thanks. >> good evening, i'm not dennis kelly. i'm linda plaque, the executive vice president of the united educators of san francisco. and i just wanted to get up this evening to say hello, welcome everybody back, superintendent, commissioners, staff, ladies and gentlemen of the audience. i want to mention something about the race for top money. it's veryit is very unfortunate california did not get it. why did we tried to get it? we are desperate this is a disgrace. the educational reform we are engaged in is not the reform we should be engaged in. what the administration wants us to do is relate not sound, research-based educational policy, and it is unfortunate. in a way, i am not fat and happy we did not get it. -- not that unhappy we did not get it. let's see some research. what about school number 11? school no. 12? why are we engaged in this type of competition. this is a crazy competition we are engaged in. where is the senate seat? -- sanity? where is the justice for our kids. we can look forward to federal funding. than

thanks. >> good evening, i'm not dennis kelly. i'm linda plaque, the executive vice president of the united educators of san francisco. and i just wanted to get up this evening to say hello, welcome everybody

dennis kelly, the president. [applause] >> thank you all for being here. it is a great honor and a great privilege to be able to recognize the work that all of these good people have done. some of these -- even the administrators. we have known to the since she was a tiny teacher. it is good to see her pass through and come to this point. it is a wonderful time to be able to celebrate the great work these teachers have done and these principles have done, and know it is emblematic of the work everyone else is doing. it was just 162 years ago. jim and i are the only ones in the room who remember it. [laughter] there were seven teachers, seven schools, and seven school board members in san francisco. we have come a long way. james was one of those first people. it is a name we have kept in the district ever since. thank you very much for coming. congratulations to all of you. just think how much longer this could all go on. thank you. [applause] >> i found my notes. now you are in trouble. i want to acknowledge my colleagues, such as norman yi. thank you for

. >> again, dennis kelly, united educators of san francisco. we are ballot argument folks on this. we are putting money behind this, and it is really because what changes a school is the participation of the parents. if immigrant parents, and these are legal immigrant parents. people come up to us and say this is about illegal immigrants. it is not. it is people who are legally here in the country but have not yet received their citizenship papers. if we cannot allow their participation in the schools in this way, we freeze them out. we slam the door on them and tell them that we are not interested in them. we cannot do that. for the schools to be successful, the schools need the participation of the parents. i think the figure used in your resolution refers to possible 30% of the parents. a large number of the parents are going to fall into this category. we need to find a way to bring them in, make it easy and comfortable for them to participate in what is going on in the schools and make the schools better for their children. >> mr. kelly did submit a card. thank you for saving

. >> i'm dennis kelly, president of the united educators of san francisco. there were two things that i wanted to comment on tonight, and they're pretty well separated. one is the -- on page 54 and following, the personnel items that you see there. those personnel items, if you tally up the number of people who were brought on as full-time employees, you have about 135. if you plug in the interns, you have another 35, and then you have another 40 or so, i think, emergency appointments and such like that. those numbers exceed the number of layoffs. and this isn't the only time that you're reporting hiring people. and while the period that we went through last year with the layoffs is, of course, gone and we can't do much about that, we can learn from what happened then and compare what we have now and consider to what degree layoffs like those are necessary. if virtually everybody has been brought back and we have not touched the obama edu-funds money at this point, then there's a question about why we spent whatever it was -- $450,000, $500,000, and went thr

. >> linda plaque and dennis kelly. you may begin in any order. if you could introduce yourself and your name and then two minutes. miss wilson will keep time. a reminder, two minutes is not long, if you didn't get to cover your point, if you're the next speaker, you could cover a different point from the first one. >> good evening. members of the board and the community here tonight. i like to ask the members to please stand. my name is emily gibson. i'm speaking on behalf of the school where i have been fortunate enough to teach fifth frayed in the mission district. 85% of our students receive a free or federal reduced lunch. we also had many years, almost a decade of c.s.t. scores over 800. a 150 of 10 rating in the similar schools index and graduates that are students at cal davis and yes, even harvard. we have just cut the budget because of a 12 student drop in enrollment. the problem is we have nothing left to cut other than a reading recovery program which is the key to the school's success. without it we could not maintain standards orr te

. >> i'm dennis kelly, president of the united educators of san francisco. there were two things that i wanted to comment on tonight, and they're pretty well separated. one is the -- on page 54 and following, the personnel items that you see there. those personnel items, if you tally up the number of people who were brought on as full-time employees, you have about 135. if you plug in the interns, you have another 35, and then you have another 40 or so, i think, emergency appointments and such like that. those numbers exceed the number of layoffs. and this isn't the only time that you're reporting hi