dr. matthews? >> tonight, we are proud and excited to present to the board an update on the middle grades redesign. the presenters this evening are our chief academics officer, miss brynn stevens, melissa dodd, and our assistant superintendent of middle schools, tom fung. >> thank you, commissioners. from this perspective, it looks dazzling. so we're pleased to present an update on the board this evening on the middle school redesign. my name is brent stephens, and i'm joined by two colleagues who will copresent this evening. >> melissa dodd, chief technology officer. >> good evening, commissioners, and department superintendent. my name is fong sung, and i am the assistant superintendent of middle schools, and i'm here to let you know that i will be participating in the middle school age redesign. i'm super excited and right now, i'm here to learn and listen and my colleagues are going to be showing me the way. >> so what we hope to do by way of this presentation is bring the board and the public

dr. matthews. >> thank you, president mendoza. good evening, everyone. >> good evening. >> this past sunday, the san francisco unified school district for the second straight year had a large and enthusiastic contingent in the pride parade. [applause] >> our district has been a national leader in providing lgbtq support services and inclusive curriculum for nearly 30 years and about 175 san francisco unified san francisco marchers, including students, families, alumni, teachers, other central based office staff, board of education commissioners and i were excited and proud to celebrate and represent our core values of social justice, diversity, and inclusion. thank you to everyone who participated in this fun and positive event. we are in the process of hiring great people. if you're interested in becoming part of the san francisco unified school district team, please go to out website, http/www.sfusdjobs.org/current openings for a list of our current postings and join our team. all of our district offices will be closed next wedn

dr matthews? >> thank you presidents. good evening, everyone. we had a great opening up schools last week and i have the pleasure, on the first day of visiting three schools,, the willie brown junior middle school, hillcrest elementary school and francisco middle school. i welcome students to willie brown in the morning and then went to hillcrest. it is one of the first schools in our district to begin using a japanese methodology called teaching through problem-solving during meth -- mathematics class this methodology focuses on student solving novel problems in which no solution is known in advance and this builds critical thinking and mathematical understanding. over the past school year, francisco middle school has dramatically improved its culture, climate, among teachers and students, by using encouragement and constructive feedback. as a result, suspensions have dropped over all but the fight -- highest dropout rate by 15 percentage points. there was a wonderful visit at all three sites and the great to see amazing work being done by our

dr. matthews and his team for putting that together. i know people worked hard, long hours to get that off the ground. i wasn't able to attend because i was not in the country. but you were all working hard and i really appreciate that. and i'm excited about the year ahead. finally, i just wanted to briefly -- about another loss that we had. i wanted to briefly acknowledge nia wilson who was tragically taken from us due to an incident of violence on one of our public transit lines on bart. she wasn't a member of our school district, but a member of the bay area community, one of our children. and i'm really focused on, i think we all do believe in keeping our children in safe. so i wanted to say her name. >> president mendoza-mcdonnell: thank you vice president cook. i think this is symbolic of the children we care for in our own district, so thank you for acknowledging her. so the calendar committee meetings, that's on me. and i am actually passing around the committee request, so if you could please complete that and i'll announce the

dr. matthews from the center center you know inside schools, the superintendent. we have been talking about a lot of the innovative approaches that you're taking towards education. let's start off when we saw at the classroom where you're trying to get the kids engaged and thinking about what they're doing rather than just people morization. >> absolutely. we're preparing the students for the 21st century. we're teaching the kids to think through problem solve. they need to have creative and good communication skills. the method that we just saw shows all of those. we note skills that they will need in the 21st century. >> reporter: the add challenge, the language, the bilingual lesson plan to make sure that you're serving the community that you're serving? >> absolutely. that is another one of those that i was just talking about they have to be able to commute across differences and world and languages. that is what we're doing, preparing for students for this century and being bilingual. >> reporter: we're also in a math class we saw language garage and arts as

dr. vincent matthews. dr. rstand you went on a tour of the schools in your district today... ( pam ) coming up ... a daring rescue after a mother and son plow their vehicle through a marina fence in southern california .. and into the water.. ( ken ) and next up.. the largest enrollment ever for one bay area university... a look at what's new on campus, and what the students at san jose state can expect in housing and class crowding. after a two year investigation, u-c berkeley has suspended a professor for 3 years following allegations he sexually harassed a graduate student(pam) kron 4's dan kerman is live on campus tonight .... dan you spoke with that grad student.. sota little over 2 years ago uc berkeley grad student eva hagberg fisher accused one of her archiecture professors of sexual harassment. just last week the university decided to suspend him for 3 years without pay.sot eva hagberg fisher/uc berkeley grad student 18-28a statement from the university says professor nezar alsayyad ...sexually harasse

dr. matthews and the general public for the opportunity to speak tonight. my name is margaret reyes, and i'm a teacher here in san francisco unified, and my employer i.d. is 18505. the investigation was conducted by the law firm vandermite and maddox. the investigator at the law firm has ruled that the matter is closed and no corrective action is needed. i'm here to request that the board keep the matter open and investigate sfusd par. while the attorney did take careful note and put considerable declare ative weight into my use of the word "huh," h-u-h, they failed to investigator several key witnesses. most importantly, the investigator made no mention of the par whistle blower letters and the par data. i am certain that the investigator had this information. i'd like to briefly review for the board and the public my interpretation of the data that was supplied to me by uesf from labor relations. here is a few highlights. sfusd teachers age 46 and above account for about 40% of the population in sfusd. while those referred to par for the same age group ac

dr. matthews. the proposed action is that san francisco unified school district board of education approve a material revision to the 2350i6b keys charter school charter and five keys indepentant charter school petitions to add some santa clara county sites that will be operated in conjunction and cooperation with the santa clara county sheriff's office. so according to charter school law, if a charter school is going to add additional sites, those sites must be listed in the petition, and to list those in the petition, you have to do what's called a material revision. so to do a material revision, we had to also review the current charter school petitions, which were renewed by this board in january of 2016, most recently, to make sure that everything is up to date. so after doing that, we have asked that the five keys charter school make three basic changes to the charter petitions for five keys charter school and five keys independance high school charter, and those would be one, to amend elemen

dr. matthews if there's going to be more information in the coming months that we can do a -- how you wanted to break this down so that we can see how the relevance of these particular schools and the strategies that you're putting in place. maybe there's just some thinking around how you could present this differently so that we're doing it in chunks and we're seeing the connections. >> so i would say for sure there will be more information because we will have the information around what the strategies that schools are selecting, so we'll be able to see which schools are selecting which strategies, where we're putting information behind, and then, we'll begin to see data both -- it'll be a year before we have data regarding, you know, high stakes testing, but we'll have benchmark data, so we'll begin to see -- you know, my expectation is we'll begin to see, you know, the ultimate measure of what this is all about is making sure that students can successfully demonstrate that they've mastered -- that they can show that they have mastery of our standards. and so we want to make sure that we'

dr. barnes, this is the right resolution? and mark aaronson, matthew fano, kim tavaglioni, and dr. palmer. please. in any order would be fine. >> okay. thank you. thank you, mr. chairman, commissioners. i'm mark aaronson. i'm a professor emeritus at u.c. hastings college of the law and associated with our community development clinic which provides legal counsel to san franciscans for health care, housing, jobs, and justice. i am speaking on behalf of the coalition. we ask you to find contrary to the recommendation of the director that these transfer of services overall will have a detrimental impact on san francisco. the reason is -- one of the reasons is that the transfer may result in a loss of proposition q oversight, what you are doing today. proposition q clearly covers hospitals. it is not as clear in terms of its coverage of the sutter pacific medical foundation, which is an arm of sutter health. this loss of public oversight would have a detrimental impact. the proposition q hearings do not result in follow up enforcement action, but they do serve a very important function

dr. vincent matthews. [applause] >> thank you, mayor breed. and i also want to thank you all for being here and joining us. on monday morning, monday the 20th, over -- we're standing in front of everett middle school. over 750 students will return to this school and it is important that we do everything we can to keep them safe and the number one way of keeping them safe is slowing down. reducing speed saves lives. 750 students will return here, but throughout the city, 56,000 students will be returning to our schools along with 10,000 staff moebs and coming to these schools will be anywhere from 75,000 to 100,000 parents dropping them off and picking them up. we want to make sure that all of our people who are associated with our schools in any way, shape or form are kept safe. so once again, we want to encourage you to know that we're starting school on monday and we need you to slow down. what we're also excite about is that we're training the next generation of safe walkers. we are partnering with so many organizations. and what that does

dr. vincent matthews first watched a first grade class approach a math problem with an innovative method.he tour but when we asked him what a superintendent does he won't quite sure. >> a superintendent wants to know about stuff. they come to places and ask people what is this place about. >> reporter: when we told him the superintendent is the boss and asked him what he would like for him to change, jaden said he would like to see more play structures. we asked a mom the same question, her focus was on security. >> keeping the school safe. last year, we had a crazy guy come on campus. >> reporter: we asked dr. mahe aut answeri such a wide range of opinions. w ps backs for the good thi doing, keep those things going and look at the areas we need to improve and try to keep making things better. >> reporter: the superintendent says his goal is that all students are thriving this year. they truly do look at today as new year's day. in san francisco, amy hollyfield, abc news. >> how cool is jaden? new year, new me. >> great attitude. >>> kids got encouragement on their way to school today. se