secondly, i did attend the sfusd community budget meeting on may 5 and i want to thank staff members nancy wo mack, rita notavan and nancy anderson for being there. it was a small but committed group and i wanted to remind our families and stakeholders that additional community budget meetings will be held on may 12, 6:00 to 7:30 at james lake middle school and may 25th, 6:30 to 8:00 at jefferson elementary school where you can sort of begin to understand the full weight of the budget crisis that we're in. just two other announcements. the northern japan earthquake relief fund administered by the japanese culture and community center has reached $2.5 million in donations. so we want to thank the community for supporting that grass roots effort. and then finally, on this past weekend, the san francisco dental society announced the winners of the children's dental poster contest and this year there was quite a strong representation from our public schools. it also reaches out to our private schools, but of the over 50 prizes, there was quite a large number of our kids from stephenson,

this means this is the end of his music performance in sfusd. this is a tragic inequity. everywhere i turn i hear the word "equity" and "access" and this is an example of inequity. it is highly immoral to start a child in elementary school, to train them for three years in middle school, and then not give them the full experience of a high school program. i was so touched that -- about kevin's situation, and also a clarinet player that i have, that saturday i wrote a duet and kevin would like to perform this for you. it's called "lament." ♪ president mendoza: i'm sorry, sir, what is your name? >> my name is richard frasier. president mendoza: thank you. ♪ [instrumental music] >> my name is george. i am a parent at the elementary school. my family has donated thousands of dollars to the schools. my wife and i, we have seen the renaissance of the city public schools, the schools we have enjoyed over the past decade. we can afford to have our children in private schools, but we choose public schools. involved parents have stepped up to fund musical education in our schools.

we have expressed in writing and in person the desire to be part of sfusd, but we have been denied. we went to the state, and were told to wait for a response from their legal division. we waited and were told we should resubmit this month. based on that directive and the understanding that this needed to be exactly what was expected, we went back to our charter. the updated every section we had been told was deficient, and reduced the charge of three other approve a charter schools of preferences. two were provided by the schools themselves. one was provided by ms. richards. this was given for review. again we have been denied. we were informed of this approximately five hours ago. we are here tonight in part to address the denial, since we were not afforded the question and answer sessions that are a part of the process. we realize you had a committee look at this charter and to view the recommendation. we hope you will look at it yourselves, because we know it is complete. other traders school administrators have looked at our charter and have agreed it represents and even if but

about we as a district have been participating in civil service examines and really finding a way the sfusd can be an equal partner. our initiative is to provide base tested which began in november 2010. we've made service appointments. it's based on the actual civil service test for the classification or based on all of the steps that are needed to be taken in that are put in the process. what that does for us is that it's reduced the time for the applicant. we were told about six months for someone. the worse case scenario is three months but really within the month is the fastest and i've heard two weeks through this new process which is really expedited and streamlined. our recruitment life cycle for these appointments. it's also in particular helped us not use as we had been using quite frequently the exempt appointment. per meant -- per meant exempt which was added by the compliance board and we want to be compliant. how our own recruitment process and selection processes. so it has a lot manufacture credibility to us. our next steps in that process which i think are also very importa

they also had an update on the requirements for high school students in sfusd. and finally we had a presentation from coleman advocates on the kinds of sore spoers that really need to be in place to -- kinds of support that really need to be in place to our students wesm did have some disappointing numbers from the first semester from students who didn't pass core courses. this is the first year that we were checting them to -- [inaudible] that was a good presentation. we also had a very interesting presentation on identifying -- on identifying students who are at risk for dropping out. there are some very specific numbers that the board were provided on eighth graders who if they have an attendance record of less than 87.5% of the time or have failed a core course in the eighth grade, they're far more likely to drop out later. and so we've identified 182, i believe it is, aggete graders who now that they're moving to high school, we know who they are, we know that they're at risk and we can follow these students and support them better. so i found that data rea

professional record had been working for 42 years. 20 years as a nurse practitioner and 11 years in sfusd. the most i have is 22 years and 36 years. as a nurse practitioner. so every one has multiple degrees. i want to comment the work that they do and salute that. so i just wanted you all to know that. >> thank you so much, commissioner. >> the meeting for may 17, commissioner yee? >> i want to readdress one of them which is the -- what we want to put on the ballot for novet. and the other -- the second one is development strategies, 1950's mission feath and this was the -- given us to. there was some recommendations that we might to follow. i think there are general con sen -- consensus. and a lot of this discussion was centered around the bhole teacher housing piece that we would -- but we wanted to see if it was practical or not in terms of the regulations that we have to follow. the other item that we -- i dressed was potentially november 2011. so besides the school bond, there was the -- there was -- brought to our attention that there is a city bond measures. she would look at road

high-quality teachers in the classroom, and whereas, with 200 national board certified teachers on staff, sfusd has one of the highest numbers of these teachers, teacher numbers in the state, and whereas good teaching grows in value and pays dividends far beyond the classroom, therefore be it resolved that the superintendent of schools and the board of education of the san francisco unified school district recognize may 11, 2011, as day of the teacher and encourage our community to thank our educators who give the gift of knowledge through teaching. president mendoza: thank you. do we have any public speakers that wanted to speak on this resolution? o.k. no speakers comments, but from the board? commissioner murase? commissioner murase: i really do want to thank our teachers. i've had tremendous teachers when i was going through the unified school district and sometimes they spend more time with the kids than we do as parents so i want to acknowledge our teachers. president mendoza: thank you. others? roll call, please. madam clerk: ms. norton? ms. wynns, mr. yee, ms. mendoza? six aye's. presid