so that's what lee hirsch's film was really all about. he's taken 5 families and he's documented it and yesterday over 3,000 of our students had a chance to view and many of them i think cried because they know it's happening in their own school site. and just because we get a label sometimes in san francisco that we're progressive or that we know better, it's happening also on our own turf to unacceptable levels. i wanted it share with you i'll be doing my part, i'll be doing more than my part. i've indicated to melinda and certainly ann marie and her coordination of this, we will be on the forefront with our school district and our administrators and our commissions to work together with the bay area to end this, to talk about it and expose it and to continue really carrying out a promise that we have made as leaders in our very dynamic bay area. we will not tolerate intolerance and we will expose it, get rid of it, and we will educate our kids, the next generation who will hopefully inherit a better world. we've got to set those condit

we had a question and answer session at the end of the movie and lee hirsch was there, unsolicited, he was not a plant, a student stood up, he was probably an athlete, strong, good-looking young man, he stood up and said what can i do when i get back to my school to make a difference? can we start a club, can we have an event, will you support that? it was a superintendent's dream to have a student say, what can i do? we want every student to go back and say we're going to do something and make it part of what we're going to do against bullying. the one thing i will share with you, ladies and gentlemen, this is not an issue that is just a school district issue. this is an issue that is a community issue. ironically yesterday as we were preparing to have 3,000 students come to 4 or 5 different venues across san francisco to watch this film, the evening before and the morning of the film yesterday we were in very close communication with the superintendent in marin county schools because there had been an incident where some pictures had been posted on facebook that were very compromisin

i hope some of you had the opportunity to meet lee hirsch because i've done a lot of work with him in the context of our bullying. one of my favorite memories in my experience with lee is that we watched this film together with about a thousand people in sioux falls, south dakota, it was remarkable to watch the reactions of the kids in sioux falls, parents, educators, and we did that same q and a when we were done. i appreciate the wonderful words of your superintendent, that was exactly the dynamic in sioux falls and that's the remarkable thing, superintendent, is that this issue knows no boundaries. this issue knows -- it doesn't know class boundaries, it doesn't know race boundaries, it's an issue regretablely that has been timeless. it seems we were all too frequently taught that bullying is simply a rite of passage, i went to christ the king grammar school in buffalo, new york, you would go behind the building and settle your scores at the end of the day and that was an accepted way of doing business. but we're learning and raising consciousness that, no, it's not an acceptable w

so lee hirsch is producer, director, he spent an enormous amount of time in the lives of our 5 families. he is going to be our speaker today. our other guest is roslyn wiseman. those of you who are parents have probably read her books. queen bee, queen bee wannabes, she has something else coming out that i'm probably not allowed it talk about yet, something to do with boys coming up. but i want to get started because our time is short. lee, first of all, tell us about bully, please, what was your inspiration for that. >> sure, we kind of met before, we definitely wanted to make our session a little more relaxed and so what we'll try and throw it out to questions pretty soon and have a bit of a free style banter amongst ourselves. but bully basically began as a, like most independent film makers, a dream, how can i possibly make this film, be able to capture bullying and give it a home, if you will, in something as durable and impactful as a documentary or a film. it very much grew from my own experiences of having been bullied as a kid and feeling like or taking the memory of how hard i