as of august 27th, 2024. special meeting workshop on resource alignment initiative. meeting to order. roll call. miss lena. present commissioner. bogus. present. commissioner fisher. present. commissioner. lamb. here commissioner kim. present. commissioner sanchez. here. commissioner. wiseman. ward. here. president. alexander. here. thank you. public comment for the workshop item will take place during item c, just before the workshop. item s of usd will provide childcare for this meeting on the first floor in the enrollment center at 555 franklin street from 6:30 p.m. to 9:00 p m or whenever the meeting ends, whichever comes first. excuse me. it doesn't go past 9 p.m, space is limited and will be provided on a first come, first serve basis for children ages 3 to 10. at this

time, before the board goes into closed session, i call for any speakers to the closed session items listed in the agenda. there will be a total of five minutes for speakers. are there any speakers? no in-person speakers for our members of the public who are participating virtually. if you care to give close a public comment on a closed session item, please raise your hand. seeing no hands raised. all right, then i recess this meeting for closed session

and enable the attendees video. translation. go ahead please. wow i don't know. translation. go ahead please.

eunice and luis, can you hear u? thanks, everyone for your patience. there seem to be some technical difficulties. i'm not even sure what they are, but we'll hopefully we'll start soo.

translation. go ahead. please thank you. as of, usd is offering interpretation services in spanish and cantonese. if you need interpretation, please dial the following phone number after dialing. please introduce the pin number. this message will be repeated in spanish and cantonese. juan carlos, el distrito escolar unificado de san francisco de servicios interpretation en el idioma espanol si necesita interpretation por medio de google meet, por favor, marca el siguiente numero telefonico seguido de la clave de la

critica, uno de una nueva tres, dos nueve 686, por favor, la clave de cinco nueva nueva six nueva six seguido de la tecla. gracias. cantonese interpreter, please. thank you. so i have kajang waiting. to get. you're going to show you how you did in google meeting in. how are you might yet say but say but say sam. sam. but see how my chat yet. look, let me go back. i'll say thank you. thank you. that concludes translation services. i just wanted to note, i think that our asl interpreter is in the attendees versus the

panelist group, just to notate for staff. i think it's asl interpreter. and then. all right. good evening everyone, i am reconvening the special workshop meeting at 6:43 p.m. thank you for your patience as we got everything set up. and thank you to those of you who are here in person, as well as those of you who are joining us

online. my name is matt alexander and i am the new president of the board of education and almost exactly 28 years ago today, a few, few, maybe a week or so off i stepped into a classroom at balboa high school on my first day of teaching in sf, usd, and so i've been involved with this district for a long time as a teacher, as a principal, as an sfusd parent, and for the last several years from the school board. and so it's just a real honor to be playing this new role in a school district, a public school system that i really care deeply about, and i want to start by saying that i'm going to very much miss laney mahtomedi, my predecessor, who had to step down from the board last week. i talked about her many exemplary leadership qualities at the press event last friday, so i won't, repeat all of that today,

but suffice to say that i'm deeply grateful that i had the opportunity to collaborate with her closely and board leadership during my time as vice president and we're all going to really miss her on the board. i am also grateful for phil kim's willingness to step up into this new job. welcome, commissioner kim, i know and respect phil a lot from his work in sfusd, he knows he's been on the staff here, and now he's joining us as a colleague. and so we're glad to glad to have him, and to my colleagues in the public, i just want to say that the next four months are going to be a very critical time for sfusd, i believe this is the right team governance team for that moment, we're going to need to continue insisting, as we have, on transparency, on accountability, and on ensuring that we represent the vision and values of the community right? i mean, that's our job. for those of you who haven't heard us say this, we as a school board are your

representatives, we represent your vision, your values. we bring that to the table tonight, we're going to be talking about the resource alignment initiative that i know a lot of folks are very have legitimate concerns and, and are skeptical about in many ways. we are going to be that voice of you as well. i mean, our job is to be skeptical when staff brings forward their plans and obviously to support our staff in doing the best possible work, but to ensure that it really reflects the vision and values of our community, our amazing community here in san francisco. and so, you know, we're going to keep working to stabilize sf usd's fiscal and operational health to rebuild trust with families, to keep our focus on student learning and student outcomes, and to really create the public school system that this great city deserves. so i'm looking forward to continuing that work with all of you, before we move to our agenda, i need to give the report from closed session, which is as follows. it's very brief in one matter of anticipated litigation, the board, by vote of seven ayes, gives direction to the general counsel and now

we are going to move on to our next agenda item, which is the election of the vice president of the board. so the way we do this type of election is it's by voice vote, a second is not needed for nominations. and it is permissible for board members to vote for themselves, colleagues, you will be voting by name if there is more than one nomination. but if there is only one nomination, we'll just vote yes or no. i declare nominations are now open for the office of vice president of the board of education for the year 2024. are there any nominations? commissioner lamb? thank you, president alexander, i would like to nominate commissioner weissman ward. she has demonstrated throughout her tenure as a board member, just her ability to bring governance to this team, her deep commitment to our students and our families and the vision,

values, goals and guardrails that have been set forward by this board. and she is, the right person at this moment to also support the transition, given the leadership transition, this will be her second time around as vice president and i, humbly nominate commissioner weissman ward. excellent. are there any other nominations seeing? none, i declare nominations closed. and so the nominee for the office of vice president of the board of education is lisa weissman. ward. miss lenhoff, please, let's have a roll call. vote. mr. montgomery. yes, i don't know what your last name is. interim miss lee, commissioner. bogus. yes commissioner. fisher. yes, commissioner. lamb. yes, commissioner. kim yes.

commissioner. sanchez. yes vice president weissman worked. not yet. awkward, but. yes yes. she telegraphed. well, actually it was. there were enough votes already. yes, there was. and i'll give an enthusiastic yes to finish it out, i am very pleased to announce that lisa weissman ward has been elected vice president of the board of education for 2024, and i am very grateful that she has agreed to serve in this role, with me, as we as we move the board forward for this year. so thank you very much. all right. and before we move into public comment, i also want to see if our student delegates would like to introduce themselves briefly. we have no langston was here last time, but if each of you could tell us we have two new student delegates this year, as we do every year, and it's. yeah, we're super excited from a round of applause, so maybe you just want to share your name, what school you're from, and anything else you would like to

share? okay hello, my name is lauren and i'm a junior at lowell high school, and i'm honored to be serving as our interim student delegate. welcome. hi, everyone. i'm langston montgomery. i'm a junior at wash, so far this year has been a lot, but it'll definitely get better. and i'm excited to do this work with you guys. i've been throwing myself into public service work for a little bit now. i was lucky enough to be picked by a superintendent, matt wayne, to be on the high school task force a couple years ago. that'd be freshman year in high school now, and i was i was lucky enough to work on the sac the following year as a sophomore and now again progressing. i have landed myself here and i'm excited to work this year with you guys. welcome, welcome to

you both. we really we're really grateful for your service, all right. we're now we're going to move into public comment, before i begin, i want to point out that there has been some understandable confusion and some justified complaints about public comment. former president mohammadi and i have been working together this year in actually trying to, improve how we do public comment. so we've been trying out some new approaches. some of the things have been working, some have not. but i want to be really clear that our that our goal is to ensure that as many people as possible can speak to the board and give public comment as they desire and as is legally required under california law, but also to begin our meetings at a reasonable hour so that we don't go late into the night if we have if we have hours and hours of public comment, then the business starts very late and then we may be taking important votes or making important decisions at a time when community members who want

to hear about those decisions or watch those decisions, it won't be able to because it's so late. so there's kind of a balance we're trying to strike. and so we would appreciate any feedback you have. we're going, our board office staff is going to be making some recommendations and talking with the other commissioners. so if you have any specific feedback on public comment, please feel free to email me. my email is matt alexander at sfusd. edu and we're going to be coming forth with some recommendations in the next month or so about some possible adjustments. the other issue i want to point out is the difference between agenda public comment and non agenda. public comment. tonight we only have agenda public comment. again that's something we can discuss. moving forward. but so if you do have public comments and if you've submitted a card or if you're speaking online, please make sure to connect your comment to the to the resource alignment initiative that's on tonight's agenda. since that is the only agenda item. all right.

let us begin. oh, the other thing. i'll say is that board rules in california law do not allow us, as board members to discuss comments or attempt to answer questions during public comment time. if appropriate, the superintendent will ask that staff follow up with speakers, but we can't engage in a back and forth or discuss your comments because it hasn't been agendized beforehand, and the last thing i'll say is public comment is not, you know, it's not it's not like i just said, it's not really two way community engagement. so we are working on also improving methods for the board to engage in two way community engagement. and please reach out to us if you have suggestions on that as well. you can always email us, but we're also working on different ways of improving our engagement, all right, let's move into public comment. okay. i will call, people in groups of five. so when you hear your name come line up at the podium.

you'll use a little button there. you'll press that and each speaker will have one minute. we have a timer here, that so just be mindful of your time. i will call mary loveless. safaí supriya. anna gloria, and lisa, please line up at the podium. news12 this one. okay. good evening everyone. my name is mary. i've been in this school district for many years, but in the position as an elementary advisor since 1986, when i was still going to college. and i want to say that, to quote a good friend of mine, starlet, who just said, i don't know what to say, i got to use her words. i don't know what to say. you've got to have a heart.

if the people in sacramento say, closing schools is not good, why are we even talking about it here? that's number one. number two is you remember about the mothership. that's sf community school. we're the people that you got all the best practices from. how can you close any small schools when maybe it seems to you that it's a drain on the money, but it's really not a drain. and if sacramento says it's not a drain, it's not a drain. thank you. good evening everyone. my name is supriya ray. thanks for taking comment today. i just wanted to speak briefly about the school closures and resource alignment

issue topic. i've talked to a lot of parents with all the advocacy i've done in the past few years, and what i'm hearing very, very commonly is people expressing concern about, you know, whether community input is being taken into account in reality. and also over what is going to happen. i understand the initial list will be coming out in september and folks are really unsure about what is going to happen after that point. what type of consultation they'll be, and in particular, if any schools are closed or co-located or merged, what the plan will be for kids, that and staff and teachers who would need to move to another locatio. i think it would be really helpful to make sure that we keep lines of communication open with the community, because when folks don't know, there's a lot of speculation going on and a lot of anxiety, and it would be very helpful to keep people as aware as possible. thank you.

the resource realignment information that people shared live was not shared in the dac meetings. the survey from stanford was not really representative of the communities. and i've got a joke for everyone. what does teach for america, kip? three runs for board that didn't work, and a thirst for making money off the backs of privatization of our children have in common. what do they have in common? the punch line was delivered friday by the mayor, and the joke's on us. please don't congratulate yourselves for further allowing the destruction of this school district being hollowed out by a chief of operations who cannot stop giving money to private consultation contracts. my child did not have a teacher all last year because of onboarding. being stalled. i got told that fingerprinting took 90 days. maybe it took 180. so i'm fed up. i'm tired of it and there's no excuse. there's an excuse to

close schools and privatize is disgusting. thank you. thank yo. hi, i'm anna klafter, high school principal and president of the united administrators of san francisco. in the midst of looming school closures, there's the i ry connection and a statewide teacher shortage. we now have a hiring freeze of some of our most important staff in schools, our social workers, our counselors, our paraeducators, and more. us school leaders have candidates who've been offered positions as early as april or may, some of them moving to the bay area to work for us. and now they're being told their job might not exist, despite the money being in our budget for these positions this year. now we're being told again to do more with less and to jeopardize our students safety and well-being in the meantime, it's not okay. for. good evening. i'm

lisa francioni. i'm a parent of a fifth grader and a kindergartner at san francisco community school. i'm here mostly to ask questions, and i know you can't respond, so i will email them to you as well, because i really do want to know the answers. as a parent with very limited time working full time, two kids, it's hard to pay attention to this process that has been very opaque, has not had good community engagement, and i just am truly want the answer to these questions. my biggest one is why this process has felt so rushed and why it went from one year ago, almost today, that school closures were one of the many options that were going to be explored, and now it is the only thing that is talked about. it is the thing that is on everyone's mind. what happened to those other solutions? i really want to know what happened. what is the plan for cutting central district staff? where is that? we know how much is being overspent on that. and you read the reports, the fiscal analysis report i have yet to see anything. i

would love to see that. i want to know where is the thoughtful process for what are we going to do for transition and many, many other things. many questions. i will email you, but i feel like the community engagement has completely been lacking in. everyone's very stressed and has a lot of anxiety around this. thank you. so good. so i want to speak. oh, do i need to say my name? rory abernathy, teacher, i want to speak to the fact that three years ago we were talking about all of the things we could have done to prevent this disaster, and people did the exact opposite. now we have a charter school person here, so we must chain ourselves to buildings if needs be, to not allow charter schools to come into this district because it's a road to nowhere. and then i want to say that jobs for justice came forward and said, we need to start applying for the infrastructure money, the income reduction act, so that we can green our public buildings. it it produces income which

would prevent school closures. because you this has happened all over the country. many, many people have applied for this money and have not seen any applications from the city of san francisco or sfusd jobs for justice came here specifically and said, when are you going to apply for the income reduction act grants? it's unlimited funds to green our public spaces for the next ten years. thank you to biden. and so that could prevent, provide revenue that will prevent closures and charter schools, reduce class sizes, increase teacher wages, all of the above. so let's not three years from now be in the same position and have not applied for that money. thank you. thank you. i will call the next group galen, michelle, alexia, erica and kathy again. galen, michelle, alexia, erica and kathy. hey, y'all. my name

is galen. i'm a parent at san francisco community school, president of our parent action council, and i got to say, commissioner alexander, i don't feel like this ra process is matching our vision or values. just streamlining school closures ahead of everything else. when we know that school closures will not close the district's budget problems within five, maybe not even ten years. closing school costs money like the $1.7 million that superintendent wayne tried to get you to approve over the summer. thankfully, that meeting got canceled, to hire an outside company to manage closures, i'm really glad that was, put to the side for now, because i want to know how our most well-funded administrative offices in the state of california can't manage this internally, and i prefer a

little eye contact from the table. thank you, anyhow, i agree with what mary said, and thank you all for being here tonight. hi. i'm zhiwen. my fellow parent, michelle, just very gracefully allowed me to come speak. i didn't prepare anything. i'm not going to. i am a teacher. i have two kids at san francisco community school. you guys want to introduce yourself? i'm maisie. what grade are you in, third grade. i'm in. i'm in first, i'm not going to stand up here and explain all the things that you've been hearing already. i am a single mom, it's exhausting to do this, to have to stand and i woke up at 6 a.m. this morning, got the

kids to school, worked all day, picked them up, grabbed a pizza on the way to get here so that we could show up and show how hard it is to do this work of being a parent, getting our kids to school, and now having to worry about whether our school is going to be open next year. just it's not okay. and i need you to see the face of this. enzo. enzo, enzo. hi, my name is alexia. i'm another sfcc parent. i have three kids at sfcc, two in first grade, one in fourth. i don't have much to add. we have only heard rumors. i know that you've heard that this outreach has been great. i don't know what outreach we're talking about. if it's the survey that went out last year that seemed

to have all the answers before we provided the, you know, hours or maybe some of the meetings that i heard happen last year, but that were unspecific, very, very badly communicated. i have so many friends, parents at the school who don't even know that this is happening or are sort of surprised when you tell them, hey, when it's happening, it's happening next year. no one knows and we don't know why. and we're supposed to trust that it's going to happen for the good reason, for the good of our children, that somehow you are going to find a great solution for our families, multiple kids in a better school. no we don't. i just don't trust that. and so, you know, thank you for listening. hello my name is erica. i'm an arts educator and proud sfusd parent, and i just would like to start by reminding

everyone that less than a year ago, doctor wayne himself said that school closures should be a last resort. and my question to you all is what other levers have been explored in order to close the budget gap? like really, what other levers have been explored, especially when significant data shows that school closures themselves can be quite costly up front? this will not solve the budgetary problems. and so i ask you agai, what other levers have been explored and what can we do to make sure that we're not balancing the budget on the backs of communities who are attending fully enrolled schools, communities that have passion. look at the parents and the students that have shown up tonight to advocate for their schools. we're talking about fully enrolled schools that are in need of your support and not confusion and a rushed process. thank you. hi, my name is kate.

i'm a parent at star king elementary. my kids are in first grade and third grade, i have a few comments about the re process. the first is that i would like the board to consider that no matter which schools are on the list, we will all be impacted. so if there are three schools in a neighborhood and one of those schools is on the list, we will have the critical job of welcoming and supporting those families that are experiencing that trauma. and you can expect us to then show up accordingly because of the fact that we will all be impacted, the second thing is, on the subject of trust, i think parents are really if it's okay that i speak on behalf of all of us, that that that we're really upset, not just about the closures that are coming, but that this is the same district that has landed us in this mess.

so what changes are happening at the district level that will ensure that going forward, this won't continue to happen? and the last thing i'm sorry, i would love to ask is instead of consistently talking about closing, streamlining, eliminating what might sfusd be doing to better attract and retain families, we are, we let us not assume. thank you. we are. let us not assume that we can. enrollment will continually decline. we are here because we care about public education. thank you. thank you. i will call the next group. gina rory. william eva, and sadia. gina. rory william, eva and sadia. hi, i'm gina scher. i'm the reading intervention specialist and

second grade math teacher at yick wo. resource alignment was supposed to bring a social worker to every school it's been budgeted for. someone's been hired for our position, and yet their hiring is blocked. they're not there. we're supposed to have we have a mod severe kinder through second grade special day class. there's a person that's been hired for the position. something's wrong with onboarding. they're not there. my school has the same money in its budget that we had in the spring. when my position was approved full time by central office and now i'm told there's only money for point seven, there are unfilled coaching and reading specialist positions in this district. hiring blocked. no options for me. no positions on the jobs board. this is not right. i work hard, i move children who don't read and turn them into readers. who i'm

sorry, i already went out of turn, but i did want to correct it and say i'm really tired. it's not the ink, it's the inflation reduction act. i just want to correct that. for those that are listening, thank you. thank you. hi, my name is eva. my pronouns are they them. i'm a parent of sfcc student and a social worker in san francisco, i want to echo what everyone has said that to align with the values of the community and to rebuild trust with families, please get meaningful feedback from the community regarding resource alignment, which to me feels like a fancy word to hide school closures, right? we do want to talk about our resources, but i think being transparent, like alexia was saying, that many people don't know what's going on and that job needs to be better done of

informing families and communities what's going on, closing schools is a self-fulfilling prophecy. if you're closing schools, families lose trust. enrollment goes down, so echoing what everyone has said, what are we doing to attract families and work with what what is working? i mean, sfcc has been going for a long time, and something's going right there, we're scaring families. thank you. thank you, my name is will patterson, and i'm a former resource specialist with the school district. and i want to talk about the school closure and how it impacts the stress level of the job. when you don't know what's coming next year, it's very difficult to stay focused on your students. i also want to bring up the. i teach two students right now who are in private school. i work as a private practice tutor. those students both last left fusd because they weren't getting the attention

that they needed to deal with dyslexia. we have 15% of our students who are dyslexic in the school district, and we have a dyslexia memo that's 13 years old and has never been sent to principals, ever. in the school district. it specifies what support students with dyslexia should receive. both the students who i tutor did not receive that support when they were in the school district, and both of them were in this district during that 13 year period. so you have principals that don't know the resource specialists were never emailed, never given a training, never given any information about this memo, except in limited one on one contact with a supervisor on some cases, you could solve this and bring back enrollment to the district and avoid school closures. and high. does these words resonate to you, equity, fairness, transparency. thriving? yes. i think all of these words, we have heard them

in sfusd. so my name is sadia and i have been a dedicated employee of sfusd for the past five years. a doctor, william cobb elementary school, and i have trusted my two daughters to enroll them in sfusd. and so with that being said, after hearing all of these parents and teachers and i can't find a words to express myself, you know, i don't have much time for that, but i feel like a little bit frustrated that, we are treated like this, not heard. we send emails, we come and we show up and everything, but none of these, and at a point, we sometimes feel discriminated and because, well, it's, too much saying. but i hope, we will be we will have like, the opportunity to be heard and

listened and treated as a, as a usda employee like they should be treated. thank you. thank yo. our last two speakers are brandy. brandy markman and brandy bone. president alexander is, can can we take another public comment from someone? okay okay. so we're going to go to online after the card. so we. okay. hi, everyone. my name is brandy markman. i'm a san francisco public school parent and a member of the organizing committee of the san francisco education alliance. everyone here should google advancement projects, stop closing public schools. the advancement project is a civil rights organization in dc. a couple of myths that were under-enrolled. so we have to close our schools under

enrollment is a construct created by business minded consultants who define enrollment relative to other schools, notions of efficiency and their own ideas of what schools should look like. we know what schools should look like. school closures. also, as a previous public commenter said, further declines in the district enrollment because the next closest school after a neighborhood school is often a charter school. i also want to call out that the san francisco education alliance joined the boards of the richmond district dumb club and sf berniecrats in expressing our outrage that mayor breed appointed a pro-charter school. former kipp employee to oversee our public schools, and he was doing before he was on on the board here. matt wayne hired him to over to coordinate a school closure process. we were very disappointed. to hello, my name is brandy. also brandy, but but i'm here with coleman advocates and i'm just extremely

frustrated that we're going through another year of understaffing and hearing the staff outside before our meeting happened. today. i really feel like we wouldn't be so under-enrolled if we weren't so understaffed. and i don't think that school closures are going to fix this issue at all. it's only going to inflame it. it's going to it's not going to heal it. and we're going to just see our schools balloon in numbers. it's going to stress out our staff, and it's really going to traumatize a lot of our black and brown students, especially those who are coming from smaller school settings into those larger classrooms. and it's just going to push them further out of our district in more than one way. and so i don't think there's any just way to close our schools. and i think that we really need to think about how this is played out in other states where not only our schools have been destabilized, but definitely our neighborhoods as well. right. so

thank you. that concludes in-person public comment. moving on to virtual public comment. please raise your hand if you care to speak to any of the items on the agenda. each speaker will have one minute. can we please have that repeated in spanish and chinese? pasamos a los comentarios publicos. usted tiene un comentario publico. puedo levantar su mano para poder. hablar acerca de los puntos de la cada persona tendra un minuto. muchas gracias. and i'm also gonna come and signifying when you come on. thank you thank you erin go ahead please. yes. hello. my name is erin with parents of san

francisco, i want to ask a question regarding how the scores are going to be validated for which schools to close for example, what if more than one school has a tie for the same score? then what would happen? and if there are a set number of schools that need to be closed, or where the limit would be cut off? thank you. thank you. miss marshall. thank you, young sister. good afternoon everyone. i'm virginia marshall with the naacp. i'm sorry, parents, that we're not there with you tonight, but please know that i definitely support the cause. and we're with you in spirit. we're very, very disappointed

that this board and this superintendent have decided to go along with school mergers. at the beginning of the school year, we said to the superintendent, a community meeting, the starting of school is very, very exciting for parents and the community at large. wait until january to get if you're going to do if you must do school closures and mergers, wait until january 2025. now, this first board meeting of this school year, parents cannot do homework with their children, feed their children a proper dinner. they're downtown at five five franklin protesting what we need to do is get rid of this board. get rid of this superintendent, because closing schools will be to no avail to our students and our parents, especially black and brown students. so president alexander, we are not happy with this call tonight. thank you. thank you. tom hi. yes, i'm tom,

my wife and i are special education teachers and parents in the district. i think what a lot of families and educators feel is there's a lot of distrust. we're still dealing with this empowered, you know, empowered debacle. and who know, every time we get our paycheck, which for teachers is coming up this friday, is it going to be correct? how do we know if it's correct, getting hold of someone? i just try to find the payroll calendar a little bit ago. and this this does go with resource alignment, because how can we trust that when they close schools, you know, they're doing it with these things in mind. and these are big things. so we can't just say, okay, we're going to close schools and everything will be better. and that's what it seems like, the district and superintendent are doing without thinking about all these other things that have happened to educators of distrust, people not being onboarded, people leaving. you know, my wife and i talk about maybe not coming back, but is that thought about or is it just the bottom buck? and that's what

it seems like for this district and the superintendent. things have gotten worse and not better under the superintendent. i want the board and them to consider that you have to cut you off. thank you. vanessa hi there. good evening everybody. my name is vanessa. i'm the executive director for parents of public schools of san francisco. and like virginia marshall, i'm not present, but i am present, because the spirit of public schools brings communities together. it's much more than just a single resource that could be a commodity. it actually, you know, has an impact on communities, i did publish a blog today, so go ahead and read it. for all of my, you know, kind of sentiments. but i just want to tell all the parents in the room we're doing the right thing. let's keep voicing our concerns. and my hope is that with matt

alexander's leadership, we are going to be able to come to a, you know, a kind of middle place. thank you, thank you. all right. jennifer. hello? can you hear me? yes, we can hear you. okay. first, i was really alarmed to hear an in-person comment or ask the board to give them eye contact. i certainly hope new commissioner kim was not one of those, folks who wasn't paying attention. because, honestly, commissioner kim, i got the kids from kipp that you canceled out for not planting. and it it really is alarming that after your entire career, there you are unable to track speakers. oh, come on, he did resource alignment. but getting to the point, i'm more concerned that information in your draft presentation for tonight was taken out from the final presentation, including information the community needs to know like that. you do not

intend to have a welcoming school for every school that you close. that leads to dispersal, which leads to permanent enrollment loss. this is why nationwide school closures don't save money. it is ridiculous that we are trying to pretend otherwise. it is time for you to do better by this community. no closures, not one. thank you. rajni yes. thank you for the opportunity to comment. my name is reginald montoya. i'm a parent of a second grader at jose ortega elementary school in the mandarin immersion program. i echo all of the comments about the harm and inequities that school closures will cause. in addition, we strongly urge the district and the board to not consolidate language programs, any of them. we believe that

maintaining co-location of language and general education programs helps ensure that our schools reflect the rich diversity of san francisco. it's what keeps many of us in the public school system. we believe that wall to wall immersion programs will result in demographically homogeneous schools that could result in segregation and really set our district back. integrated schools give our kids a much more well-rounded education. we found a model for success at jose ortega, and we invite you to visit us, and we ask you to not disrupt that model that has resulted in full enrollment, high teacher collaboration, and if you must consolidate, we ask you to actually seek authentic community input. thank you. thank you. alondra hi, my name is alondra and i am a parent of

a second grade student at san francisco community school, yesterday i had to console my child who was in tears and distressed because he overheard me speaking about this meeting, and i just i'm here to say that i'm disappointed with the lack of leadership demonstrated by the school board and the lack of transparency throughout this process. i'm here to advocate for accountability and asking you to be responsible to the children of san francisco that rely on this district. please think about the impacts school closures will have on the current generations of students. what are the alternatives? i'm curious what you guys are thinking about, and a lot of families here demonstrated and advocated for potential alternatives. so what is this process? what can we do as community to be involved, to think about how to prevent school closures? and i feel like we're all in like we're here as advocates, as families, as educators, as you know, community organizers. and we're here to support our children and

ask you, like, what can we do to make sure that these school closures do not happen? thank you. anna. hi. i'm also a parent at sf community, my main issue is just i don't understand. when we started treating our public goods like they should be run like a business. this is the government. it's not meant to run at a profit. we are meant to spend our money on our people and, you know, like everyone knows that these closures are bad and i understand they were under budget. but if we can find budget for police, we can find budget for schools. economics 101 public goods. i'm done. thank you. darcy hi. yeah,

first, i'd like to thank every public commenter from the sf usd community you've shown more care and concern for public education than anyone sitting on this board right now. sf usd is hiring pigs at the trough from privatizers and charter schools while you starve public education. shame on every one of you. it only took 22% of voters to out your predecessors over schools reopening. so how many voters would it take to recall you for these closures? you need to fire matt wayne now and keep these schools open. thank you. penelope hi. i'm a public school parent in the district of two little girls, and i've been watching this process all through last year. and what was, i think, a really transparent process or relatively, you know,

public and transparent about coming up with the criteria. feels like it's gone into a phase of being sort of shrouded by mystery as it undergoes the summer like equity audit and things like that. and i just wanted to encourage the board and the district to, be transparent. after you announce the list about what the composite scores are, how you calculated them, you know, open up what that data is and explain the why behind what our obviously as we can all see really, really painful decisions, it just i understand perhaps why it's been that way over the summer, but i think it will cause more harm if it stays in a black box. and it will mean that that process of coming up with the criteria in the spring was kind of for naught. if it feels like it gets picked out of thin air. so that's my comment. thank you. thank you. rhonda good evening. board commissioners and superintendent wayne, my name is brianna battista and i am a very proud

parent. but tonight i'm calling in as a mom. i've had children that are now alumni of s.f, usd, and i have a new little one, as some of you know, who will be entering the district. and this was by far the most stressful time i have ever had of choosing a preschool, because i had to choose one that i hoped wouldn't be closed. can you imagine the stress of that on top of already letting a baby go back to preschool for the first time in over? i don't even know how many years to put it in perspective, my youngest child is now a sophomore in college next to the baby, right? so it's been a very long time since i've had to do a preschool process. it should have been fun. it should have been easy. it was full of stress. this district cannot continue to run this way. parents need transparency. we need to be partners in this process, and you guys just need to be open and honest. school closures should not be your something different. make it

work as. thank you. violet. hi, my name is violet vasquez and i am a third generation alumni to sfusd, my grandmother went to school out here and my parents and now me. and if i have children, that would be the fourth. and i went to balboa high school, where my spanish class had books from the 1970s trying to teach me about myths of mesoamerica, and we had to share books, you know, and so it's not surprising that this administration still hasn't gotten it together. it's actually a heartache, and i've come to sfusd many, many times to come and advocate for equity in our schools. and it's not a surprise that this administrative building or company or entity is bullying those families and children that are most vulnerable in our cities. because i don't hear

lowell on the chopping block, i don't hear washington on the chopping block. i hear schools that are actually doing the work and doing it well, like june jordan, like the community school, like the schools that the children really love to be at, that our families feel included and held at. so please don't shut down our schools. look for alternatives. thanks. thank you. samsung. caller go ahead. hi my name is alejandro garcia. i have my daughter in a public school as well, i am i've been in a lot of meetings, and i think we have a problem in communication between the schools, parents and school

board. is everything a hot mess? because the school district is taking decisions without parent, without people at school, teachers, principals, everythin. and that is the big problem. our communication. we are the same community. and three groups are totally apart. it's very unfair that artificial intelligence from stanford are making decisions for parents just because of financial issue. the school district have a lot of buildings, a lot of assets that should be using instead of plotting the schools. so i am echo the other parents, try other alternatives. thank you. thank you. caller go ahead, please. hi. yeah, my name is

adriana castillo. i am a paypal alumni. as my fellow friend said, my brothers went to school out here. my 40 year old brother went to mcateer high school. if you know what mcateer is, it closed over ten years ago. so, mr. president, you probably remember that. right. and then what is that here? academy at mcateer. let's go. you reopened after closing is on the chopping block. so we're going to repeat it. my 40 year old brother again. you go to school as a 50 year old immigrant from el salvador. you threw him in that school, closed it his junior year, sends us to a different school. think about the trauma. think about the black and brown lives. you are affecting. because that's who's affected. not lone wolf, not all these rich folk, no low income immigrants like me and my family. i don't know how y'all sleep at night. thank you. allison yeah. i just want to

invite each of you, especially doctor wayne, to come out and get a preview of how this process is going to play out where a galileo, when a teacher. quote unquote, consolidation happened last year. and now we have classrooms that have more students than there are desks. and i think each of you should have to experience what my son experiences every day, which is not knowing if he will get to sit down in class or have to stand up. so you do that. you go spend a day seeing if you're going to get a desk today, and then come back and tell us all. if you still think you're doing a good job. robert. hi, my name is robert. i'm a parent of two sfusd parents or kids, and i'm

most intrigued by why matt wayne was given a raise this year, i mean, obviously we're in this mess, and, i don't know, giving a raise to that person just doesn't seem correct. on top of that, i have noticed that sf spark draws a six figure salary from that nonprofit, yet i don't see any any of the donors to that nonprofit. so i'm really intrigued, especially with the newest addition to the school board. like, is kipp a donor to that nonprofit? i don't know, i'm only asking a question because you don't share the donor list. i've seen nothing that says that closing of schools save money. so i mean, at the end of the day, i mean, i guess because it seems to be you've already made up your plan. the best us parents can hope for is maybe the doj gets

involved. thank you. autumn i'm. hi. my name is autumn and i'm the parent of two children at leonard flynn elementary school, which is on the border of the mission, and vernal. i just wanted to share that one of the reasons i joined this community is because of its really rich diversity, and that comes large in part because we have both a general education program and spanish immersion. what's really cool about that is there are often children who join the general education track that come in as monolingual english or spanish speakers, rather, and so there are there is diversity across both tracks. it's a really special school. i'm like completely honored to be a member of the community. and so i just want to make sure that people are considering some of the diversity and the richness

that we get from having those programs in one space together. my daughter's fourth grade teacher has been a member of the community for 21 years. it's a really, really special school. lots of teachers stay there for a long time and are really committed. so please consider these communities. thank you. thank you. that does conclude virtual public comment. thank you very much, and i want to just, say a couple of things as we move on to the next topic, which is the workshop conversation. one more first. excuse me. we're we're public comment is finished. i put in a card. so 40 years ago i ran for school board and the guy that won was a real estate developer. he ended up in prison because he was trying to bankrupt the school. and we finished public comment trying to sell the school. no, no, i said, we've already finished. so he needs to

submit a card. you're going to end up in prison. thank you. all right. so you can profit here on the land. that's what it's all about. so the first thing i wanted to say briefly is that there were some public comments about hiring being blocked or delayed, specifically social workers, counselors, paras, special day class teachers, and we've heard the board has received many other, complaints and comments on that topic. and just wanted to note, well, first of all, that, it's not even about the number of positions. it's really about the number of students that are being impacted by those, those delays in hiring. and it's not acceptable. and, the superintendent, i have talked and i've asked and he's agreed to do an after action review on our hiring process at our next regular board meeting

on september 10th. so we're going to get to the bottom of what has caused those delays and learn lessons from it, because we know that, you know, we're we always need to be getting better. i know people have been working really hard, but it's just not acceptable to have to not have kids, to not have staff in our classrooms, for our kids. and so we're going to have a full discussion of that at the september 10th board meeting as part of our workshop on resource alignment, so i just wanted to alert the public to that. and then we're going to move into our conversation about resource alignment right now. and i just wanted to just appreciate everyone who's made comments, you know, i, i, i as a teacher and later as a principal have, have witnessed and seen the past history of school closures in san francisco. and frankly, we do not have a good track record at this district of school closures. it's the only word i could use to describe some of them, frankly, is racist. and so

we cannot do that again. and i think there is a commitment from this board that if we move forward with with a plan, it's not going to be like it was in the past. and so i just want to say that i think the comments that we've received are received are so important. i mean, we had a conversation in june that was all focused around the need for equity. the board said that that needed to be the number one priority, and we increased that criteria. the superintendents can talk about that, but i just really want to validate a lot of the comments. we've heard the history in this city of the impact on low income families, black and brown families, and, and also the need for more transparency, for more honesty, for explaining more details. the board, you're going to hear us asking really tough questions, right? it doesn't mean that we're not open. we are open. it doesn't mean we're not supporting the staff with their work. we are. but we're going to be asking some very difficult questions, because those are the questions that that you deserve answers to and that we all deserve answers to questions

about central office spending, about why we're doing this, about what the alternative options are, again, we need to get this right, and we need to center students and families in whatever process you know, whatever comes out of this, this plan. so i'm going to turn it over to the superintendent, but just wanted to really, really appreciate and say it's very valuable. and we really, really appreciate people coming out. and the folks that spoke at home as well, so we're moving on. the two agenda items are, linked. the first one is the update on the process for a new school portfolio for the 2526 school year. the second one is the student assignment tiebreaker, for potentially closing schools. and the superintendent will explain all this. and then so there's going to be a presentation. and then the board is going to ask questions and engage in discussion. and again, our role as a board is to be skeptical, to push to represent your vision and values, in line with our goals, our academic

goals, and in line with our guardrails, specifically the one on resource allocation, which says the superintendent will align resource allocation with transparent communication about how the allocations are baselined sufficient to operate all schools while addressing inequitable inputs and creating more equity and excellence in student outcomes. and i think that actually, that's the board's expectation that really has covered a lot of what we've already heard tonight. so, just as as you stay, hopefully folks can stay and listen, that is our job is to sort of push on that, reflect on that, and hopefully get to a give the staff the feedback they need to produce a plan that meets those standards. superintendent wayne, thank you, president alexander. and also, just first, just a few logistics to start, we typically have these meetings as workshops because there but we're going to do this around the dais and so we have at least if you can just share if anybody needs the printed presentation. and then what i did is, yeah, at least.

and then what? it's on board docs too, as well as what i did was we uploaded some slides that are excerpts from this presentation, as well as just as a few others to provide guidance on on the discussion tonight. and so i'll put that on the zoom right now. and this is all uploaded to board docs for anyone who wants to follow along. correct? yeah all right. yeah and thank you, president alexander, for your opening remarks. and i want to second appreciation, my appreciation of hearing from the community, you know, we started the a new school year just a little over a week ago. and it's always an exciting time to start the new school year and welcome our students and families. and i got to go to schools from seeing our preschools all the way to our

high schools and saw the excitement and energy, but also recognize that we're starting a school year different from others, where the challenges we face are already front and center, you know, and i had parents approach me talking about this resource alignment initiative and what it's going to mean for the future. and, you know, and i understand and recognize that we're talking about making decisions that will meaningfully impact our students, our families and our staff, and in ways that, as we heard tonight, will feel, you know, could could be upsetting, disruptive. concerning and, you know, will lead to change. and so i want to honor that. that's where many people that's how many people are entering this room and are entering the school year. why it's important we though move forward. and what i remind myself when i'm out of school and looking at our

students like, so when i'm at tule elk preschool and we are welcoming our new preschoolers and transitional kindergartners, i'm wanting the best for them. for this school year, but i'm wanting the best for them for their next 13 years. and we know that overall, the status quo for our the trying to maintain the status quo is not working for all of our students and particularly for our students who we, you know, have been most underserved by this district. and so these are decisions we're needing to make to set those preschoolers, those tk students up for success over the next 13 years. but they're tough decisions. and i do not want to minimize in any way the impact that they're going to have on our community. and that's why we say we're handling this with care and transparency. and so that's why we're here tonight. i just want to be clear. we're not asking the board of education to make any decisions tonight. we're also not sharing our school closure plan tonight. but we did want to speak and talk about the process we've gone through and what to expect in the coming months so that we can

do this in a way, as commissioner alexander said, that does not repeating some of the mistakes we've made as a district in the past. so you see, tonight we're going to share just where we are in the school portfolio development process. and then we had a workshop in june. it was at the end of the school year, so we thought it'd be helpful to remind people of where we are. and then there are a few topics that the commissioners wanted more information about, specifically how this relates to our enrollment policy, you know how this connects to budget stabilization, as well as how we're transitioning and supporting the transition for families and staff through this process. so we're going to share about those. and then we'll have time for discussion. and so first we talked about the process that we're going throug. and we in march started engaging our community. and we said we're going to develop our portfolio on multiple data points and looking at what are our commitments to educational

equity and excellence. the board has been very clear actions we take, how we align our resource, need to support our vision, values, goals and guardrails as well as what did we hear from the community should be important considerations. and then what? then we're going to do an equity audit. and as well as an environmental audit. and so to as president alexander said, we heard very clearly equity needs to be a inform. this process. and in fact, we started off by asking that of our community. and that's something that other districts have not done typically. and we looked at other districts, the criteria that school that districts use is enrollment building use and maybe academic performance, but we haven't found a district or up front. they ask about criteria like we've asked about, like historical inequities in neighborhoods in a community. so we're taking all of that, and then we're going through this design process. and i wanted to spend a little bit more time on

this. we shared this in june but didn't really go through this slide. and so we're starting off with what we call our composite score. so that's we needed some objective way to say how do we start considering schools and what criteria would you use to consider schools for closure. and again, we didn't want to just say enrollment and building use because we knew where that was going to end up. so we are assigning every school what we call a composite score based on our three criteria equity, excellence, and effective use of resources. we also tried to be very transparent that we need to have school sizes that allow for us to have predictable resources at our school. we do want to use our buildings. we've invested millions of dollars into, you know, upgrading some facilities that we want our students to take advantage of that. and we're asking our community to do the same in in november. so we want to maximize the use of our facilities, particularly our new ones. we want to follow through on our commitments to equity and

excellence, which include providing a high quality curriculum, high quality instruction, as well as the support to serve the whole child. and then we want to have clear staffing and budget plans that schools can count on year to year of what they can, what they know they'll have and not have to go through. what we're hearing continues to happen. this churn of what's going to be available. so we have all that information now we're using that to develop scenarios based on multiple data points, like i'm going to speak to in a moment. we have an updated enrollment policy that we're going to implement. and so looking at things like population density or the enrollment or where our programs are placed, and while some of those were captured in the composite score, that's about individual schools. we're also using that to look at our whole system. and then we're doing an equity audit that will be conducted, that's being conducted by a third party, by stanford, center for education policy and educational policy. and as well as looking at the environmental impacts. so what does this timeline look like up

here? this is the steps we've taken so far. i do want to just say how valuable our two phases of community engagement was. we had two town halls with, you know, with thousands of participants. we had over, we had 16 in-person community sessions, and we did surveys as well as just showing up at like parent advisory committee meetings, community other community meetings. and just to hear directly from our families. what was very insightful about the hopes, because our hopes for you know, how we can improve things, but as well as the fears and concerns. and so now we're working on drafting our scenarios and looking at them through the equity lens. and we're going through an iterative process where we're revising them based on the feedback we get. and now we're in sharing where just to give again the community and the board an update on our process and then on september 18th, we'll be sharing our recommended school

portfolio with the staff and the public. so then we're going to talk a bit about what happens after september 18th. but before that i want to share the relationship between our new enrollment policy and an updated student assignment system and school closures, mergers and co-locations the board of education of five years ago passed an updated enrollment policy recognizing how frustrating it's been for families who enroll in our schools to basically say, here's 72 schools from which to choose. you tell us where you want to go to school, and we'll do our best to get you there. sometimes families get their first choice. sometimes families get their 20th choice, and there's no was, no predictability around that process. and it often led to families not being able to send their schools to where they live. and it has not resulted in the diversity that we need, so we the board passed a policy to have a more neighborhood driven enrollment system. and student assignment system using zones.

and then that policy implementation has been put on pause. it was paused during the pandemic before i started, and then it hasn't really been picked up until now, where we're making sure that we're going to implement this policy change. and so we want to do it after we determine our new school portfolio, because we don't want to create zones where we have schools that are potentially being closed and then draw boundaries around schools that won't, won't continue moving forward. so we're creating these zones after the decision around school closures. and so from february to may is when of this coming school year, we're going to go through our process to establish elementary zones and also update where our special education and language programs are located for consistency and stability. we heard about a parent talking about how concerning it was in preschool to enroll. think about where their child is going to go. we in one of our community sessions, we heard about a family who had their child in preschool and a special education program at one school.

different school for tk than a different school for kindergarten. we, you know, we want to have, you know, pathways and special education. and for language that make sense. so for 2526 and this was a big question for the board. we will use our current assignment system, and we you know, and we're going to share one potential change to that system based on our policy in 2627, the new assignment system will be implemented for grades tk to five. and i'll speak about what might happen in secondary. so that was one key update to a lot of the questions that the board had. another key update is why are we doing this if we hear this isn't going to solve our budget problem and we're not presenting this as solving our budget problem, i know people, i always say this, people feel like it's a euphemism about using our resources that this is a resource alignment. but this is really is how do we use our resources best. and that process has been looking at how we use our resources wisely. how can we get new revenue, and then how do we cut costs. and we've been

looking at all of those areas, and i hear i'll skip to the, yeah. and we looked at all of those areas. and as someone said, we needed to turn over all rocks to see how we can improve our fiscal situation. and so we did. we are still going through that process. last year, we did achieve our goal of $103 million in budget balancing solutions. we did that through reducing central office staff, eliminating vacant positions, staffing union contracts, all of these things here, which you can go back and look at our budget plan that we presented. but and we knew this, we still have to continue to reduce our budget for 2526 to achieve stabilization. but this is as you said, this is not going to be the solution to achieving that fiscal stabilization. what this is a solution to, though, is how do we use our resources to best support our students. and this is why we are still moving forward with this aspect of resource alignment, because

the question we're asking is, what's a better use of resources? is it better to try to provide everything we know our students deserve, which is not just a classroom teacher, but as we talked about, a social worker, instructional coach, those kind of supports in and try to do that in a school with two schools with 100 students in them, or one school with 280 students in them, right. which is still a very small school by any standard. and those are the questions we're asking ourselves. and we've concluded that it's a better use of resources. we can better support our students, not by trying to maintain buildings, but by trying to provide in those buildings the resources that our students need, so while there is a relationship, we will show when we present the plan because the board has asked this, that if we have if we meet our goal of increasing our capacity and not having so many unused spaces, how is that better for students? what's why is it better to have that school of 250 versus 100? we will be

presenting that as part of our plan. the last. but so that was a question that the board asked. and our community has asked the last area has been what does the transition look like? what does the communication look like. so, you know, before september 18th, we are trying to share a lot about what's happening. we're working internally with our site leaders as well as our central office leaders, our labor partners and city partners around this, and then with our as we get closer to the announcement, you know, we're sharing this is why we thought it was important to have this board meeting share additional communications. and, and sharing our detailed plan for families, staff, students, labor, partner, city partners, or public and community based organizations. and when we share our plan, it's going to be translated into our seven main languages accessible. we're going to speak to the school communities that are impacted and try to be direct, honest and sensitive. and so we

plan to be out in the schools as we make these announcements to hear directly, immediately from our school communities and then follow up over those next two months before we bring it to the board, back out at our schools at least twice at each school to have those face to face conversations, to hear the questions and concerns so we can come back to you and say, we have, you know, we have heard what the concerns are. here's how we're addressing them as we go through this transition. then the last thing i want to share, before opening up to a discussion, is, again, just a little bit more of the picture of what happens from september, really through the end of the school year. as we prepare for 2526, we'll be working with staff to support any changes to the employment, their employment status, working with our labor partners, recognizing, again, like we have said, we're going to we heard from it tonight. we're going to have staff who have been in schools for decades and understanding what that means to make a to make a change. and but we know our staff are committed to serving

the students again regardless of the physical building. but really working with the kids who they care about, who in front of them, and then supporting our families through any change, recognizing that, you know, they're going to be entering a new school community. so that means, you know, talking to them about being right up front, clear, like here is the school that you're assigned to. here's the process. if you want to do something different, here's where you can get your questions answered. and then just being, you know, operationally ready, like we know as commissioner alexander said even up to now, like we don't always have the best track record. so we're thinking we want to make sure there's enough desks at the school. we want to make sure that there's enough working restrooms. we want to, you know, we need to make sure that all of that is in place and then lastly, building school communities, you know, we're going to have students joining other school communities. families should have conversations, school site councils should meet, pta should meet, aipac should talk, our other advisory committees should talk. so setting all of that up, and that again is the work to

happen from september and then from the board taking action from december to the end of the year, the last thing i want to say is specific transition support and why we are bringing forward a policy for first reading is we are going to present to our families, you know, here is the closure plan. here's where your student will be assigned. we don't want there to be any guessing for that. but families might say we want an option to go to another school, so we're going to allow them to apply and go through the process. and in our current policy, we have these tiebreakers that basically allow preference for siblings if you live in the neighborhood. so we're asking the board to change its policy just for 2526, to add a tiebreaker for students who go to closed schools. and we wanted to bring this now so we could stand up in front of families on september 19th, when we go out to the schools to have those conversations and say, you know, we have put this in place and you can know the board will support this process if you want to apply it to another school.

so that's why the second agenda item is there as a first reading, so again, i know i shared a lot of information just ending. i want to go, go back to i started talking about our kindergartners, but again, this is going to impact the whole system. and one of our goals is that students graduate from college and career ready. and langston mentioned being on our high school task force. and one of the things that came out of the task force is that our students want opportunities, and they want options, right? they want to know they have a breadth of opportunities to explore their passions and interests, as well as different options of how to do that, whether that's going through career pathways, whether that's being in a larger school environment, a smaller school environment. so we're still committed to providing those options, but doing it in a way that's sustainable. and that sets up, again, those kindergartners to know that when they go to their high school, those options are going to be in place and not subject to these year to year changes that happen when we're continually in this cycle of not having enough

resources, being a district that, you know, is still organized as if we have 60,000 students when we have 48,000 students. so you know, it's how we can deliver on conversations we've had with our community about what does a quality high school experience look like? what would it be? how would it be to enroll students where it's not such a guessing game of where where their families go? so with that, i know, work to address some of the questions that were raised at june. i'm sure there'll be other questions. and discussion. we'll open it up to commissioner president alexander to lead the discussion. thank you, superintendent wayne. so again, board colleagues, our job here is really to represent the vision and values of the community, to ask strategic questions as much as possible, so keeping things at the sort of level of understanding, as much as possible and, if we can, it would be great to refer to specific goals or guardrails

which are up on the wall there so that, you know, again, it's easy to go down a rabbit hole, but like, let's, let's meaning into the specifics, but let's try to stay at the high level and reflect what we know as, as representatives of our community and the way that we've articulated those and really push and sort of, you know, push, push on on the superintendent and staff in a helpful way. so that they can ensure that the plan that they bring forward is meets those standards. so is anyone feeling like they want to start? i see commissioner bouguer's hand over there. i kind of like a clarifying ask, is there any space now to give some time for our state folks to give any thoughts or input on kind of the process where we're at right now, or is that not a part of what we're doing at this point? no, we're not right now. i think we're going to have a full fiscal report at the next, at the september 10th, board meeting. okay well, i still ask the first question. yeah. and

just just want to recognize i asked the some of the team leaders from resource alignment to be up here in case there's specific questions. and part of the reason for that, commissioner, i would say, is, as the superintendent mentioned, i think this we all know that closing schools, there's actually debate about how much money it saves, actually. right. and we can i think there might be that might be something we want to talk more about here. but it is first and foremost we are not going to close our budget deficit by closing schools. right. so that's just to be very, very clear. no, that will not happen. there is no way that we can it is impossible. we'd have to close all our schools and that way we wouldn't be a school district. so we will. so that's not the primary purpose of doing this, although there are some savings. and so that's why we're not focused just on the fiscal impact. but really focusing on the educational impact. so go ahead, commissioner bogart okay. cool. thank you for that clarificatio. i guess then if we could just start lifting up, i think a lot of concern i've heard from the community around kind of what alternative steps have we kind of taken as a district and kind

of how is what is being presented the representation of kind of what is in the best interest of kind of the educational needs of students not really seeing that embedded in this here. and if the district could, i guess, start to address that. yeah. and maybe in responding to that, superintendent wayne, if you could think maybe connect it also directly to our goals. right. as as he's asking about the educational needs of students, we've we've outlined those clearly. right. one second here. yeah. okay. just want to highlight, this was in, in some of the attached materials. and when i say, like, we'll provide specifics about what's the difference in terms of the educational experience that students will, will have, right.

we did share some of the examples of what that will, will mean. so like in 23, in the 23, 24 school year, we started with 21% of vacant positions, not filled. we are in a better place this year, although because it keeps happening, it feels worse. and we're going to talk about that on september 10th, as you said. and, you know, we had classrooms staffed by substitutes. and so, you know, when we have fear, you know, and so the most important thing is why we you know, invested in improving salaries for our educators to meet our goals and guardrails is to have well qualified teachers in the classroom. so the fewer classrooms we have, again, where we're not trying to spread our resources so thin, the better chance we have of having qualified teachers. and then it allows us to use some of our resources for instructional coaching, we also shared about how, sorry, can i just follow up? i just want to make sure that was clear because you said

that. oh, kind of quickly. and so you're saying that to get fully staffed schools, having fewer schools is going to help us do that. correct. having fewer example of why that might? because i don't know. i'm not sure that's obvious. right. so when we have, so right now when we when i say we're spreading our resources too thin, right. it means that we still have classrooms that can not by design but are have small, you know, have small student numbers that we're needing to sustain to keep offering the program. so for example, you know, we have bilingual classrooms where we have because we have so many programs across our schools, we have smaller small classes below just the 20 to 1, which is the class size we're looking for. and so what ends up happening is those classrooms either become combination classes. actually, that's one of the data points i'm going to share. or we do have a teacher shortage in finding bilingual teachers is really difficult. so we'd rather have to find fewer bilingual teachers for to support classes

of 20 than have so many classes below that. that's that's an example of what this looks like. sorry, i interrupted, yeah. no, no, this is good because i think we go through this data a lot. you are you represent a lot of the questions. the community asks. we're familiar with this data might not be obvious what it what it means. so here's another one, as an example, we have a lot of schools that have only one teacher per grade level. and again, not by design, and so if we had two teachers per grade level, that helps. but first of all, for our students, particularly at elementary school, when kids are going k k5, that's six years of school, they get an opportunity if they have two classes at grade level, to interact with other classmates. and then our teachers have an opportunity to collaborate with at least one other grade level colleague, we have said, i mean, here's how important teacher collaboration is for us. we release students every wednesday early so that teachers can collaborate, but if

they don't have a grade level colleague to collaborate with, it makes it much less of a relevant experience. yes, they help each other and everything, but it means so much when you can collaborate with a colleague and then also what ends up happening is, you know. well, yeah. so that's that's another example. then the third one, i'll give is, you know, just as i shared in our language pathways, we have a lot of combination classes where students are in, you know, it's a45 combination class, third, fourth combination class. and while we you know, our teachers do their best to meet the standards and make sure kids are getting everything they need, we do try to have as few combination classes as possible. and so again, with fewer schools, we can reduce the number of combination classes that we have. so those are a few examples of how then doing these things lead to a the kind of educational experience where we think kids will be able to better meet our students, goal our goals for student outcomes. yeah. can we stay on this topic? is this on the same topic? okay, i'm just going to ask before

you'll be next. thanks. but can i just ask are there follow up questions from commissioners on this question of are you convinced that the superintendent has explained how this process is going to address the educational needs of our students? i think i'm you know what i'm saying? like, if we could just stay on that for a second and then we'll go to langston's topic, or maybe or maybe what what what are your what would be your follow up? yeah, because we haven't presented yet the full case of how like the specific plan addresses that. but this is why we're having this workshop as we present. ultimately, when we present to the board, what else would you need to know? yeah, because you're right. when we present to the board, you're going to need to be convinced td for the district. thanks, you know, i do think it's really important to be transparent and honest about the primary goal of this process, and i know that that it's easy to conflate the

saving of money and our deficit situation with this is why we're doing it with things are related. but i think reminding ourselves that this is things are not going well. like, let's just be real. and this is an opportunity to, to rebuild in a way, if we do it right, that actually improves student outcomes. so to your follow up question, president alexander, and to you, doctor wayne, i think one of the things i'm really interested about, and you've given the example of, you know, social workers can't say sorry, student x, you're having a bad day. i'm at the other school. why don't you save that problem for tomorrow or sorry, student why you're not feeling well. well, our nurse isn't here today, so can you talk about how this resource alignment would improve the experience of students and our educators and staff, if in terms of if there are fewer actual physical buildings with more students in

those buildings, how does how does that allow us to make sure that we have those, not just educators in classrooms, but that other critical, critical folks to making sure our communities are safe and thriving? so, yeah, so one of the things that i think we want to help put into context is what happens if what happens if we do nothing right? what happens if we. so we one of the main ways in terms of meeting guardrail for around resource allocation being transparent is last year we put out our first school resource and staffing guide. that said started to say, here's what you can expect at a school and you heard in audience a in public comment in reference, having one social worker per per school. right. and so then there's the hiring issues we're facing. we'll talk about that next board meeting. but but doing that right now is would not be sustainable with the number of schools that we have. right and so we're saying this is the staffing we put out a staffing model that we think will best serve students, but we

need to do it in a sustainable way. so another example would be, you know, our counselors, right in in that the more you know, schools we have where we're needing to have counselors across schools and particularly schools that, you know, aren't at capacity where we want, you know, in terms of their enrollment. it means spreading those counselors thin. and, again, having more counselors than we actually can afford based on our enrollment. and so this allows us to and this is what we'll be demonstrating how we can have a staffing model that when i say like year then year in year out, you know what you can count on. people will know what they can count on. our schools will know what they can count on. okay, same topic or a different one. okay same topic. commissioner kemp. next. i haven't forgotten, so two things. one is somewhat more of a comment, and the second is a question, on slide 29 of the original reading deck, you, you

name multiple factors driving the resource alignment initiative. i think what would be really helpful is being able to confidently say that something is changing with those ten factors that are driving this initiative, that are going to change as a result of this resource alignment initiative. so one example would be in our current number of schools, we have capacity to serve more than 14,000 more students than we have now. is the assumption then that we will not have 14,000 extra seats after this resource alignment initiative is done? if so, what's that rationale and how do we get that? if not, what's the rationale for that? right. so i think this is helpful because it articulates kind of the driving factors for where we are now. but i think what would be really helpful in the future then is then tying whatever plan comes out to addressing the ten that you've named here as one of the driving factors. so that's just a comment. the question i have here is, you know, kind of building off of commissioner wiseman ward, back on the presentation deck, specifically

around slide ten, you named $103 million in budget balancing solutions, reduced central office staff in the slide before there's reorganized central office as a cost cutting measure. is there what is the status of truly like a plan to reorganize the way in which central office works and operates to better serve students, versus just saying that cuts are leading to cost saving measures that will then translate to a budget stabilization? i think it's another angle of asking is, is the way in which we're operating as a district also planning to be changed so that we can better serve our current or rather, our future portfolio of students, knowing that right now, as it stands today, we're not doing as enough as we are now to serve our our schools in our current structure. does that make sense, yes. and yes. so and i'm trying

to so we have, so i'll give one example in response to that. we actually just posted a couple weeks ago our updated organizational chart. and you're going to see last year we had an associate superintendent of schools and an associate superintendent of educational services. now we just have a senior associate superintendent of education of educational services, doctor, carlene aguilera. ford who, so that was an elimination of a cost. you know, that was an elimination of a position that will realize cost savings. but the strategy behind not filling that position because sometimes we had people left, we filled positions, is that what we've also seen in how we function? and commissioners have spoken to this as well, that what's happening in educational services like curriculum and instruction, has not always been connected to what our school leadership division is doing. so now they're all under one division and really, doctor aguilera ford

is reorganizing that division so that it's more teams of leaders, cross-disciplinary, supporting schools. so for example, college and career readiness used to be in a in a separate division than our high school division. and they need to be working together a lot more closely to meet the goal. so even if there are fewer staff members in those two departments, we're trying to change how they're working to be more coherent and organized. and so that's, that's that's what you you know, that's what you you should see reflected in the organization chart. i don't know if that explanation is in the chart, but that's that's where we're going to again, not just just reduce but actually serve our schools better from the central office. i, i appreciate that. i think hearing more about how how moves like that will actually enhance then the services that schools are receiving both today and in the future is i think that's somewhat the connection between all the different measures that

are taking place during over across ray. that connection is helpful to be explicit on because right now, i do think, i mean, what we heard as well is just the very reality of school closures sometimes masks that conversation. and i think lifting up examples of that are helpful. and i think that is where it will enhance. and also what are we losing. right. because there are some, you know, district wide activities that won't be happening, like around college and career readiness that may have happened in the past because we have fewer staff. but again, we're trying to center on what the school needs are. let's go to langston. okay, a lot of what we heard was talking about how this current initiative feels really rushed and it's sort of reflected, i think, in this report that i have in front of me because i'm this report is sort of building up the idea that the resource alignment, the resource alignment initiative

and closing schools is going to fix a lot of these problems that, commissioner kim was mentioning about, the ten driving factors. and one of them here is that many of our facilities are in poor condition, and it shows a graph that is pretty demoralizing, with our school sites and there's no analysis there. it's this image and that's and that's it. there's no analysis talking about how not only will school closures help this issue, but then how are we going to prevent it in the future, our schools need to be adapting with the system as well. i don't think closing them is going to solve a lot of the issues that we see here, especially when there's no analysis to go along with it, so i guess that's my question is how are these changes that are outlined? one going to be fixed with the school closures because there's no explanation to that here. and how is it going to evolve. so we don't find ourselves back in this position even when we have less schools, thank you. and you're referring to the facilities index one,

right? yes. yeah yeah. you you were talking about the whole all of them. right. okay all ten, okay. yeah. yeah. and so again, i think, i mean, i think this is helpful also, one just to for us to be able to when we say we want to be transparent, then like, where are we getting all this information from. so we do have a facilities master plan that shows the different conditions we call it our facilities facilities condition index that shows the different, you know, how the range of conditions in which our schools are at. and i mean, you've experienced this at as a student. and so then being clear about why this process will help us have more students and better conditioned and better conditioned buildings. right. and that so we do have like the facilities master plan. i don't think it's linked here. and then it's not clear the connection

that we're making there. so i think going back to commissioner was commissioner kim's point as well is like as we present the plan and for you as commissioners, because you represent the community. so i understand when commissioner president alexander is saying, you know, need to be convinced. it's really how is the community convinced that long term for a district this is going to help us? so i'm taking from your question, better show a little bit more of the evidence behind some of these claims, which are in different places, but need to get them very accessible. yeah. 100%, because it's not the only graph like this on here. there's ten of them that all need explaining, and then also we have this discussion is also open to this. the tiebreaker, right. can can we hold off on that one. okay. we'll come back to it. but maybe we can have a separate discussion. i have a question about that one as well. yeah. okay because i want to follow up on your question. and i don't know if, down there i want to get down there too, but just if i could just quickly follow up just on langston's

point around, how are we not going to get there again, some people have made the argument that which i think is has been shown in other places to be true, that closing schools leads to a sort of doom loop, right where it's like, okay, we closed some schools and then families. it creates more trauma. families leave the district then, you know, here, are we going to be back here in five, six, seven years, closing more schools because then, you know, like what's how do yeah, what's the evidence that that's not going to happen. yeah. well i started by saying, i during my talk i mentioned the status quo isn't working. right. so what we're saying is we're doing something to change the status quo, and then we're putting forward a plan that we think will change it for the better in the end. like that. not that it will lead it to be worse. and so that's where then, drawing from our lessons learned from other districts, what you should see from on september 18th, and as we talk further about the plan, is why this is different than other school closure plans

districts have done. right. where in those i think we know the typical pattern. it's that you identify the schools with the lowest enrollment. maybe they haven't, aren't filled to capacity, have lowest test scores, and we just say, okay, those are the schools we're going to close. and then we do that. but then you're going to have another set of schools that will become the next lowest set of schools. and that's the loop we want to avoid. so the plan that we present, and that's why spending the time establishing that criteria was so important of what's going to drive this process, that the plan that we should present should reflect how the status quo will be changing. that gives an opportunity for improvement, not just, you know, a continuing a negative cycle. thanks. let's go over to, the other side there. who wants to? well commissioner lam just pointed at me, so i'll take that as a you go first, okay. so i appreciate this conversation, and i'm a little frustrated by this conversation

because it feels so similar to what we did back in june. and so i, i feel like we asked a lot of questions in june and still haven't gotten answers. and a lot of these same community members were here or listening on zoom. and so i think that might be some of the frustration, we have a lot of work to do, and just reflecting the transparency, accountability, trust, communication that's needed, by the way, some of us weren't making eye contact because we were taking notes, and frankly, eye to eye contact can be an ableist construct. there's a lot of kids who can't who i can't. eye contact is very challenging. so keep i'll get off my soapbox now, okay. strategic question. commissioner. thank you, thank you. so going back to the initial point of the central office reorg and some of the things that need to in building trust and, talking about things

that one of the things we've heard from the community a lot is the number of contracts and consultants and, the unintended consequences of closing some positions oftentimes leads to us needing to hire a contractor, which costs more and is a nonunion position. and so one, i'm wondering if we're doing an analysis of all the closed positions and whether or not it actually does end up cost saving us money. but two, what are we doing to review our millions of dollars of open contracts and whether or not those are needed? what are we doing? part of the work we need to be doing is a planned obsolescence of some of the things. the example i'll give is with our new reading curriculum. you know, if you look at any closed session, we have thousands of dollars of additional reading programs that are after school programs or our school sites are using for reading tutoring. we just bought a new reading curriculum and now we have that material. are we

closing all those contracts? what, like what are we doing to make sure that we're working smarter, not harder? when is that review going to come, so that's one. secondly, as far as implementing the student assignment system, making sure that to your point, president alexander, we need to recognize the racist policies that we've put in place in the past, the racist history of our city with redlining, and frankly, we've done a whole lot of disinvestment in a lot of our school communities. you know, we have school communities where we instead of putting programs into one neighborhood, we bussed students to another part of town for a program. we can't just blanketly say, we're going to we're going to focus on putting folks into zones without addressing those racist policie, too. and so where is our overall analysis and making sure that if we're talking about true resource alignment, we're actually putting the resources into the neighborhoods where our

students live so they don't spend half their day traveling the city. and the same for faes, th was the whole reason. sorry one more thing, and then i'll stop. no, but i want to get that. i think that's a really good i don't want to miss your question. okay. so i'll put a pin in it and i'm going to put no, because that's a really i just want to hear the response to okay, go for it. and to follow up on that, back in 2018 when the student assignment system redesign policy was passed, the parent advisory committee, the african american advisory committee, the district of english language advisory committee, the sped special education community advisory committee, we all wrote statements against it specifically for that reason, we haven't addressed the underlying discrepancies between the different neighborhoods in our city. so until we do that and put the resources into those schools, we're just perpetuating more racism and more discrepant outcomes. so i want to see where that is part of this work, too, if we're going to force families into zones. so the question is how does this plan can you

finish that statement? just because i want to make sure that we get an answer? i think what you said is really, really important. and i want to make sure it gets we oh my gosh, let's see if i can paraphrase that that ted talk, how are we undoing the racist policies of the past and making sure that we equitably resource the zones or whatever we're doing to as part of the new assignment policy? does that cover it? that was a does that make sense, superintendent? yes yes. okay, i mean, for that one again, i think that's, you know, that's why it was important tonight to share about the connection between the enrollment policy and our developing of a new portfolio. so i think i'm going to just take that as a question that again, in the notion of like, this is what the board is asking to know, to be able to approve a plan that they will

believe will support improving students. your question is to know that if we're changing and having schools go to students, go to school where they live, if they live in an area at a school that hasn't been invested in in the kind of programs and educational opportunities or staffing that will help our students, what's the plan to address that? and so i'll just start i'm not going to give a complete answer now, but that does start in part with that staffing and budget plan that we put forward. that also shows how we differentiate, allocation of funds based on student need, so kind of noted that that will need much more explanation when the, when the final plan comes forward, secondly, i just want to you said something in the middle, but i want to go back to the contracts. one, just because you know, i'm going to give you and former president mahtomedi credit for pushing for that transparency and accountability around contracts. so i know you know this, but i just wanted to

share to the community that starting last year in january, we started posting at every regular board meeting, a summary of all contracts that have been approved by the district and then and then, and then for this year, you may have noticed if you if you like, we have a new contract abstract. so it's clear on why what what's what the contract is that's being brought forward. because you often have to dig in it to find out, like what actually is being being served. so then we're now using that to analyze what's being brought forward as well as analyze what we did last year, because that is part of our fiscal stabilization to have a fewer reliance on contracts. so for example, i you know, i know that. so just as a start from the analysis that business services has done is that for the contracts that we approved, you know, the top 20% of them account for 80% of the expenditures, right? so we're

looking through and saying then what are required ones like some of our transportation contracts and then what are ones that necessarily aren't required that we can pull back on. so like we pulled back on one around. you've heard us doing the work around the street data framework. but like, okay, we need internal leaders to lead that work. so we're not contracting that out. so there is some initial analysis on it, but it's now much more transparent. like what what we're where our contract money funds are going to, and then there is a middle one between that there is a contracts. there was the enrollment, there is how we're investing if in neighborhoods, if we're going to have neighborhood schools, what was the other one? just how are you undoing like 40 years of racist policies? basically i think that or history more than 40. you're right. you're right. more, i think that was related to the second. so i'll stop there if it comes, if it comes back, i'll share. thank you, i think my line of questioning is

pretty aligned to being consistent over the last year, you know, we talked about i appreciate really appreciate commissioner kim's question around if we're looking at the reorganization of central office staff, you know, how are we going to be operating differently as a result of it to in support of our students and our staff at the school sites? my question is related to, you know, if what will result? you know, we result in a fewer number of schools, a portfolio, you know, a portfolio of schools with fewer number of schools. you know, how will we know that we will have better educational experience for our students? i still have yet to at this time. understood. understand what that path forward looks like, certainly. i hear superintenden, your intention around, status

quo cannot continue. certainly, we know the educational outcomes of our students has, particularly for our black, latino and pacific islander students have the largest equity gaps in the state of california so that is why i'm honing in on understanding, you know, as we go through this portfolio review, how will we understand as the community that there will be better educational experience for our students? i mean, i think in part that comes through the progress monitoring you've committed to and doing so, we've we've shared in our progress monitoring process, when we meet the goal. and so far many times we haven't met the goal, but we have met, you know, in some areas we've met them. what we did that led to that or what we did that didn't lead to it. and where we need to change course. and a lot of that, again, does mean using our resources more

effectively. so like we just referred to, we just did our our progress monitoring around guardrail three with curriculum and instruction. and we saw our teachers reported, not having used data at the level that we, we thought was necessary for improvement as well as getting meaningful feedback in that way. and that's why we presented the strategy of having instructional coaches. but similar to social workers, you know, that needs to be a sustainable, ongoing model. and then also we need, you know, to have the supports in place. so teachers can focus on teaching and learning. so, again, i think it's, it's that's why we keep using the resource alignment. we're aligning to the goals. but really trying to create conditions where ultimately our teachers and those who serve our students can focus on what's happening in the classroom and not feel stretched thin, just as i say, our resources are stretched thin. we hear from teachers and staff all the time how much there is to d.

and the more support, there's more focus can be on teaching and learning. we talk about the importance of continuum of education for our students and families, so that they do not only start with sfusd, but they stay with us in our hopes of the full 13, 14 years. through this plan, i haven't seen, necessarily around the strategy or the approach around how is pk enrollment part of the total enrollment continuum for our education experience, for our students and families? and, certainly, i know that there have been responses related to early literacy. my question is related to, collectively, what is our insights and plans around having that pk three? alignment and beyond? yeah. and yeah, this

is an area where we've done, we've done a lot of work. i mean, i guess related to the resource alignment. i'll speak and then if doctor aguilera can speak because you're also asking, like, programmatically. right. how are we looking at alignment? like, as we launch our new literacy curriculum? how are our pre-k and tk students being prepared to continue with that in kindergarten? so, doctor aguilera, is he there? in the meantime, through the enrollment process, you know, i think it goes back to what i said said before, right now, families enroll in pre-k and tk, without really knowing where they're going to end up in kindergarten. now, we did just change policy for tk so that tk they they could know that they would be in the school if we for early ed,

we want to try to create those kind of pathways and alignment. and that's again what the zones will do if they're going to pk in a zone, they'll know where they can go. at least have a much clearer sense of where they can go again, rather than 72 possible schools. even after they went to preschool. in terms of programmatically, i'll have doctor aguilera to speak to that some and but thank you. before i have doctor ford respond, i just wanted to note then on the enrollment piece, that san francisco unified is the largest preschool provider for the city of san francisco. and my guess my anticipation that it will continue to grow. so because of that, i think it is absolutely key that we center students and families around their experience with sfusd and even today, there is fragmentation between our enrollment policies or enrollment experience for families entering into our early education program. good evening.

commissioners as, i explained last board meeting in terms of program and access to instruction and curriculum, we have adopted instructional materials and are providing coaching to the early teachers. pre-k and tk. in those two areas. we also have this continuum of the pre-k three alignment, which is in alignment with the state policy. and i would like to invite doctor christy herrera, who is leading this work at the state level with the coaches so she can provide some of the details in a very succinct way. good evening everyone, so one thing that's

really important to talk about the p three alignment is that when we were selecting the curriculum for into reading, we looked at a complementary curriculum that would also work for pre-k and tk, which is how we came to creative curriculum. when you look at the two structures of how they're embedded and the alignment, creative curriculum is one of the largest curriculums for early education. they're the only curriculum that has a tk curriculum, which tk is unique to california. as you know. so selecting that p three alignment with literacy curriculum was really important for us. we have instructional coaches like doctor aguilera said at all of our early ed sites, including our elementary sites that have pre-k and tk, and we're really looking at what professional learning communities can happen at our school sites that have preschool, tk and k three, so that we're having those conversations around curriculum to really have that end goal of kindergarten readiness. when all of our children show up to kindergarten, working with our head starts around that as well, thinking about the collective

system on how all of our three, four and five year olds are showing up to kindergarten. and one more thing, from an enrollment point of view in october this year, we will be rolling out the pre-k online application, which will enable us to provide much faster enrollment service to pre-k families. all right, did you want to go back and then let's go back to commissioner bogus. i saw you, but commissioner sanchez hasn't gone yet, and then we'll. yeah all right. thank you. i kind of share, i think, commissioner fisher's frustration. i think it is a repeat of the june meeting. in many ways, it's not a lot of new information, but it's worth it in a way. also, to get the same information out over and over again, because one of the common themes that i've heard and we've heard over and over again is people don't know what's happening. people feel that there's not a lot of transparency. and albeit it's much better because i'm the only one here. that was on the board when we closed over ten schools back in the day 20 years ago, where we had no process

whatsoever. it was just based on enrollment factors alone, and we disproportionately impacted negatively. african american and latino families in the process, what you can do to help reassure our, our community that that the information is transparent, that the process is transparent going forward and that people feel heard, even though we know we can hear everything and listen intently. and at the end of the day, when we have to close or merge or consolidate schools, people will feel like they were not heard. but i just need to feel reassured that we're doing everything we can to make sure that everybody in our community understands the process, understands when it does happen, that people have been heard, going forward. and then my second thing is what i brought up at the last meeting, which is the equity audit, you did cover it, but i'd like you to go deeper into what the equity audit means for this district in

this process, i'm going to ask doctor khanna to speak about the equity audit. she's working with our stanford partners on this. and then. then i'll get back to just what you were talking about. feeling heard. i can go right into. thank you. good evening. commissioners, i want to explain that the equity audit, which is being done by doctor alvin pearman from stanford, is based on the banty bill. so the banty bill, which is a california bill. so in fact, it's only applicable in california. what it does is it takes what the districts proportional representation of the underserved populations is by underserved populations, i mean primarily by race and by program. so you take the

underserved population proportions and make sure that the scenario of schools that you're closing does not matches the proportional representation in the district and does not over represents any underserved population dramatically. and then i just, maybe as we end let me go back to that. i want to do i do want to just find one resource. i think it's in the reading deck, i'll go back to the other, other point about that. commissioner bogus. thank you. i don't necessarily feel like i got my initial question answered, at least not sufficiently for me as far as how best practices are factored into what we're doing. looking at the roi reading deck final attached and board docs, i believe it's slide 41 where we break out kind of the fact base

for our decision making, just not seeing anything in there that deals with educational best practices. and hopefully someone could kind of talk about where that's represented in this kind of graphic, or if it's not where it is in the process. i think i'm just a little bit concerned that that isn't kind of the guiding light in the north star for all the work that we're doing, and it makes it a very troubling process, it feels like a lot of the different work areas that are involved in this are very siloed and aren't working together and don't represent a cohesive, clear pla, also, just to kind of build off what eric said, i feel like what's in this presentation as well as, i think what the board was briefed in anticipation of this isn't enough. it's not enough information. it's not soon enough. not enough decisions have been made. there's not enough clarity, really, for me as a commissioner, to take this and be ready to make a vote. i mean, i think that's very troubling, being this late in the process, we selected this timeframe because we felt like this would

give us the maximum amount of time to be able to reach families, knowing that we have a structural deficit that we failed to address in other ways before we got to the place where we have a lot of pressure from the state to have a balanced budget in a way that we haven't had to in previous years because of our reserves. and so i just really want to just emphasize that i appreciate the work that's gone in, but it's just not enough for as far as we are in the process. there's not enough detail, especially when it comes to our higher needs students. like i would expect at this point, for us to have a plan for all of our students who are behind, who are off track, or who are in groups, who are way behind their peers, a plan to support them through this process, knowing that school closures, school mergers has a negative impact on those outcomes. we've talked about all these things, and i know that you all are working internally to address them, but those things not being shared publicly really shakes the confidence in the process and the commitment to the public to be transparent. and i would also just say, as a commissioner, not having it makes me have lack of confidence that i'll be able to vote in

support what comes forward, because there isn't transparenc, there isn't understanding, and we as a board aren't. at least i would say me as a commissioner. i'm not fully aware of everything that's going into making these decisions. it makes me really, uncomfortable. i would also, i think, just lift up that i don't see a clear plan or direction to address the broken structure. i see fixes to some of the problems, but we have a structural issue with our whole district. our district isn't supporting all of our students properly. i don't see anything in here that is addressing that. i see us taking gradual steps to make things better. but in my mind, if we're going to do something as dramatic as closing schools, we need to do something that is going to have a larger impact and really change what the status quo is, and i will start to wrap up quickly, i would also like to see a little bit more information and clarity around the reason of how we got here in the shortcomings and our leadership, our planning and everything that kind of led us to be in a place where we have programs and sites that aren't sustainable and aren't set up

for the best success for students at that site or across the district. i'm also not sure what board policies, what strategic planning from the board is guiding this process and where that is representative. i see the goals and guardrails, but i don't see anything else that's really anchoring this to our commitment to students and families. and that's really concerning for me. and my last comment is, i'm just really troubled by the fact that we haven't found a way to do a better job of going about this. we haven't defined what equity means for us. we haven't set aside the things that ■we're going to make as guarantees to protect students, families and school communities that are in danger and i think that's just not fair for commissioners or for the public. we're really kind of being led along with no vision, no site around what's going to happen. and it's scary and we don't have to do this, and we need to have a clear understanding from the superintendent or board leadership about how these things are grounded in what we've already committed to as a district, or if it's not grounded in those things, come out and say that we're

abandoning all the things that we've previously committed to, all the things in our previous strategic plans, all the previous board resolutions, and going in a new direction. so we can be clear, because right now those things aren't clear. and it's creating a lot of uncertainty for me as a commissioner on the board who ultimately has to make this decision. so i'm hoping that as we move forward, there will be more communications, both publicly to the board in every way possible so that we don't continue having this feeling of not knowing what's going to happen and kind of waiting for this big surprise that might really harm our communities, families and students and so i would still post my little statement, would still lack an answer of like, talk to me about how best practices are reflected in what's going into this, or if that is a separate process and held somewhere else. can i just clarify one thing? it is not the job of board leadership to get answers to those questions. that is the superintendent's job. so what is our job to do what you're doing and our collectively to ask these questions and to say what we need so that the superintendent

and staff, i mean, this is not our plan, right? we don't the board is not creating a plan for resource alignment. that's the superintendent's job. we come here as quasi volunteers. we all have other jobs, and we represent the community to, as you just did, you know. and so just to just to be clear on the roles. but superintendent, do you want to respond to that question, yeah. and i want to and then go back to commissioner sanchez's question. i mean, i'm not going to i hear what you're asking for. and again, we're not asking for you to take action tonight. so i think you're laying out clearly, here's what i need to hear to take action. i want to say two things. one, and i hear the comments like, well, are we getting anything new? i mean, i shared this even last, last spring when talking to different committees, different families, let's take what you raised as a very real question, commissioner bogus is like, how are we centering equity in this

process? and will our plan reflect reflect that? well, people really are only going to believe that when they see the actual plan. so i understand there is an element of without seeing the actual plan. what has been many people's experience with this district is that they say, we say we're going to center equity, but then the outcome of the plan that's delivered or the way it's implemented doesn't do that. so, you know, part of my best answer will be when we show the plan, here's how we reflected that value of equity. i think the other thing i just wanted to pull up on the screen, just to what commissioner sanchez said is like to me, this was really important to do in the second round of community input, a second round of engaging the community. and just to indicate what we'll do when we next go out to the community. it's like after the first round, we i told you we had 16 community meetings. we had, we had, you know, thousands of survey responses. we had a town hall. we had committee meetings when

we reflected back, you know, we wanted to be clear, like, you know, like, yeah, we're trying to present a vision for the future. and not pretend that we didn't hear those some real more than just concerns. right. not using, frankly, the sanitized language of sometimes bureaucratic administrations. we know there's concerns. we know there's challenges we wanted to name. there were real fears that were out there about this process. like on that. it will lead to a disproportionate impact on our most vulnerable students. and i just put this on the screen to go back to what you're saying, like when we share the plan, we're going to make the argument about why long term, this is better for students, but we don't want to pretend that this is not going to be difficult and have an impact on students. and and families, and it's going to be hard to go to a new school community. you know, when you're a third grader and spent your first three years here thought you were going to be promoted to middle school from there, like, that's, you know, we're going to need to work through that. and

i'll just go back to being a school leader. i had, you know, my the school where i was in elementary principal, i had fifth graders who i'd been with since kindergarten, who were ready to be promoted. the district closed the nearby middle school. they changed middle schools to seventh and eighth grade, and we had to spend a sixth grade. they then had sixth grade on our campus while we were also going through construction and had no space. but i share that to say, like we had to come up with a different plan for our sixth graders because what they thought was going to happen didn't happen. and we need to show how we're, you know, developing plans for what they thought was going to happen. you know, it's changing. but how those plans still support them. and so that's what you'll that's the commitment for when we share the plan. that should answer some of these questions, how we also will still be listening to the community and reflecting back what we hear, not just saying, oh, no, it's going to be okay. you know, like we've got it all covered. we don't we have a lot of fears. we need to address. okay. so facilitation note here. so commissioner kim has a follow up. yes. so i'm trying to stay a

little bit with threads of topics. but then also kind of go to make sure people get equality of equity of equality of voice. here so let's go with commissioner kim and then langston before 9:00. because i also you want to get to the question of enrollment, which i have a question about too. so or. yeah. is that all right if we do that next, or do you want to go after this and then go to that? i have a question. i have questions related to this, but i am happy to make sure we hear from i would like to hear from our student delegate montgomery. okay. so maybe we can circle back to this. so let's do is it okay if we do commissioner kim then to langston and talk about enrollment a bit and then to your to you and then to whoever else wants to go. all right, some of this is following up from commissioner boggs's remarks, building off of the announcement itself, i'm on the workshop presentation slide 13

and 14, i imagine that the days leading up to the september 18th announcement will be quite stressful for families and staff, knowing that that announcement is being made. i see on slide 13, an laying out site leaders, central office leaders, labor partners, city partners. i think what may be helpful is also understanding what can parents expect to receive on september 18th? is it a letter? is it an email? what are they tangibly receiving that that they can look at to know what their options are and if that, if the if the if you're not able to answer that question right now that i think that's fine. but what i'm also hearing is their there needs to be something that they know what to expect when it comes to that day. knowing how stressful that day may be for some families and school communities, and just just to name in the spirit of being clear and transparent in my own thinking, i strongly believe that we should not present a portfolio if we are

not prepared to answer all of these questions and have a defensible plan in place. and i would much rather see us take the time that we need to actually get this right than to try to meet a deadline, and so i think that would be helpful for families to hear, like what exactly is going to be coming on september 18th? what can they expect to receive tangibly, and again, if that answer does not, is isn't prepared right now, i think that's okay. i just i do think that before that date, it would be helpful for, for the public to be aware and for the board to be aware. so i'm going to have our executive director of communications speak to what's planned. so far. and there might be more in development and appreciate the question. good evening. thank you, commissioner, for the question, so my name is laura dudnik. i'm the executive director of communications. so we are planning for multiple ways to notify diverse audiences on september 18th and a very humanizing, direct, clear and

honest way, so we will be sending letters directly to families and staff of schools that are affected by school closures, mergers or co-locations with information about what they can expect that fall, including planning for a family meeting. the following day at all of the affected schools, will be preparing text messages, auto dials as well to help reach families that might be experiencing low literacy. we'll make sure that the messages are all translated and accessible on our website, so that's going to be the direct communication to the families and staff of the affected schools. we're also planning for how we're going to share this information more broadly with the community, because we know that everyone in the district, in the city of san francisco is going to want to know what's going to be happening, and we want to make sure that we share this information consistently and at the same time. so that people receive this information directly from the school district so that it is accurate and clear and accessible. we'll be able to share more details of what all of those different pieces will look like regarding the more broad message as we get closer to the september 18th

date. just to clarify, so families will receive so the day of they will be receiving communication. will they receive be receiving anything before that. so we're engaging with school leaders and different departments around the district right now to get input on how how will families and staff want to be receiving this message, so we will continue to share updates with schools and that they can work with their school communities as well to give them a heads up, if that's helpful as to how they'll be receiving the message. we know that it's, you know, something that people are really waiting for and anticipating, and we want to make sure that we're providing that information clearly and accessibly for everyone. thank you. thanks. you're up. thank you. and thank you for giving my time once again before nine. because like a lot of us in this room, i got school in the morning. so yeah, i wanted to circle quickly to this, the tiebreaker for students at schools affected by the merger's closures or co-locations, and

i'm happy to hear that we are having a revised system come the year after that, unfortunately, i think it's a little it's a year too late with how we know the system works and that schools will be merging, closing and co-locating this next year, because especially i know how lucky i've been by this system. i went to lake shore elementary on my second letter on this. on my second letter, i was able to go to a pg 90, and on my first i was able to go to washington high school. i know how incredibly lucky i am for that to happen so quickly for me, and not have to worry about where i'm going to school on the first day of school. but i know people that have, and it feels like right now we're piling on top of a system that we already know doesn't work for so many. i have a friend that is no longer in svusd schools that same as me, went to lake shore elementary, didn't get a school for middle school, ended up getting on a

waitlist to go to hoover middle school, then didn't get a school for high school again. and the system isn't changing until the year after we're closing our schools and we're piling on top of it. how are we making sure? because it goes into the system and the list of the tiebreakers. how are we ensuring that the students that are affected and the parents as well, are that are affected by these school closures? not only are they because there's concerns about having to having them go across town, which you've talked about, but how can we ensure that they're even getting a school on day one? because it's not confirmed? it's not for the students that are already in schools that aren't closing. they're not confirmed to school by day one. so how are we going to confirm a school by day one for these kids? yeah my name is lauren kohler. i'm the executive director of the enrollment center. so all of the students at closing schools will be placed into a welcoming school. they will hear about that soon

after september 18th, if not on september 18th. so all of them will be guaranteed a school placement. so the tiebreaker is just for students who choose a different school other than the one that they are assigned to. and so we know all of them will get a placement. it's just do they want that placement more than they prefer any other school in the district? okay. and as, a follow up to that, like how much into account are there placements as just the same as any other kid, or is it again by the tiebreaker system? it's just going to go into that list. so it's going to go after siblings for most siblings, they usually get in for round one of the lottery because particularly in entry grades, there are lots of open spaces in nontraditional grades. there are often open spaces, particularly in larger schools, and so siblings usually get in, using the tiebreaker system. these kids will be right after siblings. and so i think that that it places them in a

nonrandom location right there will be much more likely to get their choice than families who don't have this tiebreaker or who don't have siblings. and then as a last follow up, as it goes into that list, then that, then affects not only that kid that's moving from a close school, but then it goes into that list of other tiebreakers, then it affects every other kid that's on a placement. so then how can we confirm that they also get a spot that is in their realm of choices, because we know not everyone is going to get their top three choices, but we got to make sure that they get one of the schools, right? so i think it might be a misconception that students don't get schools assigned. everybody who applies is either in a school right now, and they are told that they can continue in that school or they're given a school assignment. many families choose to decline their school assignment. however, every student gets a school assignment, and the school assignment process, i want to do you want to say something? i just wanted to follow up on that because i think this is a really

important point. that and kind of channeling former president motamedi, too, because she and i both really pressed on this point, and just to tell an anecdote that i think illustrates it, this weekend i was at sunday streets in the mission, and i talked. i was talking to this, dad with a kid in a stroller who said, and i said, are you going to enroll your child in san francisco public schools? and he said, honestly, i'm not sure the enrollment system creates so much anxiety and uncertainty. we're going to see if we can afford private school, but if not, we may well move out of the city, even though we love it here and it's because not of the public schools, it's because of the enrollment system. our enrollment system is broken. and i think and the board in 2018, i think, passed a new system which still hasn't been implemented. and i think to langston's point, like we're waiting. and that was my discomfort, actually. i said this to the superintendent when i first saw this resolution, i was like, so now we're being asked to endorse for another year a broken system while we go

through this really traumatic process. so i think, i mean, my long term question, i hear there's logistical reasons why we may not be able to do it any sooner. my long term question would be to the superintendent, you know, to address on this slide that, that commissioner kim pointed out, slide 29 of the multiple factors, one of the points on there is enrollment will continue to decline. we're taking that as a given, but i'm not sure that's true. i think if we were to fix the enrollment system and have a predictable feeder pattern where people knew you're going to be able to go to this elementary school, you're going to go to this middle school and you're going to go to this high school. like most school districts in america operate. i think it would dramatically change how public schools were viewed in the city of san francisco. and so i'm curious, like, as you think about this plan of, again, realigning our school portfolio across all those levels, what degree of confidence do you have that we could actually increase enrollment if we move to these zones? is that is that going to be one of the intended outcomes

here that we improve education? but we also have predictable enrollment through all k through 12 so that people can build confidence and increase like is that is that a is that part of the idea here or or not. yes. but i want to go back to what both commissioner boggess and commissioner fisher said and add maybe some nuance to what you said. our enrollment system is broken because not every family in this district wants to go to every school that we have available in this district, right, because as we said, as langston said, he feels he won the lottery. i mean, it's literally a lottery because he went to he got into certain schools. that's the fundamental problem that we face as a district, is that some families feel they won the lottery by getting into school, and they feel like they've lost by not getting into school. and then in this district, you know, 30% of families say, well, i'm not even going to play that lottery. i'm going to go to a private school and have the means to afford

that, where they also spend a lot more money per child than, than we do. so the enrollment system is broken in that it creates that level of anxiety. but it goes back to the questions you all have been asking. if we have fewer schools, how are we going to make sure that those schools are the ones that our families want to go to if they get assigned to school, rather than get to choose a school, right? because what's going to be lost from not having a lottery, we will still have choice in this district. so it's not going to be pure like you just get assigned to your neighborhood school no matter what, because we have our k-8 programs, we have our citywide program, but it's going to fundamentally shift that equation to say you're getting assigned to school. so we need to make sure that those schools are are well resourced and families have confidence that like, okay, i'm going to get a good education there. and so that's why we need to answer these questions. you've all raised as we bring forward the plan about how we're going to do that, particularly in neighborhoods where families haven't had confidence or that that they're going to get that. then to why to the timeline. can i just just to respond to that? is that. yeah. is that, you

know, we start our enrollment two reasons. one, as i said, you know, we want to know what our portfolio is before, you know, creating the zones. but two, also we started an enrollment process really early. so for 2526, you know, the materials have already been developed. we do our enrollment fair in october, like we need a full year in advance because of our enrollment system. if we did just if we already had the zones in place and we already had all that in place, maybe we could say in january, you know, after this, we could start, but we don't have all that in place. yeah. real quickly. i just wanted to, give one more comment because you said that, like, everyone is guaranteed a school in the places that that is true. but there have been times, especially in my own family, where that choice, especially on the first, the first try, which has happened to my brother this time, where it was the first try, was, visitacion valley, that is on the other side of the city for us. and we did the math. it would take two hours on public transit to get there from

where we live. so he'd have to leave at six. so again, like, it's whether or not the placement is guaranteed, it's whether that placement is even plausible and possible for the student to get to at like every single day. so but here's no that's a great example. and here's the challenge though. and this is again why we think having fewer schools will help the situation. because for a school to be open, it needs students. so we have to tell students, you know, we have to assign students to all of our schools. otherwise they're not open now. yes. what we're going to share is saying how we think we can get back students. like even starting with early ed, we're going to we have ideas about how we think we can keep families because again, you heard how like i mean, i hear about families who get assigned to a pre-k or tk across town. they don't want to do that. we lose the revenue from giving a student, and then they may not get into the school near where they live, and they don't continue. but, you know, but by having fewer schools to try to fill, we can actually then have

students at schools that will have what they need to be successful and not be in this situation where we're assigning students just because we're trying to keep a school open. and that's what we heard with the high school task force. and again, i think why, you know, you and president motamedi in the past, you know, said the fact that we're, you know, assigning students to schools at high schools just to keep the school open is not a good enrollment policy, right? so we would need to have fewer schools, but then we still need them to be improved schools as well. really deep gratitude to our student delegates and deep conversation for the deep conversation. yes, yes, have a good have a good night. and thank you for being here. and you're always welcome to stay later than nine. but you are. we just want to give you the permission to leave. you know. all right. where were we, commissioner weissman? word. right. vice president weissman. word. oh gosh, i can't forget that. i'm very grateful that

your vice president was more. thank you. so i want to bring us back. back to, a point that, commissioner, a question that commissioner lamm asked and i want to challenge you, doctor wayne, on your answer, so if i'm if i wrote the question down correctly, it was like, how are we going to know that what we're doing? and by closing schools that we're actually going to improve student outcomes. and i heard you there was a couple of things that you said, but one of the you referenced monitoring sessions and that we can't we can't use that as a look back like, oops, we didn't do it. well, like when it's already happened. so i don't think monitoring sessions is going to be an appropriate way to determine whether we're improving student outcomes. and maybe i misunderstood that. i also i also think that like there is such profound expertise up here. and you all have been in the weeds doing this work for over a year now. and i, i know

that some of this information is the same that we've d, but there is so much information that you all have cultivated and created and culled through. so i do benefit from from hearing it multiple times. and i know that there's different layers. and i'm like, oh, i'm hearing this differently because i have more context. so i just want to say thank you for all of the information that you're generating and sharing. and i know that there's a balance between how much you share, because then it becomes overwhelming and not useful versus feeling like we have enough that we can make a meaningful decision. and i don't know how to strike that balance. so but i thank you for trying, but i guess i want to if i could just push you, doctor wayne, if you could describe to commissioner lamm's question about how will we know if what we're doing actually improves? student outcomes, can you give an example, like using a fictitious student that is, i don't know, maybe in third grade, maybe in kindergarten? like, what does it look like for that student in a way that

matches on to our visions, values, goals and guardrails and allows us to really feel confident that those student outcomes would be improved whether and maybe we can choose a student that's that's i mean, as one of the individuals that did public comment mentioned, everyone is impacted, whether you are from a school that is impacted through a closure or you are moving to a school and the school is absorbing new, new community. but so maybe let's just use the example of the student that is currently enrolled in a school. that's that's slated, that's on on the list. what does it look like for them that next year? yeah, i mean, i think, you know, i've spoken about in general, like how we're improving in a system. and i guess i just want to acknowledge your question. i think that's when we engage with each individual family at each individual school, you know, needing to, answer that question

to show how they're going to get a comparable or even improved experience than they had the year before. and so, you know, i feel like i, i appreciate you asking that question. and challenging us to put it in those terms. so i just want to say, i would i don't want to just go back to the examples i've given because i could just say, well, maybe a third grader who is in a, in a in a combination class next year won't be in a combination class. so, but i think that's helpful guidance when thinking about what we present on september 18th and specifically when we go out to the schools on september 19th, as well as the two, you know, follow up meetings like putting it in those terms, not just in the systems terms. and, yeah. so if it's okay, i'm going to take that away as a, as, as, and you know, seeing, needing, needing to do that and then be able to do that when we share with you as well. can i follow

up on that? because i think i just want to second what vice president weisman ward said. and i mean, i was thinking something similar. i was imagining myself as, let's say, a parent of a second grader who's been struggling to learn to read, so connected to our goal around literacy, right. third grade literacy. and now my kid is in a school, and you're coming to me and saying your school is going to close, and now you're going to go to another school, there's going to be all this disruption. how is that going to help my kid learn to read? that's what's going to be going through my head. right. so if we don't have an answer to that question, and especially for the most vulnerable students, as commissioner bogus was saying i that raises i think i see colleagues nodding to i mean, i think that's that's something that needs to be very clear on whatever is put out there. if it's going to get the support of this board. commissioner fisher and then and that that's my follow up to i think it dovetails with all of this very

nicely, and to commissioner lam's point, a school list, a school closure list is not a plan, right? the one. so i think what i really want to know is. and commissioner kim had mentioned it as well, like you mentioned it from the framework of what can families expect on september 18th? i want to know what we can expect. right. as a like not yes, there's a family engagement component of it, but there's so many more components to it. you know, like what what actionable work is being undertaken by what people in what positions by when, who's assigned accountability to what. so like these are the level of details that we haven't seen yet about what is happening, who's doing what, you know, what money have we set aside for tutoring

for, home visits for, additional family liaisons, for additional language support for everything else that we need for new programs, for everything like that's i think when we talk about that, where is that level of planning? that's what i'm struggling with in order to give our community confidence that this is more than just pretty words about equity. this is what i'm being asked for every day. and this is what i'm hoping we are going to get from you or your team by september 18th. all right, i know commissioner bogusz had something to say, and then are there other issues that people want to bring up, or are we. do you have another one? yeah. all good. so let's go with commissioner bogus. let's and let's try to keep these brief. it's 915. so if we could wrap up in the next 15 minutes by 930, can we do that? yes. great.

let's do that. yes i just wanted to go back to my question about kind of educational best practices and kind of how they're anchoring the process. i just didn't feel like i heard a response to that. and so i know, i mean, it would be helpful if we could talk about it in, in the terms used on, i believe it's slide 41 and the boe workshop are i reading deck? and i guess, you know, with that with kind of the fact based, the guardrail equity audit, all those things being listed, where does educational best practices, what's going to be most beneficial to our students fit in, and how is that helping or guiding kind of this process? yeah so sorry, let me just get to the slide you're referencing. what slide number was it again? 41 on the reading deck. final the long one. where we talk about the best practices from other districts. the one below

that one. yeah. wait a second. there we go. it starts with fact based and then has a chart with sf, usd guardrail, one equity audit sequa ab 1912. i mean. so but then you're saying where this what this slide is saying is how we're planning for equity throughout to make sure we're not disproportionately impacting any one community. right, right. but you're asking about like best practices in terms of educationally, what are we doing. are you saying best practices through for closure process? i think it's a little bit of both where i guess i turn it off. i guess it's a little bit of both. for me, it is. how is our process, our planning and the strategy that we're implementing to executing this grounded in best practices and what works best, i guess what

i'm familiar with, with school closures, is there being a budgetary need to reduce staffing and other things around the district, and so a district will just cut, right? and it doesn't have anything to do with educational best practices. we're going to just fill up the classrooms, put as many kids in there, reduce the amount of unnecessary staff at school sites, which means anyone who isn't a teacher or a principal or who we have to have there. and i guess i want to know whether or not that is what is guiding kind of our thinking around like this slide in particular in this process, or if it is relying on how we are modifying the district to improve outcomes and better serve students. if that makes sense. yeah, okay, let me let me maybe try another way to, to respond to this. and then again, i think this is helpful feedback to be able to move, move forward because i appreciate the way you described what typically happens. this is why in our resource alignment process, we named what we thought needs to be happening at our schools. so

we named some strategies based on best practices that we think are aligned to our goals and guardrails. i'm going to name, you know, four of them as examples. so one is instructional coaching to support. right now it's focused on literacy. but we've talked about also how lesson study has helped with math. and that process. two, our social workers to support the our guardrail around serving the whole child, three there's around our expanded options for students in secondary like career, you know, career pathways and to have college and career readiness. we're going to talk about this in a month, having more more students in those in those kind of programs. and then four, we've talked about our language programs and how we feel. you know, that's, you know, leads to the academic outcomes we want. i think what we're trying to say

is we put out a staffing model, and these are the things we need to do to be able to do those four things, as well as the other ones that we've named in our throughout our progress, monitoring reports about what our strategies are. we do not have the resources to do that at, you know, the 102 pre-k-12, our k-12 schools that we have. so we can have, you know, we likely could have 102 schools with a principal, a clerk, classroom teachers, and maybe secondary schools. you know, one counselor for every 450 students. is that going to get us to where we need to be? no, that's going to make sure we have 102 schools and we don't close any buildings. but the doing this ensures that those resources are, again, not used to we're not using our limited resources to maintain school buildings is to maintain is to

provide those plans to provide those supports. what i feel like i'm hearing from this conversation in the community is that that needs to be put in. i just named them in systemic terms. that needs to be put in terms, you know, as commissioner weissman, ward asked, who's a parent, as is commissioner boggess, like with my parent hat on, how do i understand when you're saying, you know, coaching and career pathways and bilingual programs and social workers, like, okay, but what does that mean for my child? and what does that mean if you don't do this for my child at school? and that's my the big takeaway from tonight about i feel like we've made the case about why, what it means to stretch our resources too thin. but making the case, then, of what it means for the child who has to go to a different school. that's like the next level of pushing. you're providing, and maybe you feel like you pushed that earlier. but just as you said, as you see, more information becomes clear as we hear what you're asking for, it becomes more clear for us. great commissioner, can i just follow up? oh, sorry. sorry, i know we're trying to move forward. i appreciate that response. and

having had this conversation, i think a few different times with staff over the course of this process, i appreciate the response and the intention that you give. and i think what's lifted up on this re reading deck on like slide 12 through slide 14, where we kind of break out kind of our different equity flower pieces is like a good high level explanation of like what we're trying to do, how we're trying to transform. but i think what's missing is how is this not just talk and hollow promises? we as a district have for a very long time talked about these things and haven't executed. and what i don't see in here is our plan to execute our commitment to families, to say that we're going to ensure that we have strong, functioning leadership teams at every side, and these are the systems we're going to put in place to ensure that we're monitoring and checking that we're going to ensure that every student has a qualified teacher at the end of this process. that is going to be something we can commit to and guarantee in a different way than we are now. and i think that's what i'm struggling with. it sounds like we have these commitments, but these commitments aren't anchoring the decision and the process, and i feel like that's what needs to

be recentered to me, because if those things aren't anchoring what we're doing, we're going to fall short in our goals and really miss our objective. and so i just want to highlight that, and i appreciate what you lifted up. and i think that extra level of detail and intention of how we're going to see that, how we're going to feel that and how people are going to know that this process isn't just about school closures, but about how the district is changing the page and the things that they've experienced up to this point that are negative are going to be remedied through what we're doing to some scale. right. i would like to follow up on that and add to commissioner bogusz point, our 12th public commenter from ikwo mentioned that all schools are supposed to have social workers and sped teachers, and we don't. our positions are blocked. my position was supposed to be full time on the 0.7. everything is blocked. where are the jobs? so if we already can't follow through on our commitments this year, how can the public have any faith that we're going to follow through on our

commitments for next year or through this ra process? and i think that's a huge well, can i disconnect here? and a huge tension. yeah. and can i just interject on that point. that's exactly why i asked for this after action review of what happened with our hr problems over the last month or six weeks, whatever it's been, because i this is something that i think has really eroded trust because over and over again we don't meet something. and again, like we there are big struggles in a huge bureaucracy like this. our staff are working incredibly hard. there's some i just think want to also give appreciation to the folks in schools and the folks in central office who are working incredibly hard to address these issues, and sometimes we don't hit the mark. right. i think what's important and what what the board needs to ensure is that there's transparency and accountability. accountability doesn't mean blame, but it does mean being able to say, okay, over the last, you know, since june, we've had the cdc advisers in we've had our hr people working. why did some of these people who

were offered jobs in may not get them right? like if we can't answer that question, how is anyone going to trust this next thing? so again, that's that is sort of the purpose. stay tuned. come on september 10th and hear our after action review. and i think that's you know because we can't go back. right. but we can say what did we learn from those mistakes. how are we moving forward. and we can show that we're doing things differently? i think again, when this portfolio comes out, i think one of the superintendent has said it's going to be different from in the past. it's going to be different from other school districts across the country. so again, i think the public and you know, i've gotten i haven't seen the plan. there's not nobody on the board has seen it yet. but i've gotten i've talked to staff and i think it is going to be different. i'm excited that there are some possibilities. not to say it's going to be perfect, not to say there won't be need to be adjustments, but i think i do think there's progress being made. but we have to be collectively, we have to show that transparency and that accountability. and because that

i just think that's i just want to underscore that what you just said. commissioner lamb, did you have a yes, i do. so i think maybe i can get more crisp now to, to the superintendent, you know, starting with the flowers. you've heard my private conversations about the flower, from slide number 12 through slide 20. i think it's about, on the on the theme of what commissioner had raised is getting into the next level, the next kind of quote, click down, so to speak, on what those operational, approaches are going to need to be in place in order for us to be successful, to fulfill the words, to fulfill our values and our principles. because because time and time again, i think that's what we're also trying to lift up at the fiscal and operational health ad hoc committee is really trying to get an understanding to the root cause, getting to the root

cause of how can we improve our systems, where are the gaps and what resources are we going to put towards them so we can ultimately close those system gaps, and so my next question is related to the transition plan. so that's related to slide number. 93 we've talked a little bit tonight about what can parents expect, on the day that the portfolio and school closure list is published as well as the welcoming school communities, what i'd like to, understand is what is the amount funding amount, either both direct dollar amount or non-monetary investments that are required for a good transition process. right. so we're we're working on that now. and we'll share, yeah.

definitely share in detail about that. and i think we've we've broken it into a few different categories. so there's the kind of capital investments that need to be made to make sure we can have the desks, the rooms are set up, we're all compliant. then there's some of the transition activities. yeah, we are going to need we're working on figuring out how to have the right building, build some of that capacity while not, you know, not contributing, you know, devoting too many of our limited dollars to this. but that's like logistics, you know, coordinating the staffing, the moving, you know, activities like that. and then there's the engagement piece, which is setting up, as i shared, like sacs meeting staff meetings so that costs extra hours, you know, maybe extra, extra hours for staff to meet, extra hours for family liaisons, to help coordinate meetings. so we're getting organizing all that to be a clear budget because, yeah,

it does cost money to do this process. right, and those are the three kind of big buckets where we, where we're seeing we're going to need to invest some dollars to make sure this goes smoothly. and i think that's my ask, is being able to understand when you do come back with that transition plan, in addition to the logistics, i think particularly i'm interested in understanding the other components that are, you know, maybe less visible that is the human, you know, touch, around ensuring that our staff, are supported in order to provide that best, care to our students. and families, once the news you know, or the portfolio is put forward and not only in the school communities that will be impacted by closures or mergers or co-locations, but the welcoming community school communities. so i'd like to also understand in that detail around what is that funding amount that

is going to be necessary for that whole comprehensive transition plan? okay. okay, did you want to say something before we wrap up? oh you said earlier. yeah. i just wanted to take a moment, recognizing that maybe a week ago, i would have been on that side of the table, i just want to take a moment to thank staff for your time on this work. i recognize that. trust me, i recognize that there are a lot of questions being asked, and with every question comes additional work that needs to be done by staff. and at a time when we are actually reducing staff both at central office, as much as possible, to be quite frank, i just i recognize the impact that that has on both central office staff and site staff who rely on central office teams to deliver services and supports. so, i just wanted to take a moment to acknowledge

that, to also just recognize the tension here of we are at a time of great financial challenge, and we are trying to do something that, quite frankly, takes resources, not just money, but emotional, mental, physical load. and, and that is incredibly challenging, and should be recognized, i think, just in terms of the work that needs to happen over the course of this coming year and beyond. so i just wanted to say that, i think what what i heard clearly was that if we are wanting to be a board and a district that does focus on student outcomes, changing and improving that, as i've heard many say before, adult behaviors need to change. i think the push here is what are those changes that are going to be happening that we know will then produce outcomes for our students and the more clear that we can be with that to ourselves and to our, our

parents and our school communities. the better this will be. so i just wanted to close with that. thank you. yeah. and i think, i don't know if commissioner boggess, you may have said this, but the other thing i was thinking of around this is metrics, right? i mean, one of the things we've done with our student outcomes and with our guardrails is to have clear metrics. so again, if i go back to that question of if we're if i'm a parent in one of those schools, that's that's closing or merging, what's, you know, are you going to are there metrics that i can look at to say, well, in a year or two, you should expect this for, for your kid, i don't know. or again, the more specific we can be, i think the better, and i also want to echo commissioner kim's gratitude for our staff, starting with the frontline staff in schools that are right now dealing with, you know, these positions that haven't been filled with, you know, changes that they weren't told about in the budget in the

spring, all these things. i mean, that's those are the people that deal with it first and then as well our, our central office staff who are working incredibly hard to support them and to build these plans. and we're doing a lot of other things as well. we're trying as we're as we're doing this resource alignment process, we're also balancing the budget sort of and trying to rehaul overhaul our fiscal and operational systems. thank you, commissioner lamb, for your leadership on that committee, and by the way, we're adopting a new enterprise resource management system next year too, which will help with that. but but all of these things, there's a lot of change happening in svusd all at the same time. and we're trying to rebuild trust and we're trying to improve student outcomes. so just to put it out there, i think, again, this is this is hard, hard work at every single level of the system. we're not always going to get it right. but what we do need to do as leaders is we need to be committed to accountability, to transparency, to honesty. you know, and to

saying we're going to work through these issues. we're going to listen deeply. we're going to we're not going to just like you said earlier, we're not just going to do something to meet a deadline, but we're actually going to make sure we get it right. so i think that's the fundamental message here also is like, let's get it right for our students, and take the time we need to do to do that. so thank you very much, superintendent wayne and staff also so you don't feel again like rushed to say, okay, we have to, you know, if there's something that's not ready, tell us, you know, don't feel like you got to you got to meet the deadline and you got to. right. so i think that's also a message that's important. thank you so much for everyone. i feel like this was a productive discussion. it was long, thank you to the public for sticking with us. and to the board for engaging in it. and, you know, again, the board now, this is actually a little bit out of our hands for a while, right? the just to be really, really clear about the process, we are going to vote on this, this resolution, the tiebreaker resolution that will probably be on the consent agenda at the

september 10th meeting, unless someone unless two commissioners want to pull it off for discussion. but otherwise we'll just put it on consent. but then this will be the superintendent and staff will propose, will put this out on september 18th, and it won't come back to a board agenda, until november. right. so there'll be some time for the superintendent and staff to get feedback from the community to engage, to make any adjustments they want to make to the plan, and then they're going to bring the final version of the plan back to the board in november. obviously, you can talk to us about it, and we expect you will and hope you will. but but this the a lot of the engagement will be around with staff because they're the ones that are going to then bring a final plan to us for consideration in november. question. comment yeah. president alexander, just a clarification around the timeline we spent a whole lot of time tonight admiring the problem and asking a lot of questions the same way that we did back in june. when should we expect answers to these questions? will we expect answers to these questions before september 18th, i well,

again, i'm unclear about our next steps as far as our role in the accountability and the monitoring process here. well, can i just say before you respond, i would just say that is up to the superintendent and he can respond to us. but i mean, at the end of the day in december, we're going to vote yes or no on their plan, right? so there's a we do have time for them to answer these questions. i think the next phase is really about the superintendent and the community. and during that phase, we'll be hearing and listening and learning right. and, and but but it's really between the superintendent and the community largely. he needs, you know, to be able to answer some of those questions for the community and also for us. can i reframe my question then? yeah because, my job here is to reflect the values of my community and reflect what i'm hearing from the community. and i hear a heck of a lot of fear out here, and i do not have the

answers i need right now at this point to be comfortable, to just walk away from this process and come back to it. in november. i feel like september 18th 19th, i need to be at a lot of schools hearing what the community says. september 18th, 19th, like, like i still don't understand the plans and how we are actually supporting families, through the pain that's going to that. we are inflicting and we are authorizing as a board. so i would like a lot more clarity about our role moving forward here, actually. well, i think that's well, i think my point wasn't that we don't engage as individual commissioners, but at a board meeting, you know, there's not a board meeting to discuss it because the idea is we want to give time and space for the superintendent team to refine the plan. right. our job is really at the end of the day to vote yes or no. and again, we will have to be convinced or

there won't be the votes. right? i mean, that is at the end of the day, that's our job. it's not it's actually not to i would argue it's actually not to micromanage along the way. that's their job is to figure that out. so yes, we need to be informed. but i don't want us i don't want the community to think that, like if we show up on september 19th at a community meeting, you're actually not giving feedback to us. we're just observing. we're the board observing. you're giving feedback to the superintendent because he's the one making the plan there. does that make sense? that distinction? it totally does. and at the end of the day, the community has us to hold accountable through how they vote. and i take that responsibly and that responsibility incredibly seriously. that's why i'm here. right? so and that list that comes out on september 18th, like, okay, we still have the sequel process, and yet we haven't even talked about the fact that there's very likely going to be more schools on the list than actually get closed because of the sequel process. right? so there i, i'm still

struggling with my responsibility to the community in this process, in preventing harm from being done and what our role is in. so that's where i'm hoping that maybe we can, as a leadership team, maybe talk through what our role as community engagement looks like between now and november, and not just sit. that's what i'm asking for. a community engagement plan. so i think, yeah, no, i do think that that might be helpful. and in that in the last when we went out to the community, every single one of you were at at least one of our community meetings. i don't know, you know, of the 16, you were at a good number of them. right. and i think, i mean, i guess we are asking for the same role there. you listened, you reflected back what you heard when we had briefings or on june 25th. some of that you shared some of that. i think that's

what president alexander is saying, that would that would continue. and then so that's one thing that would continue if you want to do any other engagement, that's what i'm saying. you all would talk about that. and then just the second thing is, i mean, we got a lot of information. we'll take our notes back from this. i mean, i do feel like we i go back in the notes, i think we referenced them some. but like, again, the three major themes we heard last time was about enrollment and transition planning and support. and then the, you know, fiscal, you know, the connection to budget, while also, i guess i say that always overall theme, how is this connected to our student outcomes? but to say we are going to be providing regular updates, a lot of the questions you asked will be answered on september 18th and then some. as president alexander said, will evolve through our process. so with all that being said, i guess i'm saying that one you would you know how you showed up at the last round of engagement would make sense to show up in this round of engagement? secondly

we'll be providing updates to the community and regular updates to you. and then third, i'll let president alexander respond. if you want to do consider more than that or talk to. absolutely. i mean, if board members, the more that board members want to do and engage in, i mean, i think our new board office, we can talk, we can think about that as we've at least already has ideas around how we can improve our community engagement. so that's great. my point. and we can also we need to get all your questions answered, all that stuff. i mean, that's what our board office is going to do. my point was more so just to say i didn't want to mislead the public into thinking that we were going to be micromanaging the details of the plan. that was all. so yes, it's their job to keep keep us engaged and our job to keep listening, and i think this board actually, frankly, does a really good job of that. i, if i may say so. i think all of us, you know, are out there a lot in the community. and that's why you heard the questions we asked tonight. i mean, i think we are reflecting the vision and values of the community, and we need to keep doing that. i think that's

what i would say in our in the way that that we that we do it right, even if it's not at this dais, we're, we're in our check ins with the superintendent. we're talking with our briefings with staff and all that. so but but we could talk if we want to do something more formal. i'm certainly open to it, if that's what if that's. i don't know if that's what you're suggesting, but through this process, i think it's fair for community to have opportunities to engage with us outside of that dais and this dais and. yeah, well, let's do it then. let's would love to talk about that. yeah, let's do it. thank so, if there are no and actually just, just to so for the policy, that's why we combine them together. so i just want to reiterate what president alexander said. i mean, there was good discussion. i think it was helpful to do this as a first reading, just so you and the public can understand. langston helped provide a lot of clarity about what this is trying to accomplish. so if there if there are any more specific concerns about it, we'll go through our process,

you know, submit questions. but this will be on and we the reason why president alexander said consent is because we don't need to discuss it again, since we had the discussion tonight, so i think we got the questions answered about it. but if there's anything that comes up, we'll go through our process as, as you said about, on addressing an item like that. all right. if there's nothing else, it is 9:41 p.m. and this meeting is adjourned. i've got time i've b

with 25 jobs so for young people one of my favorite days in san francisco thank you, thank you to the companies that are hiring. >> (clapping.) >> the city of san francisco and united way are calling an employers to have jobs for youth in 2012 president obama issued a challenge and the challenge was get disconnected young people

connected to jobs and so mayor ed lee said we should lead this challenge that the city will have 25 hundred jobs that first summer 6200 jobs and been building. >> i'll high are ups we like to pledge 50 jobs so for youth this summer. >> excellent. thank you. >> a large part of the jobs it did manual resource center started off a a youth program and our first year 35 percent of the young people working full-time we know there the pressors looking for committed young people the resource fair attracts over 6 hundred people if all over the city and the greater bay area. >> we have public and private partnership the employers came

from hertz rent a car and many private sector jobs sea have the city staff so the airport is here, starbuck's is here we've been retail we have restaurants, we have offices and so the young people will get an opportunity to partner search warrant with so many of the great champions for jobs. >> for the past 5 years we've hired over 3 willed youth to work as business traces they have been promoted to supervisors. >> if you're doing a job at starbuck's the opportunity for them allows them to understand math if tire working at anothers architectural firm understanding debris or a media to understand reading and writing differently those are opportunities that the mayor is clear he wanted to provide

we're going to be do mock interviews helping young people that the resumes a it pulls them to the career opportunities and building inspection commission make sure they're prepared for those opportunity educational and in terms of their preparation skills by the time many of them leave they'll leave with jobs and new relationships building their network of the opportunity to thrive and i think i could focus and i check around the booths to see had is available i'm hoping to get a job but have employers you know employers give practice. >> i feel this will be a great way to look for jobs we can do this like you get paid. >> when our young people walk we capture their information so we can do follows up and we have

a room that has a our computer lab an opportunity for them to do cover letters and talk about updating their profile and i think how you do things on the internet we help quam and they can update tare resume and can look in interviews and on the spot job officers we hire about one hundred young people today lee alone it is exciting out of that it is if they come through with one hundred walk out with a job. >> we'll rock and roll i guess in the job interviews it went great. >> as a youth we get to go through experiences 3 builds a great foundation gymnasium a positive outlook and more importantly confidence. >> we really want to do at the end of the day exist a young person with the possibility of

what we can be and do we have them go home i want to get there let me connection with those folks and ultimately got on the path. >> good morning good morning caitlin i'm caitlin lopez 23 years old i moved out to california and san francisco, california had i was about 8 years old and actually put in foster care at the age of 9 or 10 had a baby at the 16 years old so i've kind of had this crazy like youth experience. >> despite the challenges she faced caitlin finished high school and take advantage of program. >> i heard will mayor ed lee's program through my social worker and i interviewed with

entrepreneurs after i was matched walking sweet spots office i thought imitated not been in that type of office ones i got into the office with my supervisor we boptd and i got a call from h.r. i got the position and i'm in. >> i have. >> we hired merry for 8 weeks and saw how she did she was only going to work 8 weeks but at the end question offered her a position part time. >> i have those traits it has been great working here my term of 5 weeks was pretty much like family supporting each other i feel like the mayors job program helped me to get in job without

the jobs plus program i - i probably would have not even had a job. >> in her case she's a mother of two now going to school full-time and making it happen so if she can do it differently anyone that has a willingness to try at least try to make it can do it. >> those programs are amazing they're so important for young adults to really go out there and make a better future for themselves and despite not having a traditional - you can go out there based on the programs that's what they're for they want to help you succeed. >> we'll be committing to 25 jobs in the tech. >> the san francisco rec and park is hiring 3 and 50 youth

that summer . >> (clapping.) >> and only child born in the office development allocation to r so for me is a network of the community that made the difference no way i'll be with united way this network was here for me this was personal and professional so important we create the opportunities who know the next ceo or champion of the community is coming today to find their path. >> that's the roll in san francisco we really by helping each other out >> (clapping.) >> the goal for 2017 to create 5 thousand jobs for youth if you want more information invite them at sf youth.org

>> everyone loves a good sunset, but in san francisco we take to a new level. i'm city supervisor engardio and i represent an entire part of the city called the sunset. it stretches 30 glorious avenues. welcome to district 4! the sunset is a collide scope of people culture and experiences for residents of all ages. we are a beach town, we are a chinatown, and not a town at

all. the sunset is home to 80 thousand people and we love our dogs. we live in neat row houses, homes with yards, story book homes and every quirk in between. the sunset used to be sand dunes all the way to the ocean. when the city needed to grow, san francisco's future ran through the sunset. we built rows and rows of housing for a great irish population and welcomed a great chinese population. today home to a gowing number of families from all backgrounds and the future starts here. >> we chose sunset knauz we love san francisco but during the pandemic we needed more space and more family focused, so that is where we found the sunset. how walkable it is. we live along iving street along where diana's school is our son's day care

is. >> our kids and all the kids we knee in the neighborhood are really the future here and we are really excited to live in the neighborhood. we love it so much. >> nina and alex are expecting their first baby and it first leaders of the newly formed sunset community band which bring together musicians of all ages at special events. >> we are about to have our first kid and met so many younger people and so many moving into the neighborhood. exciting to raising our family here because this community is awesome. >> bringing the community together and making it stronger i think a band can help with that. it is a matter of civic pride and coming together and doing something as a community that really makes like us from a collection of people into a neighborhood. >> sundays in the sunset are

for worship, farmer's market and live music at the ocean. if the sunset had a town square, it would be this magical area that appears every sunday on 37 avenue. the sunset farmer market isn't just a place to get good food and produce, it is where community gathers live music from local musicians and cultural celebrations and [indiscernible] share ideas to shape our city. it really is the place the community comes together to celebrate the best of the sunset. >> something about it had sunset chinese cultural district is there a lot of opportunities to uplift the chinese voice and chinese people. when you look at the sunset, a lot of think of trees and single family homets and the schools, but there isn't a lot of very iconic locations that

people can look at and know they are in the sunset. one thing we are working on is to unveil a new mural in the park by community and as we do more work in the sunset and uplift the unique qualities of the community, we want to do more mural s and spaces that are iconic so the sunset gets a piece of being unique and identifiable. >> a supermarket for everything you need for chinese home cooking and [indiscernible] the rice noodles are so good they are featured in catherine moss latest novel, [indiscernible] takes place in the sunset. there is a old school menu at the ond mandarin islamic restaurant and a item so spicy they have to warn customers. maybe bobo can neutralize the spice. the sunset has plenty options. try the bars at the beach.

we also have the sunset reservoir brewing company and o'briens irish pub. cuisine in the sunset spans the world. [indiscernible] >> travel and work in [indiscernible] we have our own restaurant. and then, it was my turn to follow her to her country, so that's why we opened in her neighborhood. >> we are looking for more a local gentleman gem. we traveled around the world and what we highly value, a place for the community to gather. a local hang-out spot. that is why this isn't a restaurant, it is cafe, you can order a coffee, you can have a fuel full meal but it is place to connect. whether parents kids friends is why we decide to go qulose close to

the beach, a neighborhood i am familiar with. i run into people all the time. i live in a big city but why i chose district 4 outer sunset. it has a small town feel. i love our neighbors. >> the sunset has everything from footwear to hardware. here is great wall hardware, 3500 square feet of retail space. we carry about 22 thousand items and counting. it never stops because i have a thing. when a customer says don't you have this and i don't have it, it bothers me. i want to have it,s so it is just of those things about owner a hardware store, people expect you to have everything and you to fulfill that need. i like to serve my neighborhood. most businesses you want to buy this or that or eat this or buy the widget. a hardware store is different. people come in and have a

problem and need a solution and they are looking for you to navigate them through that problem and offer them products that help them get to where they need to go. people are great. i love this neighborhood. there is different ethnicities here, different cultures here. we all intermingle and mix together and we get along fine and i always like that about this neighborhood. it is just a nice place to be. it is near the beach, it is beautiful and near the zoo and near golden gate park, stern grove. great schools, great parks. whats there not to like? we also love pizza from hole in the wall to [indiscernible] hottest restaurants in the sunset tunching vietnamese food [indiscernible] ice cream [indiscernible] this is great highway park. a great place to burn calories

on the weekend. i'm here every sunday doing a long run and start with 5 miles and with this ocean view, if it motivates me i try for 10. the new york times named great highway park one of 52 places to change the world. it is that amazing and the gem of the sunset and people are finding new ways to activate the space. in halloween it turns into the great haunt way. >> we imagine a future from the part time road close toor to a park to welcome people all ages and activities to our coast. >> since we had [indiscernible] always looking for ways to sort of improve what is already good around us. the neighborhood is great. it will be even better with a park here. >> sunset turn to put a new sign up on our coast. open for all. >> this is the treasure of san francisco and this hasn't been

discovered yet. homes are still relatively affordable, there is decent schools and a place for kids to have a feeling they can run and play and take part in things. what i'm happy the great highway has become a park for the weekend. i'm glad we share what we have with the rest of the city and people come from outside the city. i'm sure people come from the east bay, and i just feel like, seeing the people out here enjoying this represents the hope for the future. >> imagine the potential of an emerald necklace in the sunset for safe biking and recreation along the green belt of sunset boulevard which connects lake merced with golden gate park and great highway park. quality of life matters and we know how to take care of each other. sunset youth service helps teenagers find purpose and self-help for

the elderly let's seniors shine. local artists capture the sunset experience and work is on display in cafes like java beach and black bird books. the art of conversation happens at this new barber shop called the avenue. the owner calls it a barber lounge because he wants to create a space for the community to gather beyond hair cuts. this corner is a hent of the future. you see new housing built for new generations and it is over a community space that everyone loves. the sunset is a place full of potential. >> the possibility is here, more then anything. you can start something here and people will get behind and the community finds there is a need for it and people support it. >> i always look around the corner, the next thing we can do to crank it up more and make it safer, make it more enjoyable. bring in new business, support them. >> i really hope we bring just joy,

because ultimately music helps bring joy to the community. >> this is where people are at. this is where people want to be, so it gives me a lot of positive energy. >> my office created the first sunset night market on iring street where i'm standing. more then 10 thousand people showed up. nobody has seen that many on--[indiscernible] here it celebrate all the fun things in life, food music and art. our beautiful sunset always amazed. the sunset experience is pure joy. the sunset is where we will create our best san francisco. join us.

[music] san francisco emergency home program is a safety net for sustableable commuters if you bike, walk, take public transit or shares mobility you are eligible for a free and safe roadway home the city will reimburse you up to $150 dlrs in an event of an emergency. to learn more how to submit a reimbursement visit sferh.

>> i'm supervisor connie chan. over the last 4 years i worked to make district 1 stronger and safeer for all families. first generation chinese immigrant, i aserved the public over two deck ades to give back to it the city that gave my family new opportunities. it was haneer to be elected in 2020 and day one i worked to be a voice for district 1 residents. i believe every san franciscan deserve clean and safe streets. and pushed city hall to admore patrol to richmond, retired police ambassadors to neighborhood commercial cordize and expand street crisis response team. worked graffiti removal and street cleaning and supported working families. i fought budget cuts to prms