay. got it. so should we go ahead and proceed? >> president sanchez: sure. >> okay, thank you. good evening, commissioners, student delegates and superintendent and district staff and families and community members. my name is michelle, and i'm the coordinator for the parent advisory council to the san francisco board of education. before our parent leaders present the pac report i would like to appreciate the dedication of those on earlier. tina is a dedicated advocate for families and always learn asking growing to serve -- to best serve those that she advocates for. and just always impressed by her, thank you, gina, for all that you do, you're an inspiration. and i would like to shout out to

our amazing student delegates. you're so remarkable and so much of what you say resonates with many of us as apparent by the text messages that are lighting up my phone this evening. i want to thank you for that. please keep it up. the world is better when you speak truth to power. and now i will welcome the pac members who are present to introduce themselves. robin? are you with us? >> i am here, thank you. would you like me to go first? >> yeah, why don't go ahead and introduce yourself and then emma and naomi. >> great. hi, i'm robin, a parent of three children in sfsud, and a senior in high school who has been a public school student since day one, an 8th grader and a member of the parent pac. >> i am anna, a proud parent of

a student at r.l. stevenson elementary. and i'm the chair of the native hawaiian-pacific islander parent advisory council. and i'm also the vice-chair on the pac. >> naomi? >> hi, guys, i'm the chair of the pac this year and i have a seventh grader at altos middle and an 11th grader at jewish community high school. i am so privileged and honored to be here today. it's been a really intense call, very interesting. and i'm really proud to be sharing the work with all of you on this call. and i wanted to give a shoutout to the parent advisory council coordinator, michelle. she puts in tireless work for our council and she's constantly teaching and guiding us and

leading this work. so big shoutout to michelle. and then also on behalf of the pac, we to sincerely thank commissioner cook and commissioner norton for all of their service on the board of ed. we appreciate everything that you guys have done. and for your service. and we have so many people and we have 287, it dropped from the 400 earlier tonight, so a lot of people are paying attention. so i wanted to go over the role of the parent advisory council. we're here to represent the parents' voices and perspectives in order to help inform the board of education as they discuss policy and make policy decisions. this is our report for december 8, 2020. this past summer, we identified priorities to focus our efforts on for the 2020-2021 school

year. which include communications, number one. between the school district and the families. as well as between the school sites and the families. and number two, all things related to and, number three, issues of equity which permeate all access to services, including the ability to have one's voice heard. and we tried to distill it down to the essence of what we want to do and updates on key and ongoing initiatives which the pac is actively engaged in right now. so robin will now talk a little bit about communication and distance learning.

>> thank you, naomi. the pac acknowledges that the district is making great strides in improving the communication to families. including using various platforms and channels and to have multiple languages. and we are to understand that sometimes short timelines and the ever changing status of the pandemic can create challenges and effective communication. however, we do have real concerns about long-standing disconnects that are exacerbated by the current situation. we have for example, which many of you have heard iterated in the public comment that on november 7, 2020, during a special meeting of the board of education, district staff provided information on the plan to return to in-person instruction in phase 2a. so in this presentation the students in grade tk through first were included in phase 2a. and then on december 2nd,

without prior communication or notification, emails were sent to families through second grade, and about the interest of returning to in-person instruction. it created confusion, concern for many families. this was a first that many people had heard that second graders were being considered for return in 2a. we heard that some teachers learned about the surveys for the first time when they received emails from confused parents. asking questions and trying to understand if their child's teacher would be returning to the classroom. i know that in my own household that one adult received the survey email of the person who does not do a great job of managing their inbox. and i found out through a text from a friend and we had a mad scramble to find it and i'm a resource person who, you know, was getting insider knowledge and we still had a mad scramble. and we couldn't find the subject line, it wasn't very urgent, so

my partner would definitely not have paid any attention. so today the pac only learned that 32% of the families responded. we have been talking about this a lot in the pac and we really appreciate the transparency and sharing your plans to follow up and all of the comments that have been made thus far. it's been a big point of conversation among the pac this week. and we just continue to underscore the need for the district to continue to improve the communications so we can support principals, teachers, families. we have been looking at some communications sent out from school sites that we thought that were helpful and useful and equity progress and transparency focused and, they responded after the december 2nd survey with an email with a lot of clarification and detail and opportunities to connect and to

answer questions. you know, but this is only one school site. so we know that there can be inconsistencies with other school sites. and we encourage the district to survey all families regarding their preference for returning to in-person learning. we think that it would be great to do this in this way, and so we could get a clear understanding of what the demand could be. and it could help to determine what resources are needed. if we had a better picture of what all families are asking for. so that is howe our high level summary of the discussions in the pac about communications and now i hand it over to anna and my fellow pac member who is going to talk about equity and family voice. >> thank you, robin. the pac agrees that it is important to do the difficult work of dismantling racism and

white supremacy in our school district. we want authentic stakeholder engagement in all initiatives. this is why we want to support the principals who serve at the 40 plus schools that have been identified for this and i have requested more time to do this work. currently, principals feel pressured to participate in a rushed and inauthentic process. what they want to do is to be allowed the time to engage in critical and powerful conversations in their communities. they see this as an opportunity to use culturally responsive teaching and to work together to interrupt the systems of oppression and racism that have led us to where we are today. and it's an opportunity to bring our communities together around

a common goal. i will say this again. to rush the remaining of our schools is to miss an opportunity to bring our communities together around a common goal. so often we have been separated by the pandemic, and program pathways and socio-economic factors and more. the remaining process provides a rare opportunity to come together. to learn from each other, and to engage in collective healing practices. to expect that all 40 plus school sites can effectively engage their communities during this pandemic while simultaneously trying to support students and teachers in distance learning, to connect with and to support students and families to ensure their well-being and to prepare their sites and staff for a safe return to in-person learning is unrealistic and inequitable.

principals want the opportunity to come together with the remaining committee to discuss the challenges around engaging all families in their schools, to learn from each other and to align the process with developing their school plans for student achievement. (please stand by)

>> -- commissioner molina asked for full community involvement

in the naming of all housing sites going forward. we are asking for the same consideration for the communities that have been identified for renaming. the p.a.c. is 100% supporting the renaming of these schools. what we do not support is rushing the process and not honoring parent voices. please help principals in their effort to move this important work forward with meaningful community engagement, and please do not let this be another situation where families continue to be frustrated with the district and feel that they want -- that they don't want to be in the participate or they don't feel heard. thank you. i will now let michelle talk about the areas of the ongoing advocacy.

thank you for listening. >> thank you, anna. the p.a.c. is involved in many different initiatives in the district, including, but not limited to, the alignment and collaboration of the various family advisory groups, the local control and accountability plan or lcap, including spear heading lcap meetings and community engagement around the three-year lcap plan. arranging meetings and bringing the community and families together for perspectives on a wide range of community gatherings, and working to set up a time for p.a.c. members and board members to come together in the new calendar year to discuss priorities on how we can best achieve these

priorities. >> applications are accepted on an ongoing basis. for more information or to request an application in any other language or with any question in general, please e-mail pac@sfusd.edu. attending an upcoming p.a.c. meeting to see if you enjoy what we are doing or if you have any questions about it. our next p.a.c. meeting is scheduled for january 6. wednesday, january 6, and it's

from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. through zoom. p.a.c. meetings are open to the public. we welcome anyone to attend. we welcome our commissioners, student advisors, and anyone. we would love to have you. translation and interpretation can be provided with advance notice, so let us know, and we're so happy to will with comnew members. we're really looking for new members, if that message is not clear. so please contact michelle jacques minegues with any additional questions or concerns. this concludes our report.

thank you for staying up late for us. >> thank you for your patience, as well, and going out of order. so thank you very much. any public comment on this item? >> clerk: please raise your hand if you care to speak to the parent advisory council report. i'm seeing five right now, president sanchez. >> all right. let's do 90 seconds each. >> operator: okay. hello, julie? >> hi. i wanted to start by thanking the p.a.c. for all the hard work that all the families do

without any pay. the unpaid labor that you're putting in for our families is really appreciated, and i would encourage you to borrow the commissioner's language to go outside sfusd's representative and democratic process. i hope they're still here listening to the parent p.a.c. and will listen to the american indian p.a.c. i feel like it's frustrating when these important parent conversations, parent-led conversations with bu conversations are bumped for things like the reopening discussion. i do want to say that while i understand the tension around speed and thoughtful engagement around school renaming, i'm also hearing from some families and educators who had really exciting processes at their sites, and i'm hoping we can learn from what that's looking

like marched to ensure, you know, our families who walk into our communities will see a less racist and more equitable approach. thank you for all that you're doing. >> operator: hello, alita? >> hi, everyone. thank you so much to the is -- p.a.c. as a parent in this district, there's so many times when you

just feel overwhoverwhelmed an. and to have another advisory committee bringing more focus to the work is just so empowering and so reassuring. so thank you, p.a.c. for raising your voice and bringing up the important issues, and the c.a.c. looks forward to advocating alongside of you. >> operator: thank you. hello, brandy? >> hi. my name is brandy, and i am a parent at sutro elementary school in the district. i'd like to add my voices to thank the p.a.c. for all of their hard work. in the school renaming process. my school has been going through that process and the

chair of the school site council, and we are excited to get a new name. a lot of our families, now knowing the history of the person that our school is named for really want to see that removed as soon as possible? we are not a school with a lot of resources? we received title i funding. most of our families are english language learners, our children, as well, and we are just about done with two months of meetings with interpretation and translation at each. so it's sometimes -- i can't speak for all parents in all schools, but i know we have had some parents and children at some schools that have been clamorri cl clamoring for years to have the names removed. this has been a good experience for us, and i know for our

school community -- again, i can't speak for everyone -- we would be really hurt if we would be asked to keep our racist name for another year. so thank you for allowing me to share my perspective, and i'm glad that other groups will be able to share their views, as well. thank you. >> operator: hello, joan? >> yes. this is joan he fferly, united educators of san francisco. i want to thank alita for saying that parents can really engage the staff around renaming. uesf supports the renaming. we know that schools are different spaces, but there are

schools that have larger communities or more diverse communities, and they have a need to engage at a different pace. some schools may just need to be individualized. thank you for consideration. >> operator: thank you. la toya? >> yes, i am la toya, and i am [inaudible] and also, i wanted to respond as an individual, not an apac leader, but i agree with the last commenter's suggesting with the name change that don't have any opposition, and the parents have already been allowed to provide

feedback for the name change should be allowed to proceed while the others that have issues should be allowed to resolve those issues. thank you. >> operator: thank you. that concludes public comment, president sanchez. >> all right. any board members or student delegates want to say anything? if you do, go ahead. commissioner moliga and commissioner collins? >> i first want to say thank you to all the parents. i want to give a special shoutout to anna, my girl moan. she's pacific islander, and tongan students perform very well throughout the country, and they're not even counted in the school district. but she's still here, right? in community, in solidarity to

help advance the work that we want to do for our students. i just want to mention that because there's a lot of folks that also are not recognized in our school districts that are here in solidarity, so i just want to recognize you. the comment around the school renamings. i do support. schools are ready to go, communities are ready to go. i think that schools that are not prepared, you know, we should support them around that process, as well, right? i don't think we should be held up in, you know, causing more stress in things that, you know, folks could probably figure out on their own on the ground. i did make a comment at the buildings and grounds committee in terms of having community input, and i just wanted to give a little context around that. a lot of times when we're doing

work, we're in communities, and i want, you know, everyone to understand that we're going into places where people live, where people have been, some of them for their whole entire lives, right? so for us as a school district, it is important for us to be respectful and mindful of the places that we're going. i think having a process, you know, where peoples are, you know, available to capture the inclusiveness of -- inclusiveness of community is very important. i've had that conversation a couple of times with school district folks, and it's, you know, something, you know, that's not sinking all the way down in people's values and philosophies, so -- sorry. i'm sorry. i lost train of thought.

let me turn this phone off. but i do just want to say thank you again, you know, for the parents for always showing up and for the volunteer work. you guys really are, you know, the true she-roes and heroes in this work. thank you. >> okay. commissioner collins? >> i just wanted to, again, extend my appreciation to families for serving on the p.a.c., encourage new families, if you want to be involved, if you want to given put on policy, encourage them to apply, but again, say, it's the unpaid labor of you all and your heart, and your love for all of our students that makes our district better, so again, just deep appreciation for all of you and for your voice. >> vice president lopez? >> yes, thank you, also.

and i just want to say, you know, looking at our priorities, i think we are aligned, but i am appreciative that you are naming learning in this process and prioritizing learning that's happening virtually, which it is not ideal, but it is indeed occurring, and what learning will look like once we transition back into the classroom. but i stress that because i know there's a lot of phrasing as far as learning not occurring during this time, and i know that's very false, and so i just appreciate you bringing that up and to our attention. >> thank you. any last comments or questions? >> yeah, i would like to say that, umm, thank you, f for yo work and volunteer work, as everyone else has said. i just think about my mom and her responsibility with her kids, and i can imagine each and every one of you have tons

of responsibilities, but the fact that you prioritize your students and your students' career in school, it's truly admirable, and i thank you for all of that work. >> all right. okay. thank you again. i'll pile on the phrase, i think you guys are wonderful, and i remember back to starting back in my first years on the board of ed a long time ago. and thank you anna, all the p.a.c., and stay tuned. we are revising the timelines for the school renaming. i thank you for your eloquent talking point on that. i've been listening, and i've talked to a lot of folks, and other board members are listening, as well, so there should be some communication coming out soon, so just hold on tight. all right. so thank you all again, and we

a are -- our other advisory committee, we're going to move to january 5, so the indian advisory committee will move to january 5. okay. seeing none, we are moving the item on -- oh, sorry. commissioner collins. >> just had a question. is it because of the timing that they were moved? is that because they were put at the end? >> a couple of the folks had to drop out. i didn't expect that item to go as long as it did. it's one of the pit falls of being the president of the board. >> i do understand. i just want to say the parents that are regular volunteers in

p.a.c., it's the beginning of the agenda, and parents that do want to be involved, i do appreciate their involvement, but the p.a.c. parents, they show up all the time, so i would just request that we maintain that structure because they do volunteer and show up at all of our meetings, so i would just like to keep that structure, as well. it's a balancing act. >> it's a balancing act, and they're not coming to every reporting out, but the meetings that they're reporting out, we can put the reopening process after that. but we've been trying to prioritize the reopening, of course, because there's been a lot of demand for that. >> yes, i know. >> it's a balancing act, so i apologize to everybody who had waited so long. so -- but again, we are moving up the student assignment

items, so i'm going to swing it over to superintendent matthews. >> thank you, president sanchez. tonight, we have chief o'keeffe and her team, and they will be presenting this item to you and the community. miss o'keeffe? >> thank you. good evening, commissioners and superintendent matthews. my name is ord o'keeffe, and i'm the chief executive director. the subject of agenda item g-9

is board policy 5101.2. in december 2018, the board passed resolution 10125.891 developing a community based assignment system for sfusd to address concerns that the current district wide school choice assignment system has not reversed the trend of racial eye owe lation. it's complicated for families to navigate, and it's not sufficiently predictable or transparent. since then, the board engaged in a two-year-long development process has been included 12 convening of the ad hoc committee, four virtual community information sessions, dozens of additional

conversations with san francisco families and community groups, case studies from other districts, and policy simulates conducted by stanford researchers. board policy p-5101.2 was heard by the board on december 1, 2020, and the full presentation is on board docs. the policy describes the methodology that supports the board's goals for diverse school enrollment. the policy includes an amendment recommended by staff and [inaudible] and discussed at the december 1 committee of the whole which memorializes our commitment to make implementation decisions in partnership with the community. if the board approves the policy this evening, staff is proposing an 18-month timeline

for implementation because that is the fastest we could get everything ready, and we understand the board wants us to move quickly. will policy does not include actual zone boundaries, the assignment algorithm or diversity categories. that's the hard work that lies ahead during implementation, as we transition from policy development to policy implementation, many policies and procedures will need to be established, su established,. this will give staff the green light to implement student policy decisions in accordance with those policy guidelines. if we need to take longer in order to do a good job, the policy guidelines don't prohibit that from happening. the proposed budget fore implementing the new student assignment policy is

$2.56 million over two fiscal years. we have confidence that this investment will result in eventual savings. for example, we currently spend about $30 million on transportation services because of our full choice system. we believe the goals of availability and proxibility will benefit zones. the majority of the investment is not needed until later in the implementation process once the superintendent and board with ready to approve specific zones. for example, about 50% of the zones are for people to build a new science algorithm and

science and data structure needed to assign new students under new rules. that is a downstream cost, not add immediate cost. the one-time cost less than 50 on are to support implementation, marketing, and community analysis. these are things we need to invest in any ways to address the challenges that sometimes encounter when enrolling in sfusd. we need time to execute well in sfusd, and these up-front investments will help fill that bench. these one-time investments will fade out as we transition to a new way in enrolling students in sfusd. we don't believe there are intentions between those goals and moving forward to implement a new student advisory policy

for elementary schools. we can push this in -- forward in a meaningful way in the next six months without disrupting learning. there are aspects that we'll need to hold space for after schools are back in session in person. currently, families are busy with distance learning and thinking about in-person learning, so we would not want to launch or phase of community engagement until fall 2021. before we do that, however, there is a lot of work we need to do. we need to build structures and teams like teams like an advisory community and community goals, creating explicit meaningful opportunities for families to

participate in and inform that process, and the final results have demonstrate how feedback from families has impacted the decision making process. in closing, the recommended action is that the board approve policy p-5101.2, elementary school student assignments. thank you. >> thank you. any public comment on this iteite item? >> operator: please raise your hand if you care to speak to the student assignment policy. >> president sanchez, i believe that supervisor haney is here. i wonder if we could promote

him to panelist and let him state first. thank you. >> thank you, commissioner norton. i just promoted commissioner haney to panelist, and he should be able to speak now. there he is now. >> supervisor haney: hey, can you see me and see me all right? well, it's good to see you all, and i think we have late meetings at the board of supervisors, but you all are meeting even later than us. this is a challenging time for our students, for our educators, for our schools, and i am inspired by how hard you all are working and how you're stepping up. i want to thank you for everything that you're doing, and not

help to create equality for our students or desegregation. it in fact, unfortunately, has, in many cases, done the

opposite of that, and i really want to thank you and congratulate you for coming forward with a proposal here that i think will get us much closer to a system that will work for families and for schools and for students. i want to thank you, orla, for your hard work. i know we worked together on it for many years, and for all of your hours and all of the families and all of the students who gave their feedback to get us here. i'm not going to tell you what to do, because i know when i was a school board member, i didn't like people telling me what to do. but i want to say thank you for all of your hard work. last thing i'll say is thank you, esther, for all you do.

i also want to shout out to the student delegates. you all are extraordinary. it's just been so inspiring and hopeful to see your leadership and how powerful you all have been and essential to the kmfrgs at a time when we need you more than ever. you've been leading, and we've been following you all. so thank you for leading, thank you for taking this on, thank you for seeing it through. this will make a huge difference for the constituents that i represent in district 6, but more importantly, i believe this will lead us to more high quality, accessible equitable schools for our students and kids. this is a really hard time, and you all are stepping into this moment in a way that's inspiring us, and thank you for letting me crash this meeting. good to see you all. >> thank you, supervisor haney, and i think some of us will see

you at the next select committe committee. thank you so much. judson, you got a lineup there? >> operator: yes, we've got five speakers up. >> okay. 90 seconds. >> sorry. this is michelle with the p.a.c. for judson, i can't raise my hand because i'm a panelist, but michelle and i want to tag team on a presentation. >> operator: president sanchez, should we start with them? okay. go ahead, michelle. >> okay. good evening, commissioners, staff, and community members. my name is [inaudible] to the san francisco board of education and i'm speaking to you this evening on behalf of myself and my colleagues. representatives from the advisory -- family advisory would like to address comments made as part of the board's discussion of the proposed

student assignment system at the committee of the whole on tuesday, december 1, 2020. the advisories appreciate commissioner collins' participation in the discussion, including her questions of us as well as proposals to move the policy to the budget services committee for review and to postpone the decision until the new board is seated in january, and also commissioner moliga's support for the proposals. the advisors deeply understand the need to change the system that doesn't work on multiple levels for so many of our students and families. we also understand that commissioners who have been deeply involved in this process would have a desire to vote on its passage before the end of their term. however -- and i will now turn it over to lisa scherr. thank you. >> i'll be calling on lee right now.

alita? >> thank you. we take issue with some of the commissioner norton's comments. we find them appalling, troubling, and insulting to families and our work and to the values of being student cancered and equity driven. tonight is a perfect example. in all of the public comment that we've heard, we have heard one comment in spanish and zero in chinese or mandarin or cantonese, and zero in other languages. our sign language viewers are commenting that the sign

language interpreters are having trouble keeping up with the commenting. when we use tools, we find that we are really only engaging with our most privileged families. we are hearing from families that they simply don't have the ability to engage with us right now. the pandemic is impacting families' income, food security, scarcity, and commenting on a project of this size is unrealistic and insensitive to families' realities. also, this pulls staff away from other krisscally important projects that need to happen right now, especially as we plan for school reopening. thank you. >> hello, alexander?

hello, alexander? hello, la toya? >> hello. it's me again, la toya fisher, and i am calling again because i would love if you would not vote on this and let the new board vote on this. this is less not desegregating schools more so it is about politicians and keeping the affluent kids away from the nonaffluent kids. until we are considering how to better integrate our schools, let's hold off on integrating a new student assignment policy. thank you. >> thank you.

hello, julie? >> this is julie, and i think some members -- most members of the board have heard my thoughts about this resolution. i think in terms of family engagement and the conversation about whether or not family voices have been listened to, i think it's frustrated when representatives of parent p.a.c.s and communities impacted by segregation say don't move forward with this, this does not meet our needs, and the board decides to move forward any way. it sounds like it's something that you're planning to do. if it does go forward, then i hope that -- you know, i hope you're right, but i have serious reservations. i'd like to reiterate the call for this to go through budget committee specifically to look at the impact it would have on-site budgets and free and reduced lunch for families because the percentage of

families who are low-income and qualify for free our reduced lunch, there's a lot of term equity in terms of the school sites, and i'm concerned that simply existing around some students and creating a process that families who have been marginalized has the potential to blow up site budgets and impact black and other marginalized families. so i appreciate the recommendation to send this to budget and not vote on it tonight. thank you.

>> hello, carmen? [speaking spanish language] >> thank you for taking my comments. what i can say on the voice of the parents, a lot of us have more than one kid in school, and sometimes we take jobs that are close to our job sites, and if there's an emergency, we can head to the schools faster.

in my case, i live on the outskirts of the city, and so there's not too many options to have my kids clear to my job rather than near to my job site. and i would like to organize meetings to consider the parents' opinions or even pick the meetings that have more meaning to us. thank you. >> operator: that concludes public comment, president sanchez. >> thank you, mr. steele.

okay. commissioners? >> before we moved on, i did want to mention some of the concerns for our a.s.l. interpreters, and i understand there was maybe lack of guidance and apologies on our end as far as the length of this meeting and the vast topics and terms that come up, i think, you know, of course these are thicks that we are learning through, and we'll definitely build on and get better about, but if we can learn to check in with our interpreters as far as breaks or any communication that they need, and again, just wanted to appreciate you for your work. >> i think, vice president lopez, we've been coordinating with them regarding the time frame of the meeting, so we've been discussing with this prior to the meeting. everyone was aware that we were going to go at least until

10:00 tonight. >> sorry. if i could jump in tonight, this is one of the interpreters. i didn't realize that we were going to have a break, and it would be great if we could have a break. i'm exhausted, and it's impacting the quality of our work. i'm sorry. >> i'm not against having a break. i can eat something, so how long would you suggest the break be for? >> at minimum, 15 minutes. that would be great. thank you. >> i support that. >> all righty. everybody take a bio break. >> thanks.

>> anybody want to go? >> i can go. >> go ahead. >> where's my friend, orla. >> good evening. i am here. i apologize. i'm having a power outage issue. i'm sitting in the dark, but if i put any camera on, you won't see me any way. >> i just wanted to ask some questions, and we can go back and forth. i had a good conversation earlier around the budget, and i had a lot of questions, you know, about how much we're getting ready to spend on this,

which, to me, it's a good price tag. so orla, can you breakdown everything from the positions, how this funding is going to get scaled out, how things are going to be sunseted, what position is actually going to remain, you know, that's going to be ongoing. could you just start off by responding to those questions? >> absolutely. yes, commissioner. first, i hope all board members got a copy of the fiscal impact analysis memo. it should be in your inbox, and that breaks everything down, breaks all the costs out and talks about what's one time versus ongoing. and 91% of the costs are one-time, and it's -- there's just one item that we believe may be ongoing, and that is

building up the infrastructure within the educational placement center to have a skill set to manage and monitor the zones, because once we draw them, it doesn't stop there. we'll be adjusting them based on normal projections, and we also want to make sure we're analyzing the monitoring system and coordinating all things related to the front and back ends of the data system. that's the only cost that will be ongoing, and all of the other costs are a one-time costs. i might have mentioned in my talking points that the initial costs and up-front costs are all going to be focused on communication, marketing engagement -- communication, marketing communications, data analysis, data story telling, work that we believe is important any way for us to be

doing in order to change the experience that families are having when they're enrolling in the school district, and creating greater transparency. we believe that changing to a zone-based system is going to be a paradigm shift for the whole organization and the city, and if we don't effectively communicate that consistently and get initial in order up front to develop all of the messaging that we need to make it easily understood and transparent, and if we don't do the kind of community engagement that we've committed to doing with our community advisory bodies and the development of zones and the diversity groups, and the tie breakers, we believe that's critically important to successfully implementing it.

so those costs are one-time, and they will help us operate, but the vast majority of the costs come once the zones develop. so the next six months do not the work once schools are back full time, to do effective community engagement, we have to design it and plan for it in a very thoughtful way, and so that's all the work that we're contemplating doing in the next six months, and hopefully continuing the community research partnership with stanford and developing contebt that we would share during the community engagement -- content

that we would share during the community engagement process. i don't know if that answers your question, president sanchez. >> i appreciate that. could you talk a little bit about where this funding is going to come from to kick start the process? >> yeah. to kick start the process, we're anticipating the funding can come from the savings that we're having in transportation this year, so as we have not been providing transportation services up to this point.

>> you can -- you know, you can name two schools that are the most integrated, starking and rosa parks. i've heard from families that they can be, like, two separate schools within a school, so the work that we need to do if we want to meaningfully integrate

schools is also address antiblackness, which was also brought up by a parent. some parents choose schools that are well resourced, so it as a district, we need to verify how we place resources in schools, but additionally, we have to work on antiblackness, and also antiasian bias, as well. in my neighborhood in chinatown, i've heard parents say that they appreciate certain schools, but they wouldn't send their kids there because they're all chinese. those aren't things that are going to get involved with an algorithm. i believe if we really want meaningful input, we need to address communities that are most affected by segregation,

and that work is the antiblackness work that we're doing, the antiracist work that we're doing, and also, creating meaningful programs that families want in their neighborhoods. and so -- and additionally, 2.5 million is a lot of money to spend or to commit to spend when we could spend that money on making our schools safe and for our educators and families. so i wish -- i'm not opposed to this conversation. i want it to happen in a meaningful way. i've heard from families that they won't feel like it's happening in a meaningful way, and i'm a parent, and i don't think it's happening in a meaningful way. so i'm opposed to moving forward with this plan. i'm not opposed to this plan overall, but i'm opposed to moving forward with approving this plan at this time.

>> anybody else? commissioner -- okay. student delegate realmanza? >> hi, thank you. i was reading over this resolution, and actually, it was brought to my attention a couple months ago by a student, and they actually had this concern, and i wanted to see if maybe by asking this, it could clear up this confusion. he was telling me that oftentimes people decide a school in a different neighborhood because it might be better resourced, and i think this is a common narrative we have in the s.f. community where if you go to a school where there's more money, you're going to get a better education. and i was wondering how to tackle that, this disparity

that, like, people are seeing, and how we're addressing that in this resolution? >> i absolutely appreciate that question. student assignment alone cannot address any of these things, but it is directly connected in multiple ways. so with our current student assignment system, because students are resources, families are resources, and the most important resources that any communities could have. unfortunately, under our current student assignment system, we have a situation where there are some schools that get very, very few requests, and therefore, their enrollment is really low, and they're underenrolled, and they are underresourced, and then, we have other schools that

people are clamoring to attend and get into, and they are overresourced. so we are hoping that by designing a school zone system, we will create robust diverse enrollment in all of our schools, but as commissioner collins said, it alone cannot work. so if you've got a diverse enrollment, you automatically won't have diverse schools. it's one piece of the puzzle, but it's not the entire piece. it's a role to play. >> thank you so much for answering the question. so looking at this level, when we think of zone, we think of a community. like, if you're in the excelsior, you can go to cleveland, like, that would be named. so in what ways are these

researchers or your community -- or, sorry, your committee taking on these factors that certain neighborhoods are already segregated just because of oppression systematically because i know when i read zoned, i knew there was more segregation that went into it. >> you're absolutely right. there are residential patterns in our city that have been formed by red lining policies and policies that have impacted generations of families. and so there are tensions between the goal of creating proximity and diversity because of many of these patterns, but luckily, with the support of some researchers and graduate

students at stanford, we were able to create thousands of different zones to test the equation of is it possible to create more zones that would create more diversity, create robust enrollment and resources. that's why we want to invest in community engagement because we want to develop those zones in conjunction with feedback from students and family members. you need to draw parameters to draw the zones, and so there are a lot of decisions that we need to make over the next few months before we can model the zones, and there are a number of issues that we'll neat to engauge in and discuss as part

of the provision of designing the zones. >> okay. i have another question, if that's okay. i want to take up the public comment earlier about people want to have a school for their student that's close to their jobs. are there going to be ways to appeal these zones for these circumstances or is it set and there's no special circumstances in this case? >> yeah, thank you. so the way we're contemplating is that every student will get assigned to a school in their school. there will be an exception, for example, with siblings, because we're going to continue to honor the sibling tie breaker. so if a sibling is already enrolled in a school that a younger sibling wants to go to, and they don't live in the zone, we imagine that would fully be a situation where a student would be out of their

zone. but other than that, as much as possible, we want to have as few exceptions as possible. because what we've looked at with our student assignments and the board, we've been working hard since the 70s to create integrated learning environments. when we look at these past policies, we see the initial intent often works, and it's all the exceptions that work against it. so even if the current system, if everyone ended up being enrolled in the schools that they were assigned to, our schools would be more diverse than they otherwise are now. and there are so much things that works against the board's policy goals. it's going to be important to not have all of these exit

falls that won't work against the goals of robust diverse enrollment. >> thank you for answering the questions. >> thank you for asking the questions. i look forward to chatting with you about this. [please stand by]

>> even the zone piece is and think we could have a k-8 in each zone as a farmer parent who has gone through that wasn't a possibility when we are entering into the system at kindergarten many of the thought we could land a k-8 was really not a pos ability so, that meant more access for families moving forward. i know the zones haven't been drawn yet but that is something that carries with me and i think the language emersion discussion and language programs to understand how that is going to roll out and how going to be key to the zone on this something else i'm going to hold and as we move forward with this and then of course, absolutely a really

authentic conversation with families who otherwise we don't really usually get to see who are engaging in addition to of course our parent leaders who are dedicating their time on a regular basis but it's something that will be important to engage in and i think you know the modernizations of addressing a long-time outdated system and if this means the investments in the short term both in one-time cost and as well as if human capital to look at not only be grounded in community and responsive to students and families and that the data systems that we need in order to be more real time in our analysis to shift when we need to and to its great when we need to make changes and i just really think it's due time for those modernizations and there are other pieces of our operations and i've been very focal and supportive of and i see this is also a piece of that

as well. thank you. >> commissioner poll inns. >> thank you. i just want to reiterate what parents are saying when we talk about school quality, some of that have is based on bias. parents perceived value of a school when they don't have experience with it but i also want to say there's a lot of families when they're talking about school qualit quality thee talking about resources so i appreciate student delegate for bringing that up. what we're really talking about when it comes to resources the school portfolio and we're not talking about that as families and that is something that staff is talking about and so it feels like there's this, it's like where do we place k-8 schools or immersion programs and where do we place language programs or

other special ed arts programs. they drive parents' decision-making and their ability to feel like they have access to programs that they want and if we're not going to have that conversation and say we'll change like an algorithm, then the process is wrong and so i'm very frustrated because i feel like as a board, i don't know if other commissioners are aware, i'm not aware of how we're making decisions on programs and are we willing to put more programs in areas where we don't have them. are we willing to pull programs and redistribute them. those are tough conversation and if we're not having that conversation we shouldn't be happening a conversation about schools, like where we place families because where we place them has to do with what is available and i also want to say as far as diversity goes, that's

another big, we all just talk about diversity as if everybody wants it and it's great and it's a superficial understanding of diversity because as a society we chose not to be diverse, right. we keep having government plans and we keep undermining it and some of that is because of the anti blackness, anti asian bias, anti immigrant bias, families equate school quality with the number of black students or low income students or students that are homeless. i've heard parents say you know, if there's too many kids from the projects they don't feel they're safe and additionally, there's also communities of color that want to be in schools that are pro black, pro asian, pro latin x and they're choosing schools where their culture is valued and visible and their language and valued and visible and until we show them at every school back lids are loved and they are loved and asian families are heard, and that

also drives whether they feel like a school we're going to do that and we haven't demonstrated and you have to demonstrate it so we can pass this but we're not listening and we're going to do it and we haven't done it and trust us. i'm just, again, reiterating what i'm hearing from families and we have to put our money where our mouth is and that's a much more difficult conversation than a an algorithm and it's the latinx resolution and black city solution and those are resolutions that make communities feel valued and visible and talking about where we place our resource zoos every family does have access to a immersion program and arts programming and the same safety and support all families want for their kids.

thank you president sanchez for allowing me to speak again. >> did you want to go, norm. it's the last meeting so you might as well do it. >> either way, sir, if you want to go first no problem. go ahead. >> yeah, i just, the thing i want to talk about with our board is, you know, i think the school re-assignment issue is real. i know it's important so i want to first acknowledge that the other thing i want to remind us and just think about it and we're funding this and a savings that we located because of transportation and i want to really own in on that because we're saying that we're

identifying that we're getting ready to allocate resources to kick-start this and i want to bring the conversation back to, yes, which is fine, right. we can but we cannot ignore the fact that we have an equity issue around other components that are priority right now for us and we have the data meeting the other day with and i'm just going to say it, right, and so every single school in the district has at least one so families and kids are going everywhere in this school district to find a place and so,

the data shows that you know, our kids are not doing really well, right and so, your priorities is where your money is. priority is where your money is. if we're going to rehall a system, which i agree and we should do. we should do it based on the feedback we're receiving from the parents and commissioners. we have to continue to do that and also push the work forward to close the opportunity gap with our kids. and so, for me the issue around the funding, that's the thing that pushed my ears up the most, right, it's like ok, if we're going to do this are we ignoring this? are we saying that the school re-assignment system is a priority over black kids, latin x kids, and it's not in terms of

how we're allocating the funding we prioritize that over these we can move it all forward together but in a way that makes sense for the school district, right. we're always talking like we're in a budget deficit and we need to scale out these budgets. i had a great conversation earlier today and you know, i brought up the fact that we all have to be flexibility in these times and to me we have to have that conversation and we can move this and.

>> we're getting ready to build this but what about these other issues around our black and brown folks that haven't been really, you know, attended to yet. financially, financially, we talk a really good talk in this school district. really good talk. but the data shows that we're all talk right now and we all talk right now and that can change. we're getting ready to have budget discussions on tuesday. right, and i do support this effort. i think it's definitely needed and with all the feedback and everything and at the same time we need to be real with ourselves and really have a full conversation of what equity means from a school

re-assignment system, specific initiatives and et cetera and et cetera. that is all i want today say about that and i'm going to pass it over to commissioner norton. >> thank you, commissioner moliga. there are a couple of points i want to make. first i wanted to ask ms. o'keefe if you can talk a little bit about the equity features that are built into the framework for this policy. i think it's really also a dimension that we should highlight and i mean particularly piggybacking off of commissioner cook's comments and specifically we've built in some equity features for students and public housing, for example, and how some of those will work in this policy, could you talk about that? >> >> yeah, absolutely.

and going to be thinking about what programs are available where and how we can make sure as we draw the zones are providing everyone for equitable access and this is much greater and this is going to create a paradigm shift and require all parts of the organization to work in concert in service of our students and making sure there's equitable access. when drawing the zones we're going to look at a variety of demographic data points to make sure that we create diverse zones and that's just one aspect of it is grouping schools together in zones that students will have and choice of those schools and then there's the question of how do you assign

students to schools within those zones, like, what is the mechanism for doing that and this is where we're going to use a variety of strategies including having tie breakers so there's an equity tie-breaker, the specifics of it have yet to be all ironed out through community conversations and looking not asking students for individualized student data but rather looking at where students live and profiles of residents within that area to give preference to families who are living in an area of the city that have historically have had the least opportunity and have the least resources. we're going to use as we assign students to school and diversity

and and whatever programs are unique in the city, that no matter where you live you will have access to them. so for example, every child will have access to a k-8. all children have access to the language pathways available and students with ieps will have access to the choices and programs that meet their needs and so that will be part of the work as well. and discussions about programs and where they're located and opportunities will all be part of the process of designing and the zones. we're going to give thought to transportation to minimize the cost of transportation to minimize --