and norman yee, president of the school board. i am here as an individual advocate today. i wanted to thank supervisors of a loavalos and chu and others tt this office together. it has really been of long time coming. i was brought into this discussion several years ago when people were talking about needing to have this office and whether my perspectives as a former executive of an organization that rallied around child care programs or being on the first five commission or being at the code-share of the preschool for all program in san francisco, this resolution makes sense to me. creating this office makes sense to me. we need to reduce the confusion that is happening in the field in terms of what direction we want to go in san francisco. we need to make things more efficient for the government, and for those reasons alone, it would dictate we need to create this office. i am glad to hear from commissioner hydra mendoza, my colleagues on the school board that this will be budgeted in the mayor's budget, because without that, we will not have this office. i am here to su

norman yee, president of the board of education is also here with us today. i did see laurel from first five in the room. if there are other department heads or commissioners i have missed, my apologies. thank you. >> good morning. thank you for having us. costi am happy to be here to tak about the direction we are going in. i really want to thank supervisor avalos for taking a leadership role in this. this has been lots of conversations, and i think the community is clear that this has been many years, and not just from 2010. so are really appreciate all that you've done to make this happen. over the past several years we have built in the city and early care and education system that has addressed many of the very challenging issues that we have. there are three different departments that have been helping to serve our kids across the city, and our thought is we really want to be able to bring the quality of care education facility affordable wheat and accessibility for all of our families. the current investments from the department of children and youth f

. >> lastly, we do want to give special thanks to norman yee for putting this together and asking us, the district and the committee to come together on this, to look how we can work together and meet these goals in the end. also want to thank all the assistant sups, the board members to attend, and for the cbo's to see that this was not an initiative that stallone. it was the district wide initiative. we want to thank -- there were so many community members. she mentioned dcyf. they played a critical role. this was not a district product. this was a committee project and we want to make sure everyone knows that and we want to say thank you to the board, to our assistant sups an members -- and members of the community who participated. thank you. >> ok, comments. >> we do have a clip of the symposium. what we plan to do is to put it on the early education district website for folks to see a as long as well as the report. >> ok, great. comments? commissioner mendozurase: i wano recognize you for your leadership. we have heard of the resounding endorsement of pre-k in tonight's public c

norman yee, everybody. [applause] [laughter] you know, i am getting up there. 60. it goes downhill afterwards. it is great to join everybody to kick off. we could be elsewhere. we could be protesting today on something. but we're here celebrating our asian pacific heritage month. it is a month-long celebration and recognition of things we have been doing to promote heritage. this year's theme is advancing education. it is sorely needed by everyone. is something we naturally do. i want to welcome everything here from japantown, the southeast asian community, the philippine committee, the samoan community, all of our asian populations working together to promote this month and be able to tell more stories about who we are. it is a wonderful country. i just came back from seattle, my home town. i have my own homegrown seattle jokes i could tell you. they will ruin your day. it is great to link up roots. i went back to my high school in beacon hill where i grew up. i rethought the steps of how i got to san francisco. i met with housing groups that resonated with our in

i will talk a lot about that with the new president of our school board, norman yee and hydra mendoza. i will talk about how our schools can participate and make sure there are generations of kids who do not lose hope in the city. do not look elsewhere when the best jobs are created right here. all they have to do is do their part and when they do their part and complete that education, the education they need will be there for them. i want to say one thing about our infrastructure. something i want you to remember as you leave today's room. it is -- want to mention something about hetch hetchy. there is dialogue out there that some people are suggesting that we can tear down our hetch hetchy dam and still survive as a city. i want to let you know that as insane as that is, it is in fact, insane. [applause] there are going to be some leaders that approach you, suggests that tearing down the hetch hetchy is a good idea. they will grow pew into some discussion about water sustainability issues. but know this. not only do we have the cleanest water, not only have we spent serious amounts

finance budget and finance go together like education and science ask the president of the board norman yee and you'll find it is a very elementary try to understand it it is no illusion budget and finance budget and finance supervisor chu: thank you. next speaker. >> good morning. i am the director of friends of st. francis child care center, a nonprofit that serves 30 low- income and middle-income families for the past 35 years. we survive as an organization that can serve low-income families by having a grant from the department of education that need to be supplemented by city funds. we have been fortunate to receive at least three different funding sources from city departments. i am here to support the creation of an officer early childhood education. one of the main reasons for this, i feel it will make our organization more able to provide quality education because it will simplify and unify the various monitoring data collection and fiscal reporting systems, which right now we are constantly jumping to report to each of the agencies that fund us. we are reporting attended several t

marissa, david johnson, christina hart, susan watson, norman, -- >> do you mind if we go in a different order? president yee: 1 minutes, each. >> good evening. i am a teacher. this has been a difficult year for us as we are moving into the dual language spanish program in san francisco. we have been trying very hard to make this happen. we have found that the administration has made it is very difficult for us. trying to to come to agreements and terms, we are working about staffing next year. people love made requests to continue on with their jobs -- people have made request to continue on with their jobs to do so. it has not been the case for everybody. someone has been singled out. as opposed to giving professional reasons, it becomes clear to me that it has been personal. if that should not be the case. we're all working for the same things. this has not been a fair process for us at our school. is that my time? ok, thank you. >> i am also a teacher. i wanted to elaborate on some of the things that norman was referring to. he was referring to the consolidation of one particular staff member. we are not