Transcripts For SFGTV Board Of Education 20240713

Section a General Information and section b opening items. First item is approval of board minutes. We need a motion and a second. So moved. Any corrections. [roll call]. Clerk thank you. [roll call] speaker cards for the regular agenda and for closed session are necessary if you wish to regards board of education. Members of the public are reminded that an individual can complete a speaker card prior to the item being called. And presented it to the executive session. To my right and to your left. Members of the public are reminded that individual members of the public have two minutes to address the board and or the item and or the time as set by the president. According to board rules and procedures, speaker cards will not be accepted for an item already before the board. Item number 2, dr. Matthews. Thank you, president sanchez. Good evening, everyone. This month the entire country will join us to elevate the diverse histories, experiences, stories, and voices of African Americans and our critical importance in the past, present and future of our society. The month of february was officially recognized as black History Month in 1976. But its origins go back 50 years prior when woodson had a vision for promoting African American history. Throughout the month of february, San Francisco Public Schools will host a multitude of lessons, efforts efforts and performances. Last week, i joined the African American readin at carver elementary and i encourage our students, teachers, faculty and staff to participate fully in celebrations across the city. On our website, theres a San Francisco Unified School District black History Month resource guide for our educators. This guide is a compilation of resources from blogs, news outlets and Community Organizations that teachers can incorporate into units and lessons throughout the year. You are welcome to reference it for ideas to bring black History Month alive in your family discussions and in activities this movement it is important that these conversations continue outside the classroom and there are many ways that you can celebrate black History Month at home also. We will also be celebrating the successes of our African American students at the 26th annual African American honor roll and candlelight ceremony thursday, february 20th from 5 00 p. M. To 8 00 p. M. At saint marys cathedral located at 1,100 1111 goth street. The San Francisco alliance of black School Educators and the African American community request the honor of your presence at the honor roll Academic Awards ceremony and reception. We will honor third to 12th grade students who have approved a 3. 0 or higher this academic year. All students will gather at five and the program will begin at six with the reception immediately following. This is open to all. National School Counseling week was february 3rd through february 7th. This week, sponsored by the American School councillors association, highlights the unique contributions of School Councillors within our u. S. School systems and the tremendous impact they have at helping students achieve School Success and helping them plan for their careers. Here in the San Francisco Unified School District, we know that School Councillors are an essential part of the school community. School councillors work with students in the areas of academic, social, emotional and College Career planning and School Councillors are advocates for students and our district recognizes the and their families will be held on saturday, february 22nd, from 9 00 a. M. To 2 30 at the university of San Francisco fram hall. It will feature a keynote address by emily smith from the paul k. Longmoore institute on disability. A Speaker Panel and multitude of workshops focusing on career and College Navigation and readiness will be held. In workshop topics include Financial Aid in scholarships, Career Transitions and opportunities after high school. Transitioning to adulthood and how accommodations work in college and many, many more. This event is free and a light breakfast and lunch are provided. I would like to continue to encourage San Francisco unified seniors to apply for the superintendents 21st septembery awards and they have one or more of the characteristics in our graduate profile. They will receive a 2,000 skip and honored at an event with myself and other leaders this spring. The scholarship is available to all students regardless of citizenships status. The deadline to apply is friday, february 28th. Go to San Francisco sfusd. Edu to learn more and apply and talk to your School Councilor or principal if you have any questions. Finally, all schools and offices will be closed on monday, february 17th, for president s day. President sanchez, that ends my announcement. Thank you, very much. Item 3, student delegates report. Thank you, president sanchez. Good evening, everybody. For our first item, its a super cool scholarship opportunity, which dr. Vincent matthews has already stated but ill repeat t the superintendent 21st century award. Applications are open and six winners will each receive a 2000 ski2000scholarship and be honorn event this bring. This scholarship is available to all students and the goal is to circulate this opportunity with the district student body to apply for this opportunity which highlights superintendent six graduate profile years. Wed like to thank superintendent dr. Vincent matthews for continuing to make this an opportunity available to students and laura for bringing this award to our attention. Our second item is the sfusd census outreach presentation. So, last night at our meeting, Christina Wong presented on the 2020 census and we were updated on last years survey responses and we discussed ways to promote the survey for the up coming year. We talked about how we could possibly include it in curriculum to teach students more about the census and our goal is to promote engagement with this years 2020 census to encourage people to research and learn more about the importance. Wed like to thank Christina Wong for presenting to the sac. Our third item is the youth summit update. Our annual youth summit is soon approaching. They have been working hard to plan and coordinate the event. Our goal is to encourage younger class men who are interested in making a change in their school to attend. For more information, send us an email or look for your representative at your school. We would like to thank everyone who has reached out to us. Regarding this support and Student Voice and offering to host the workshop at our youth summit. Can i please get a drum roll from the audience or from the board. A little louder. Im honored to announce the student delegate for the 2020 to 2021 student delegate is now open. I am very sad to say this will be my only year here but i am really excited for the next lowerclass men to join this board. Our goal from is to have a student delegate who has great leadership opportunities to represent a Student Voice and its a fun in rewarding experience where you work to create change in your district and the Board Members are always exciting. See your schools representative for an application and the deadline is march 6th at 5 00 p. M. Thank you. Do you want to. Our next meeting is on monday, february 24th at 5 00 p. M. Yes. Its a Public Council and anyone is welcome to attend our meetings. If you would like to attend or make a presentation, or would like a copy of our upandcoming sac agenda, please contact our sac supervisor mr. Salvador lopez. Thank you, student delegates. Recognitions and rel resolutions of accommodations. Recognizing all valuable employees award none tonight. Public comment on non agenda items. Im going to call a number of speakers up. You will each have two minutes. Virginia marshal. Ben sendrick, williams, hannah, Dianne Thompson. Julie a stone, josie verona, sophia ekert, gloria wong, benia man morrison, steven oriley, william patterson, joe safina martin. Franklin chin, heath chung, the protocol for Public Comment. Note that Public Comment is an opportunity for the board to hear from the community on matters within the boards jurisdiction. We ask that you refrain from using employee and student names. If you have a complaint about a district employee, you may submit it to the employee supervisor in accordance with district policy. As a reminder, board rules and California Law do not allow us to respond to comments or attempt to answer questions during the Public Comment time. If appropriate, the superintendent will ask that staff followup with speakers. Thank you, you may begin. Good evening, board. Happy black history, black history week. Black lives matter in School Last Week and the boards continued support for the students of color and celebrating black History Month. Im speaking on regards to a session you are going to have, a closed session later on this evening. In regards to a school and an individual that works at the school. I just really want to share our concerns, we have a number of speakers that will be speaking in regards to supporting her. She was non reelected and the process was not as fair as we would have liked. The thing i want to really harp on or talk about today in a goodfaith process you will do your due diligence. As we look for educators to support our students in the classroom, our evaluations should come through a good faith process. A holistic process. A process that you can talk to the community to see how this individual is working. And this case, this young lady worked in the soar program her first year. Very little support. Three quarters of the teachers left. She stayed. This year she worked in an r. S. P. Position and she worked with k3 and has done an excellent job and supporting kids and you will get some stories about that and the concern about it is she had a coach. The coach supported her throughout the whole year. There was no conversation between admin and her coach about what her hollis trick growtholistic growthhas been. Also, this young lady has received five satisfactory evaluations. Last year, she received four for soar and she received a pathway score and shes received a satisfactory. Please support this young lady and reconsider, give her an opportunity to go elsewhere so she can develop her skills and get to support and resources she needs. Thank you, very much. [applause] thank you, my name is Dianne Thompson and im a span induction coach her coach. Ive been supporting and coaching this particular teacher for throw years. Shes four months away from getting her credential cleared and im here today to just urge you to take some of this to heart. My greatest challenge with this particular situation is that i have been working diligently to not only support this teachers but the entire site. I have four teachers at this particular site. In this particular situation, the school is in crisis and going through lots of transition and the department is suffering the brunt of that. All while this teacher has been committed to this school and this community. I am struggling with how we, as a district, try to get to the place where we interrupt inequity and we do get to the place where we can interrupt the predictability of how students succeed when positions of power and privilege are at play. I am here particularly hoping we can give this teacher an opportunity to go to a community that might best suit her where she can continue to grow and develop. As we know, we are in a teacher crisis. We have tons of special ed opens that are open all year long, year after year and i think it is when we get teachers of color, it is our duty to support them and its our duty to cultivate them and not just drop them and let them go for whatever reason. There are times when that needs to happen and i do understand that. There are times when there are some individuals that we need to hold on to and continue to cultivate and question ourselves are we setting teachers up for success . Are we doing everything we can to provide them the support that they need . Some special ed teachers often get the least amount of support. Im urging the board to please, take this into consideration so that we can be a district that has teachers that look like the students they serve. [applause] hi, my name is sew fee ekert. Im here to speak on behalf of the same person. I have many students with ieps in my classrooms and she spends an hour a day pushing in my classroom. So i get to witness her compassion, her patients im sorry, im feeling emotional because its her creativity, her humor and her kindness with my kids each day. I have seen her deescalate children and successfully deal with challenging behaviors all while putting the relationship with the children first. She has spent countless hours on the phone with me, meeting me after school late nights, coming up with plans to help all my special ed kids in my classroom. I remember one time i had a kid on her caseload who got really violent in my class. I was super shaken and upset and she said, this is just a manifestation of his trauma. Dont give up on him. And i didnt because of her. So, if you vote to non reelect this person, its unfair but shell be ok. Really the person, the people that you are going to punish are the children at the school. Hi, my name is julia stone. Im a teacher at e. R. Taylor. This is my first year teaching and my first day this teacher has been nothing but a mentor and role model and a continuous support for me. Our department is logging in a lot of Critical Resources and when we meet, shes always, her first thing is lets be student centered. Were frustrated about a lot of things and we can harp about them for hours and hours but what are we going to do to support our students and how will we show up for them everyday. Otherwise know who to turn to is her at the helm. The students have really high needs and shes been the first person to collaborate with me and help with their support. That leads me to our allocation has been so unclear and murky with her taking the brunt of that she started with three and now down to one which makes it literally impossible to meet all of her Students Service minutes and thats not even taking into account the amount of time she has to spend on Case Management work. Speaking of the teacher from our particular site, weve been through a lot this year and shes constantly kept a studentcentered approach and if were staying true to that student centered approach, we have to look at her. She exemplifies this. Ive seen her with my students and very few people are able to connect with my students. Especially just in passing. And they all love her. They all know her. Ive seen her with the students. They love her. Going back to that students centered approach the only person that gets hurt are our students. Im a literacy person and i am here on behalf of my colleague, an individual being in question. I have had the privilege of working, shes a team player. Shes collaborative. We often collaborate to work on literacy goals for students moving from tier 2 to tier 3. Im concerned this individual was recruited as part of our Pathways Program to put teachers in our schools and what message are we saying to pathway teachers if we offer a non reelect. This is an individual who is willing to learn, who asked for help when she needs it. Please reconsider. Thank you. Will patterson and research specialist. Ive had the privilege to go out and visit three times with this teacher. I do know her work. Im not just standing up here for no reason. This is a school thats had extreme chaos with administration this year. There was a lot of teachers given the program they have and complexity and i think this teacher has done a fine job of living up to what would be the best expectation of what she could do in this set up. And there is this process where you get to review these recommendations and you get to override them. And i think this is a situation that calls for. And i say that genuinely, thank you. Hello, my name is glory wong and im a kindergarten general ed teacher at e. R. Taylor. Im here to speak on behalf of the teacher who has been nominated for reelect. The reason im here today is to speak about how i have observed this particular teacher around the school. How shes always willing to do whatever it takes to help every student at the school. Whether they are on her caseload or not. So, if i have seen her on the yard with students who are he is ka lateescalated, if anybody nea hand the administrators know they can count on her to go and give some resources to whatever important situation needed triage at that time. I am here today to speak for her in regards to asking everyone to reconsider her non reelect and give her a chance to prove and to communicate with her what she needs in order to succeed. [applause] hi, my name is ben c. Morrison. I worked at e. R. Taylor for two years, im on a leave of absence this year. It was my privilege to be her induction coach for a year last year. She strikes me as a teacher who is everything we want a thirdyear teacher to be. Shes driven. Shes intel again. Shes equity focused and shes a team player. Shes an excellent collaborator and shes hungry to do this work well and meet the needs of students. She and i spent many hours just going over the nuts and bolts of what it takes to do this work and the pressures involved. She and i also had opportunities to talk about the difference in doing this work when it comes with the privilege of race and gender i carry and the difference that it is for her doing this work and what it feels like to make her voice heard and be received in a respectable way when shes advocating for a student or for change. She has really good instincts and shes the kind of teacher we want in this district and i really hope that the board will support her in helping her to keep a position in the district. Thank you. [applause] good evening. My name is joe safina and i am the rtp that works in collaboration with kamiko and i would have to say that she has been my mentor and a first time teacher, she has showed me the ropes without kamiko. Shes the rock within e. R. Department. Without her, e. R. Taylor will sink in a sinkhole. If one word i can describe is shes very dedicated. She doesnt give up on her students. And im there every day with her. She takes her work home and she is very knowledgeable and when i heard t. I was like shocked. [applause] my name is hannah mack a wits and im here to speak on behalf of this teacher. I feel so lucky that i get to work with her and ive learned so much from her. Shes not only passionate about supporting the students and serving our students but she works well with the family all of the teachers and shes always open minded and listen to go suggestion 0 others as she treasurers to make it work with an incredible amount of work she was given. That is unreasonable for anyone. I so much to same she speaks up for what she believes is important and she seeks out help. Shes spoken up for herself and the needs of our students and voices the opinions of our teachers and shes not getting any helpful response zoos it makes her jobs responsible. We deserve a teacher like this person and the students in our district do too and i hope you reconsider because well be losing a valuable person. Thank you. [applause] hello. My name is franklin and ive been a para for two years. For those two years, i have been working closely with kamiko. With the teacher in question. And as an aspiring educator, i have never seen anyone working as tirelessly. We were speaking about it today. Some days can be rather difficult but the teacher were talking about shes always considers the needs of our students before anything else. No matter how hard things get. She works every day to the very best of her ability and even though our school is lacking in support in many ways, our school needs this teacher. Thank you. [applause] hello. Im one of the speech language pathologist as e. R. Taylor and im working with the teacher who has been determined to not be reelected. This is grossly unjust. Shes being scapegoated for the failure of the administration at the site. [applause] she has not been evaluated on her own merits, which there are multitude of merits. She brings so much heart and soul to this job. So much skill and talent. She brings experience. She brings so much belief and faith and confidence in the students. And they see it and feel it. Shes made you i i worked wr on two dozen i. E. P. Teams. Ive seen firsthand how she interacts with her colleagues, how she treats her students and how she treasurers to do her job in the face of countless obstacles. She has not been supported, other people have noted that and ive seen it. Shes also been sabotaged. Shes been prevented from doing her job because administration failed to get the resources called for in the i. E. P. S of the students we serve. And thats not her failure and she should not be scapegoated for that or judged for that and the district, as many people have said, needs more people like her and the way to encourage people to enter this profession is not to do what is being done to her. Please reconsider thank you. Good evening, my name is heather and im the school psychologist. In the past three years i worked with the teacher in question, shes always been a major advocate for our children and their families. Shes passionate about serving our children and determined to get what our little ones need. Despite obstacles and equality she continues to seek the positive and be student focused. She comes to work everyday with a open heart and open mind and its undeniable and its full of love and runs deep. We need more teachers that pours their heart into our children and our school. Thank you. [applause] good evening. My name is kimi. Im a teacher at e. R. Taylor Elementary School. I was told yesterday at 4 45p. M. That it would be non reelect this year. Upon that news, i was taken aback. This is my third year in education. Im a pathway teacher. I never worked in education before. But i know that im here to do the work of my heart. I went to the university of San Francisco where they say we educate minds and hearts to change the world and i live with that purpose daily. And thats why im here. Im sorry i didnt have much time to prepare anything. I just heard this is i dont know, where my name would be coming up. Ive got a parent that i would love to share my time with. Good evening. My name is sarah. Honestly, this young lady has been a great person for me and my kids. My twins just joined e. R. Taylor this year and when i say the second day, shes been strong with my kids. You dont get too many teachers that call past their workload. After school was out, teachers go home. She has been here calling my kids making sure theyre ok and my kids have had a challenging time and shes been there every step of the way, you dont get too many people as determined as she is with the ambition she strives fostrives for with kids. Not just black kids. Every child of every race. You dont get that. This young lady has done her part in my eyes. Im not too certain about everybody else and how you feel as a board, meaning you guys arent working with kids physically everyday like she is. She puts her heart into these kids. Im just asking you consider her because she is one of the people that you need and not just e. R. Taylor but in any School District to help with any child. My time is up. Yeah. [applause] good evening, student delegates. Commissioners and superintendent path use. Im president of the united educators of San Francisco. I know this teacher but more importantly her Community Knows her. The parents, the students, the staff, her colleagues, and i hope that you will listen to the words they have said today about this fine individual. Thank you. [applause] thank you for your comments. Section D Advisory Committee reports and appointments, one Parent Advisory Council. Please join us at the dais. Ms. Marshal, are you here . Can you come up to the podium. You have two minutes. S. Good evening, commissioner sanchez, im sorry, president sanchez, Vice President lopez, all the commissioners. Commissioner collins, superintendent matthews, our student delegates. Deputy student and i just wanted to thank outgoing president for your support over the years. I am honored to stand here every year to invite you to something very special in the African American community. Do not have my veil but just pretend i have my veil. Next thursday february 20th, the alliance of black School Educators will host our 26th annual African American honor roll celebration. Give it a round of applause. Yeah [applause] at 6 00 p. M. At saint mar pres cathedral. We will honor more than 1500 students, 1500. African American Students in grades three to 12. Give them a round of applause. [applause] the students will assemble at 5 00 p. M. And the program is this year listen to what im going to say, its from 6 00 p. M. Until 7 30. We are going to troy our hardest, commissioners, to get the students downstairs for the reception in 90 minutes this year. So lets talk about those kind of things, when they finish the ceremony well go downstairs for our reception. They have receive a claw from begagathat and a certificate and program booklet. Its a lot of work. Wore a small volunteer organization. We are indexed to the district for your support and special Alliance Member led by superintendent matthews and indebted to donet and the program and were indebted to all our Alliance Members and all our supporters. We must raise about 15,000 to put worth in this event. We are a small volunteer organization. So if you want to make a donation tonight. Make your checks pail able to the alliance of black School Educators and find me before i walk out the door. I will take your check. Where should we be next thursday . Saint marys cathedral. Were looking for a 40men in black. Why in black . They wear black tops and black bottoms but you can wear whatever you want. Thats what we would like you to wear to be volunteers. Saint marys cathedral holds 3,000 people. It will be full on that evening so if you like to volunteer also see me. I [ off mic ] esther has a veil for me to borrow so im going to say ring this bowl you wil this belw to be at saint marys next thursday. I know many of us will be there next week. Thank you. Parent Advisory Council. Sorry for the delay. Good evening, president sanchez, commissioners. Staff, student delegates and Community Members. My name is michelle delanie and my children go to mckinley Elementary School. Im anna and my child goes to stevenson. This is the report for the Parent Advisory Council for today is the advisory alignment summit was held together bringing parents serving on the African American Parent Advisory Council and the community Advisory Council committee for special education, district english learner, Advisory Committee and the parent advise council as well as those representing the Early Education youth indian migrant and Pacific Islander families. Chief of the student familiarly and Community Support division welcomed us and packed member miranda shared her leadership story. Staff from the office of Family Partnerships led the workshop where we strategized on how to strengthen our school and family relationships. We shared food and connected across differences. We would like to extend a special thank you to principle jared and Rosa Parks Elementary School community for welcoming us into their space and for being terrific hosts. Were halfway through the Community Workshops on the Student Assignment redesign process with district staff and parents for Public Schools. We highly encourage families to attend these workshops to learn more about the proposed changes to ask questions and to provide parent and family perspectives. For more information including remaining workshop dates, times and locations visit sfusd. Ed. The task force are in the process of planning Stakeholder Engagement for the spring which will help to inform sfusdlcat for the next three years. We build upon the work done in propofol years. This year we are work on communities and populations that we have not previously heard from. We will update you about the specifics of our Stakeholder Engagement whats theyre whate confirmed. Theyre open to the public and we encourage all who are interested to attend. Information about the district can be found at the website and you can visit our website at tinyurl. Com sf lcap. The year School Planning summit will be held saturday, march 7th at edward middle school. The summit provides an opportunity for a Principals School staff site and parent and Community Leaders to Work Together as a team to develop the plan for Upcoming School years. Interpretation, multi lingual materials, breakfast and childcare are provided. And the San Francisco Public Library book mobile will be there providing all children with a free book. For more information, go to sfusd. Edu connect getinvolved s chool planning summit. The first meeting of the task force was held on january 29th at Everett School as well as attended. With representatives from schools and parent organizations, teachers and staff, direct scaff staff and commissioners collins and lamb. The meeting included an orientation of the work of the task force as well as the Community Building activities. As student led break outs for educators, parents, youth, and Community Organizations. The next equity study Task Force Meeting is on wednesday, march 4th from 5 00 to 7 00 p. M. At everett middle school. Food and childcare will be provided. For more information, email Equity Task Force. At the january meeting we are joined by chris and kai and school performing planning who rep panted plans for a new school in mission bay. Including efforts to increase clean Drinking Water and eliminate unnecessary packaging and engage students in the decisionmaking process. The next pack meeting is tomorrow, february 12th from 5 45 to 8 00. Guests include jeff king, ex you different director of sfusd educational placement center, pack meetings are open to the public and all are welcome. We invite the commissioners to attend a meeting. Food and childcare are provided with advance notice. The pack is recruiting new members so we are committed to reflecting the multidiversity of the sfusd student and family population. Including those from different neighborhoods. Types of schools and culture and experience of backgrounds are focusing on our outreach to recruit parents, guardians, caregivers and communities not currently represented. Applications are available on our website packsf. Org in chinese, spanish and english. Hopefully in samoan or tongan. If you have any questions or would like information please call michelle at pac at sfusd. Edu. Thank you. Thank you. Any questions . I dont see any Public Comment on this item. Any board comments or questions for this pack . I just want to say thank you. Its good to see a Pacific Islander presenting. I dont know anna, you do a lot of work and so i just want to appreciate you. Tongan also and just many, many thanks. On that note, i just like to shout out anna because she was the Pacific Islander for parent representative at our advisory alignment summit this weekend and she really held it down. I also wanted to celebrate all the families that participated in this and im going to say, these are parent leaders that are giving up time away from their families on a weekend to collaborate and improve schools across the district for free. They are not compensated for this labor and i want to recognize that and you make us your work and the work in the carrying that you give both at the district wide level but also at the schools that are involved in, it makes our district better and i am personally grateful for that labor and the heart and the intellectual capital that you bring so thank you for that. I also wanted to thank district staff for getting all the packs together. I know this is been going on for a while now but i really, really appreciate a lot of the Parent Advisory Councils come before us and each group will give us recommendations and what you see overtime is there are similar recommendations and there are different recommendations but there is similarities among those recommendation us see repeated so its wonderful to see the packs working collaboratively on requests in terms of improvements from the district and its wonderful to see the solidarity between groups in supporting one another in advocating things that are specific to the unique communities that you serve. So i just want to say thank you again and just look forward. Please, always reach out to me or all of us if theres anyway that we can support the work that you are doing either collectively or individually at your schools. Thank you. Thank you. Could you remind us when your next meeting is and what time . Its tomorrow night. Just across the hall in the main conference room. We meet every second wednesday of the month. So its 601. Yeah. Ok. 601. Thank you, very much. Thank you. The next item is community Advisory Council for special education. [applause] i amoco secretary of the cac. Im danielle and i am the second chair. John, and im the parliamentary. Past chair. Im the vicechair and parent of two sfusd students. Im the cosecretary of the cac and parent of a child with i. E. P. Thank you. The c. A. C. Is an Advisory Group mandated by california state educational code which defines our role. While you may be familiar with our efforts in educating the community, we also play an integral role in the development of our districts special education local plan. The local plan is updated every five years and the new sfusd local plan is currently in development and required by the California Department of education to be completed by june, 2020. We have a copy of the old plan here for your reference. C. A. C. General meeting played a crucial role in our mandate to educate family and Foster Community involvement. C. A. C. Meetings attendance has been increasing. In 23015 and 16 our average Meeting Attendance was 35 to 40 people. And this year, we have an average of 60 or more attending every meeting. Meetings are free and open to public and held on the fourth thursday of every month from 5 30 to 8 00 p. M. , located at 12663 mission street. Available at no cost and must be reserved in advance. We do not have a meeting in december. Instead, we focused our effort in supporting up collusive school reach. We invite the board to attend any of our meetings and extend a special invitation to our april advocate award which recognizes individuals and groups who go above and beyond for students with exceptional needs. Community involvement is an important part of c. A. C. Mandate, and we are proud to be a part of the following event. Inclusive school week in december. And this documentary shines a light on challenges faced by student behavioral challenges. If you want to learn more, we recommend the book lost at school, by the famed producer ross green. The Second Annual sfusd college and career fair for kids with learning differences will be on saturday, february 22. The c. A. C. Partners with the department for the conference to provide information and resources to students and family about the postsecondary options. The keynote speaker will be emily smith, the institute on disability. Lastly, for the support of family information resource conferences. This seminar is for students with disabilities, features workshops and keynotes from christian wright, director of the California Department of education. As a reminder, here are the c. A. C. s 2019 and 2020 priorities which are based on the California School data dashboard. We have special thanks to john berk for helping analyze these numbers. Strength and evidence based academic instruction and interventions for not only literacy but also for math. Second, ensure that social emotional supports are in place and all students feel safe and included in each and every school, which is a key component of addressing chronic absenteeism rates. Next, 75 percent of students with disability are in general education classrooms. It is essential that general education and special education staff have the supports and training they need to teach all students. And lastly, the c. A. C. Continues to expand its outreach and share knowledge about special education with all sfusD Advisory Committees to support marginalized communities. Weve been taking a much deeper dive into literacy interventions this year. And we are grateful for the collaboration with Dyslexic Center. We put, our meeting was on dyslexic interventions and it was hosted by the Dyslexic Center and decoding dyslexia. We are lucky to have one of the worlds leading Research Centers for dyslexic in our backyard next to where our new school will be. They have been hosting tours of what the Dyslexia Center does and have been wanting to partner with sfusd for years. We hope every one of you will attend one of their upcoming tours, april 7, mark your calendars please. There are great things happening. Their apprise, its a universal screening tool that shows great promise. They are partnering with schools to ensure outcomes for students with reading differences or what they can and should be. We are also lucky to be able to partner with curriculum and instruction and work to develop dyslexia intervention guidelines, particularly around tier 3. And this year weve been spending a lot of focus on the district and a lot of professional development around interventions such as spire and wilson to make sure teachers are trained to support reading interventions that we know students need and are mandated by state law now. So theres a lot of great work being done. And we are hoping to push that work further. How can we leverage the resources at ucsf to improve outcomes for all students . How can we build capacity of general ed teachers to strengthen tier 1 and tier 2 interventions . According to decoding dyslexia california, with early identification and prevention programs, the number of children who are placed in special education can be reduced by up to 70 percent. How do we retain newly trained literacy teachers . Although this might be costly, could sfusd give stipend . We are finding many of our teachers who get trained in these interventions are highly marketable elsewhere. After we invest in them, how do we continue to invest in them to keep them. We are grateful for the partnership of curriculum and instruction for math intervention. We are starting to have this conversation. Promoting social emotional supports and inclusion is part of the c. A. C. Mandate, and we do this in many ways. In september we had a c. A. C. General meeting on inclusion best practices in sfusd schools. We learned a lot. In the fall, we worked with multidepartmental committee to plan celebrations for Inclusive Schools week. Special thanks to the p. E. Department and Special Olympics for coordinating an inclusive basketball turnment, rallies and speaker presentations. Another highlight was the super fest disability Film Festival at the school of the arts. On february 27 our next c. A. C. Meeting topic is anxiety and depression in students with disabilities who are two to five times more likely to Face Mental Health challenges. To improve sense of belonging, the c. A. C. Asks the district to consider prioritizing the following. Special education representation on school tours at open houses and in school site parent groups. Fair and equitable access to a. C. T. And s. A. T. Testing for students with disabilities. We are struggling to find testing sites in San Francisco that can allow accommodations. Continued support of restorative practices, safety care training and the safe and Supportive Schools resolution. Staffing. Vacancies, as this chart shows, special education jobs are hard to fill. Our vacancies in august, we have more vacancies now in february. And thats for special ed teachers and we are doing slightly better on paras. Our number of openings includes half positions as well as individuals that are on leave. And we thank the h. R. Department for their collaboration in providing the data for this slide. Professional development, we feel, plays a key role in teacher retention. The c. A. C. Asks the district to build capacity of teachers since as we mentioned in our fall report, 23 percent of our special education teachers are on interim and emergency credentials. In addition, special education teachers typically have four less years of experience on average, they have eight years of experience, and general education teachers have on average 12 years. Appropriate, relevant and timely professional development will help to ensure current staff feels appreciated and has the tools they need to teach students. And the c. A. C. Wants to make sure our teachers work in a supportive environment. So the c. A. C. Is asking administrators to include special education staff in planning and collaboration meetings with their general education colleagues. For example, in order to be coteaching successfully, the general education and special education teachers must have planning time. And lastly, the c. A. C. Wonders would the district consider providing stipends to teachers who have special ed skills. Tonights Public Comment was a perfect example of many of the challenges that we face in retaining our teachers, especially our pathway teachers, as a special education advocate with a local nonprofit can can attest to the work taylor is doing. I supported a student who transferred to taylor. Last year we couldnt keep him in the classroom and this year he is focusing on academics, and its because of a huge amount of support and blood sweat and tears they are putting in. And nonreelecting is going to have amazing impact on morale at that school that morale thats been damaged for years. So the c. A. C. Is very much in support of retaining that teacher. Our focus on equity, ensuring all students feel safe and connected is crucially important to us, the c. A. C. , and this can be seen in many of the actions we undertake. In november, the c. A. C. Held a joint meeting with apac to continue the learning while black conversation, and we look forward to deepening our connections with this Impressive Group of parents. The c. A. C. Is honored to be part of the new Equity Task Force and is excited to have the district start looking at instruction materials to ensure the history of all students are appropriately represented. And this past weekend, as mentioned before, members of c. A. C. Came together with the other advisories in the district, at the third annual alignment summit, which was very insightful and helpful. The joint advisories and the Family Partnership team worked hard to plan this event. And that builds family leadership and connection across within groups recognizing we are all stronger together. And as my first time there, that is very true. Very, very insightful. So we also want to thank the principal and rosa parks for hosting the event. And lastly, the c. A. C. Along with aapac will be participating in upcoming c. D. E. Performing indicator review task force. We will be delving into the data behind the disproportionate representation of africanamericans in special education. So we thank you for your time and for listening. We realize special education is very complex, and for those who would like more information, we recommend the California Legislative Analyst Office overview of special education in california. And the landscape of education in california, a primer for Board Members. We look forward to presenting again in june 2020. In the meantime, we encourage you to check out our website at www. Cacsf. Com. Reach out via email at cacspedsf gmail. Com or follow us on facebook. And you are always welcome to our meeting. Thank you. Thank you so much. We have a number of speakers. As i call your name, approach the podium, you will have two minutes each. [calling speakers] and i press this . First time. Press the button. Im a mom. I was invited to come here. I have a son who is has an i. E. P. And multiple disabilities, i also have my own disabilities, i suffer from chronic pain. And i have navigated multiple layers of various systems because of that throughout my life, on and off. And i would say that trying to navigate thank you. Thats better. Trying to navigate and understand the i. E. P. Process and what to do as a parent has been just as daunting and overwhelming as my own medical crisis when i was in a car accident as well as it would be parallel to when my son was first diagnosed. The reason why is the educational jargon is completely a different language. I would also add that there is very Little Information as you are starting out from prek to kinder, and the district and information that is there onsite is not translated properly to the local site staff. And thats the part i would like to talk about the most. When you go in as a parent, you understand that you are supposed to ask for this i. E. P. Process through the district and you might talk to a receptionist or one or two people and there after you are on kind of an island, and you are relying on principals and various people that im going to be honest, have given me as a parent, incorrect information, i did not know that at the time. And as i was trying to navigate and just understand and undo all the confusion, to just get the basics, as i continued to learn, i felt a mix of emotions, and one of them was mistrust. And that mistrust sorry. Can i say one last thing . Please support the local site staff and close that gap between the district, the parents and local site staff so we can all be on the same page. Please do that. [applause] hi. I was actually asked to do this on the side so im not prepared but i have a lot to say. My name is veronica johnson. Im a onetoone para at sunnyside Elementary School. The special day class. And what im calling to attention is the unsafe environment that we are put in. We had a new teacher hired, first year pathways teacher, no support at all. Shes on stress leave right now. We dont have a teacher. The classroom she was teaching in is extremely unsafe. We as paras, im a onetoone, are pulled from the other classroom, forced to work in the classroom, without a teacher present, which is not very legal. And also you are supposed to support us and put us in a safe environment to work in. Weve had numerous kids being hit, general ed, teachers, im the one that showed up tonight to represent everybody. But i have a swollen head from yesterday and a big bruise on my arm. We are always injured. So we would like you to take interest in our school and to see what you can do to sway our principal who is forcing us to work in this environment, i mean, we are forced to be working in this classroom with no notice whatsoever. So its really dangerous. It makes me not want to go to work, you know . It makes me not want to go to work. So we have one to ones in one other classroom, and we are being pulled out, so we are not even in compliance. Okay . Thats all i have to say. Thank you. [applause] hi. Good evening. Good evening, everyone. I am a proud parent of a 21yearold college graduate, and she graduated from the university of london with honors. And right now, we are currently in the process of buying well, she is buying a home in San Francisco. And this story, she is an amazing, my daughters name is isis. She is an amazing success story. But life wasnt always like that for her. She is dyslexic. And throughout her childhood, she was pretty much embarrassed, humiliated and full of anxiety most of her childhood. Because no one really understood her. Other students were mean to her. And teachers didnt understand, and it wasnt until high school that she was diagnosed. And the person behind me as well well. After the diagnosis she climbed out of this by amazing reading and writing programs, special ed teachers that would take and go above and beyond, calling late night to home to schedule meetings, emails on the weekend, its clear to me as a parent, these are not working hours, they are going above and beyond, and this is their time. And one of the phenomenal teachers is will patterson, here. [applause] phenomenal. And why i get so emotional is because i would say 80 percent of her success, as high as we already know, is because of this man. The more successful she became as a student, the more i leaned on him and leaned on him and leaned on him. This is the first thing thats ever worked for us. The first time she has been successful. She never wanted to go to college, she never wanted to do anything more with her life, but because of people like him, shes had hope. How do you quantify hope . Please support i support the district with strong reading and writing programs and definitely clerical support. He needed more support, and he didnt have it. But i kept on asking, and he didnt have the heart to tell me no. So thank you. Thank you. [applause] i dont know if you gave your name for the record. Castillo. My name is will patterson. And i just want to say thank you to the community Advisory Committee for their presentation of so much information. Theres a lot in those slides. And im only going to speak to two of the items, maybe three. One is there was a topic about clerical support, and i want to reiterate the need for this case manager position for our staff. It will be huge for us. It would lower the cost of teacher recruitment, reduce the cost of litigation, increase attendance as teachers are more present for their students. When it comes to planning time, teachers have less than general education colleagues because our days are defined by caseload rather than schedule. A general ed teacher gets release time during music, p. E. , art, dance, library, and we dont get any of of that relief time. It comes up to two and a half hours a week, which is more than the planning time equal to the planning time we get in our contract. So they are getting five hours, we have two and a half, and we have \defy way to twicet the paperwork. So planning time in this next round of contract negotiations would be great for us. I did recently conduct a survey of special ed teachers. We had 150 reply, thats one out of three classroom teachers, special ed teachers teaching students. 66 percent of them cannot meet the needs of students on their caseloads, as many as 78 percent of sites are not Meeting Services on the i. E. P. S, 48 percent of the teachers were not able to implement the dyslexia intervention because their caseload is too large to serve all students. Another 22 percent said they needed more training and another 23 percent reported the department has not met with admin to formulate an Implementation Plan yet. Also yesterday or last week at the committee of a whole there was what i think is a mistake in reporting of the average caseload for sfusd, it was reported at 16, its actually 22 for elementary. I did the calculations last night. [applause] good evening. Im steven riley, teacher at jefferson elementary. I would like to speak to the amount of time that is required for a special ed teacher to deliver intensive structured literacy interventions. According to the sfusd processing and dyslexia guidelines, interventions must be documented in the i. E. P. , instruction delivered by teacher trained in intervention, maximum group sizes, k through 2 three students, 4 through 12, four students. Minimum time required for k through 2, 150 minutes weekly. Grades three through eight, 180 minutes per week. In order to follow these guidelines, we will need for special ed teachers. I am concerned about next years budget cuts. Not only do we have approximately 20 students that meet the criteria according to sfusd guidelines, we also have 45 to 50 tier 2 students that are receiving tier 2 interventions. Im concerned that the budget cuts for the possible budget cut for next year could cut some of our staff, and that would mean 20 to 25 of these tier 2 students would no longer be receiving tier 2 interventions from us. Please consider the amount of time that is required to teach students with dyslexia. Thank you. [applause] hi. Im kerry. Im a general education classroom teacher at an Elementary School. Im here to talk about how i read in the newspaper about how there was a budget shortfall and some people were pointing to special education and saying it was really surprising that there were so many costs in special education. And i wonder why that was really surprising, because when we look at some of the slides that we saw, especially what touches me is about Case Management and about the staffing issues we have, it doesnt seem and we know these are systemic issues that are not brand new. It doesnt seem surprising to me that this causes underservice and trauma to our students that then increases the needs that they have. So i was confused by that. But im a general education teacher, and im not here to speak on behalf of the amazing special educators in my school, and not here to speak on behalf of the special education students, im here to speak on behalf of my own students in a general education classroom who suffer from not being able to experience inclusion with special education students because of the shortfalls in resources and staff at our school, included is an incredibly powerful for owl students, and the message that gets extent to general education students about special education students when we are not able to do full inclusion is really bad and harmful for their futures. I would encourage you to reconsider budget cuts and consider those slides about Case Management and staffing. Its an emergency and not just for special education students but for all students in our schools. [applause] do i press this . Sorry. Ive been here before to talk about special education. Will, who is amazing, is always getting us to come here. A part of me is like they know, they are Board Members, they must know that special ed is often a disaster. They must know. But he assures me we have to keep coming or i think he is worried you dont know. I think theres this idea that we need researchbased interventions and to train teachers, but its almost like this joke with some content specialists that some of these materials are accumulating dust or spires not being used or thats not being used. I think the question is what are the barriers to implementation. If the job is impossible, if i have recess duty three times a week, if i have to write i. E. P. S, when do we have time to engage with this structured, complex, precise, purposeful curriculum and actually make it work . So i dont think people should joke about spire accumulating cobwebs. I think people should ask about what are the barriers to implementation. And take those seriously. Because when there are surveys that say that 60 percent of people cant meet their minutes, the question should be the people who can meet their minutes, what are their caseloads . By random chance, is it 14, is it 12 . By complete randomness. Thats probably the only reason they can meet their minutes. So i would encourage you to just be really aware. I dont say that it is a disaster because i think its funny, i dont think its enjoyable. Its quite sad. Thats just how i feel. And im at lakeshore now, im currently a fifth grade teacher now temporarily. Im the sixth or seventh teacher in this fifth grade class with some very challenging behaviors, teachers keep leaving. Having an i. E. P. In the morning and then teaching fifth grade all day in a challenging class is a piece of cake compared to negotiating the chaos and the endless requirements of being a sped teacher in this district in 2020. [applause] i want to thank the folks that came out to speak on this issue. Any comments or questions, commissioners . Vice president lopez . Hi. Thank you for presenting and thank you, everyone, for coming out. Theres absolutely no doubt that i fully understand the circumstances. And i empathize as a teacher. Im wondering about the Translation Services at i. E. P. Meetings and who that falls on. I heard an earlier comment about sort of the jargon that comes during these meetings and whether the people who are translating have an understanding of that and i would explain it when translating. And then just who has to go through the process, is is it the parents . Is it you . Is it sitebased . The case manager is responsible for coordinating interpretation services, which is another responsibility, and finding someone who can not only interpret at a meeting but then i. E. P. S or any other related documents, very meaty, technical reports and assessments are sent to our Translation Department and right now the backlog is i think three to four weeks on getting so a parent could sit in an i. E. P. Meeting and not be able to fully engage with really technical terms and have to wait another three weeks until they get the documents in their preferred language to be able to come back to the table and talk about those do you means, ask questions and really hold those documents, ask questions and really hold because what we run into oftentimes is theres hesitation to send documents to translation ahead of time because until the team meets, its a draft document, so its a catch 22. So that is absolutely an equity access barrier for any family. Thank you for raising it. I want to mention that the person who asked the question, i believe they are a native english speaker. So, yeah, its a problem, maybe could be addressed with, like, handing out a definition of all the acronyms, pretranslated, thats going to be the same for everyone. You want to comment on that . I wanted to comment on that. The amount of jargon that we use just in general in our district, depending on who is speaking, is not intelligible for people who are college educated, and so the additional load of understanding jargon in special education settings is even higher, and then add, oh, and your primary language is other than english. And so i just wanted to echo that and thank you for saying that. Its definitely an issue for folks who are learning english, but its also ive been in settings where i dont know the language, and ive been in education for 20 years. And i think its something that we have to be really explicit about naming in the beginning that we are going to use them, folks are good at doing it all the time, and other folks i think are trying to be helpful but they are not used to speaking to regular people who dont use acronyms. Are you finished with yours . Yeah, i guess i just want to make sure that we continue to bring this up, and if theres a way, like a best practice on your end, i would love to hear it so that we can see how we can make that connection on our end, especially if theres something that we are expecting that although its not in the i. E. P. Its still in the draft, we can have it ready so families can share it and understand it briefly before having to go to the meeting, just wondering, you know, what that could look like. Support for families gives i. E. P. Clinics every month. They do one clinic in english, one clinic in spanish and one in chinese. So we highly encourage all families to attend those. Its just a baseline. Many of the family liaisons at schools actually reach out to not just us but also the district ombudsman to come in and talk. We are in the process of trying to schedule a presentation at one of our local Elementary Schools. Unfortunately there have been some miscommunications around permitting, you know . So theres extra barriers, for example, when parents want to bring us into p. T. A. Meetings, it seems like some sites welcome us with open arms, others put up barriers like insurance and permits. So some of it is staff equity. But there are a lot of resources out there that and a lot of information online. And itzhak success is its ae issue. A lot of it is how much time. When you are a parent of a student with any need, you are a parent, in some cases you are a medical specialist, in some cases you have to become an educational specialist, and in some cases you have to become your own lawyer. And so having support like family liaisons at schools who work with our ombudsman and special Education Department i think is a great start. Commissioner collins and commissioner lam. I want to echo that. Ive been told by families that they were discouraged from initiating 504s and i. E. P. S, and i would love for our district, im currently the chair of the Curriculum Committee, so i want you to know im going to be putting it on the agenda that i believe that we should have explicit protocols when parents request academic or behavioral support, they should immediately be informed of their rights, and that includes the right to request an s. F. T. , understanding whats the 504 initiating an i. E. P. Process, their right to review curriculum, observe instruction, and any other rights related to accessing support for your children. So i will work with you, ill share with you when we put that on the agenda, and i would really appreciate it if you guys could show up and help me understand what some of those specific too much information is too much information, but if we can figure out what are the key pieces of information that we should directly assume if somebody asks for help, we can immediately maybe have a handout or something that has information that maybe leads to other stuff. But can help folks at the very beginning. I think thats something that i would like to see. We welcome the collaboration. Commissioner lam. Thank you for the report. And thank you, commissioner lopez for raising the issue around interpretation and translation. Because i notice in the budget update that we got, at the committee as a whole last week, we anticipated about 9,000 for interpretation. So something i would like to seek the recommendation for who to work with within the superintendents cabinet. Is it your recommendation if you feel like that knowing that there is a backlog right now, three to five weeks, does it make sense to really integrate interpretation and cultural competency within our special education division. So those are the type of recommendations that i would love to have the c. A. C. Really continue to think about as someone who formerly worked in the Civil Rights Movement and working with chinesespeaking parents, we were one of the first line of staffing that folks would come to us at that time with english only and really helping parents interpret what this journey was going to be like. And so thats just top of mind for me that this is really beyond interpretation, but really how are we going to be supporting families on a continuum for their childs journey with us within the district. So again, look to the c. A. C. And working with the superintendents cabinet around what those next steps will look like and look forward to either followup conversations directly or before your june presentation. Thank you. Thank you for your presentation and your volunteer work, all of you in support of our students. I also want to thank the public for coming out to speak. There was one speaker who mentioned, i believe it was sunny side Elementary School. The para educator mentioning theres no teacher in the class. I would like staff to follow up on that situation. Also i would recommend that the board hold a study session so just an isolated meeting with you and the Broader Community around special ed so that we can kind of get a grip on all the moving parts. And we all understand, of course, that there are a lot of problems in our special Education Program as well as across the nation. We also understand that we are systemically underfunded in Public Education in california. So but we do know also that there are things we can do to make it better. So i would love for us to have a deeper conversation. Maybe that can happen in lieu oh the june presentation or as part of committee of the whole. So we will coordinate with you to make sure we can have that conversation. So thank you. Thank you for that opportunity. Thanks. Are there any appointments to Advisory Committees by any members of the board . Okay. Section e, consent calendar, we need a motion and a second. So moved. Second i do not see any Public Comment. Any items withdrawn or corrected by the superintendent . Yes. Thank you. One withdrawal from the consent calendar, 20211k8. All right. Thank you. Any items removed for First Reading by the board . Seeing none, any items severed by the board for discussion and a vote tonight . Okay. Roll call. Thank you. [roll call vote] six ayes. Section f. There are none tonight. G, proposals for action, if i hear an objection from my colleagues the following board policies which have all been heard in committee will be approved in one vote. I had a comment. Yes. Go ahead. I wanted to make a comment. I really appreciated the conversation that happened around this, and two, more specific, one was on the on bullying policy and the other on parental notification, and it connects with what we were talking about earlier, and its a consistent theme. And commissioner collins, can we enter these into the record and ill open it up for comment. Yes. So one board policy 514 freedom of speech expression, two board policy 5145. 6 parental notifications, three board policy suspension and expulsion due process, four, board policy 6154, homework makeup work, five, board policy 5131. 2 bullying, six, board policy 5127, graduation ceremonies and activities, the policies removed were seconded at a prior Board Meeting. The proposals were heard at curriculum and rules committees. Lets have a report from ms. Lam from the last rules committee and from ms. Collins, supplemental instructional materials which was heard at curriculum last night. I dont know if you have anything prepared, ms. Lam. Okay. Theres one other item which was supplementary instructional curriculum. I dont have the number. But go ahead. I dont have any formal remarks for this evening but that we had very robust, comprehensive discussion around the board policies that are being put forward tonight to the full board for approval. Particularly, i know that commissioner collins will have a couple comments. But for example, freedom of speech and came out of the light of the importance of us hearing the board of ed hearing from young people how critical it was to feel they had a board policy and that the district was in support of that freedom of speech. So we worked with staff around revising the policy and had a positive recommendation coming out of rules. And i think thats and then also lastly, board policy 5127 graduation ceremonies and activities. That had been a continued item and policy for many months, and it was really critical to the rules and policy Committee Members that we reviewed that policy in detail and that it was going to assure, again, student freedom of expression and that we really have landed and worked with staff in feeling confident that now it is a policy that is alignment with the districts values and principles. For the record, the seventh item was board 6161. 11 which is the supplementary instructional materials. Commissioner collins. I just wanted to comment. I really appreciated the discussion that occurred during the policy committee. And several items we agreed that the policy was fine and we wanted to move forward but that there needed to be discussion not about the policy but how its currently being implemented. I want it on the record, i want all of you to know this is something i feel like we all need to be talking about and specifically parental notification which has to do with communication about parent rights and thats specific to homework policies or attendance policies and also around bullying, and that was another policy that i encouraged the community to look at. Its online, and its loaded on board docs. You can see we have a bullying policy, and the bullying policy states things we are going to notify families of rights. We are going to educate students with curriculum, and these are questions that i have around are we actually doing it and i think the answer in many cases is no. So im going to be putting that on the Curriculum Committee agenda, and i encourage Community Members to come out and help us improve, not policies themselves but how we implement the policies of communicating with families and also ensuring that our schools are safe, physically safe, and that includes staff and students feel safe in schools. And then out of the discussion as well, at rules, we decided that we would hear we would have further dialogue around mobile devices in our schools. And thats going to be march 3 at committee of the whole. We are going to discuss homework. And thats april 14 at a regular Board Meeting. Got a lot to talk about. Thank you. All right. So we dont have any public speakers. Roll call, please. Thank you. This is for all eight policies, one vote. [roll call vote] passes. Section 8, first item is transportation contracts. May i hear a motion and a second on this item . So moved. Second. Superintendent . Thank you, president sanchez. This evening we have our chief of policy and operations, and the executive director of transportation here tonight to present the information before the contract comes forward. So this is the transportation contract. Good evening, commissioners, student delegates and dr. Mathews, and my colleagues. My name is keef, and im here to present on the transportation contracts. Im joined by the executive director of transportation and the chief of Early Education department, jennifer who is the executive director for curriculum improvement and margaret, the director of special education services. This evening, archie and i will be presenting an update to the board, and my colleagues are here in the event the board wants to ask questions about the related services and emerging needs we are hoping to support for our students. Do i start with the presentation or read the action item from the agenda . The requested action item, i should read that first. So the requested action item, or the recommended action is that the board approve a seventh amendment and have funds for contract Agreement Number ts2015 with First Student for yellow Bus Transportation Services that would extend the term one year from august 1, 2020 to july 31, 2021 that increases the fixed prices by six percent and that reduce it is not to exceed amount from 32 million to 30 million for the 2021 school year and approve an award of contract with zoom services from february 12, 2020 through 2023 with a not to exceed amount of 629,000 through january 12, 21. So that is the requested action for this evening and staff has a presentation that we will provide now. And then we are happy to answer any questions the board might have. Good evening, commissioners. Dr. Matthews, colleagues and did he go gatts. My first appearance before the board this year, so i didnt have an opportunity to wish everyone a happy new year and may it be successful and prosperous to you all. A little bit about the Transportation Vision and goals. Our mission is to provide safe, efficient and on time Transportation Services that support the equitable access to Educational Opportunities for all of our students. And on the daytoday, we provide services to our general education students, approximately 2,055 students, students with i. E. P. S. We have 1500 students and for field trips we provide 2000 trips a year for our students. The vision, the transformation of the department, the north star of where we would like to be is sfusd students and families experience a Transportation Department as one that is studentcentered and responsive in providing ecofriendly Transportation Options that are prompt, reliable and affordable. Our goals to achieve that vision provide each and every student with equitable access to Educational Opportunities, strengthen operational efficiency, increase organizational clarity. As the board may know, we dont run our own buses. We partner with School Bus Transportation provider First Student. The sfusd determines who rides the bus. We design the bus routes and schedules. We provide the Customer Service to families First Student provides and maintains the school buses, assuring they are safe. They hire and train the bus drivers. They operate our daily routes and provide Customer Service to our students, families and site professionals. Onto our next slide, we see that costs have increased 38 percent since 2014. The total number of students served remain relatively stable. We see that at 20 percent increase in daily rates since 2014 and 15. We had a 14 percent increase in 2015, that was our new contract. And there was a jump there because the district required new buses in the fleet. Now, costs have increased, however its not just the base rate that has increased that we as a district added 27 additional buses to 18 additional locations, five more sfusd schools and 13 more nps schools. Later on in the presentation, we will show why we are using more buses. Now to give you an idea and a sense of where our money is going, youll see for the 2019 20 school year at a glance, we are spending an estimated 28 million for students with i. E. P. S, 3. 7 million for general education students, and 325,000 for field trips, that is a caveat that i would like to add to our wonderful partners at the dcyf, they provide this yearly to our School District and these trips are free for Elementary Students so a big shoutout and thank you to our dcyf partners. You will see that in our students with i. E. P. S, we have 205 buses, we serve 131 different schools, 1500 students and an average per student of 18,654 a student. In general education, we run 26 buses daily, serve 44 schools, four of those schools are middle schools, the others are elementary and k8 serving the needs of 2,055 students approximately. And we have an average per student cost of 1,801. So these costs are really high, and as we are going on in the slides, youll see why some of these costs are where theyre at. This is a profile of our 1500 students with i. E. P. S, youll see by grade level, sorry for the orange, didnt come out as brighton my paper. But that we roughly serve 38 percent of our students are in elementary and 30 percent in high school. When we look at the zip codes, if you look in the darker areas, youll see in the shaded darker red, youll see that half of our students, 50 percent of our students reside in southeast part of San Francisco. And the pie chart to your right will show that half of our students are hispanic, Pacific Islander or africanamerican. As we turn to our next slide, we are consistently looking at why costs are so high. And San Francisco has probably one of the most complex bell schedules around. And that really impacts costs. It increases the buses we need daily and that are required. Districtwide, we have 19 different drop off times. 17 different pickup times, 40 schools that trust their schedules on different days of the week. Seven have a late start, and 33 have an Early Release. Prior to my arrival in the department, my understanding was that there was a rough crude study done that estimated that if we would align these, we would save 5 million if we would just align the start times in our schools. To your right, you will see a graph and illustration that we have just designed with some of our new software that we are really excited about and talk a little bit more about that. Youll see that this illustration is Washington High School. We have eight morning routes and 35 students that we serve. Youll see that these routes are served with the regular end time of 3 12 in the evening and they have two Early Release dates. So that is really impacting us. The programs available at Washington High School that we are serving our mild to moderate and moderate to severe, these programs are also available at marshal and mission. However, with our process, we have students going from the Southeast Side to the north, the east side. So in addition to this next slide, we see how choice and unique programs and curb to curb might impact our cost. So on the left, youll see a unique program, we have nine morning routes for 28 students that are attending our deaf and hard of hearing program. Now, what would that look like if we had programs throughout the city and located in different areas or what if we had hub programs where we could have a hub bus that is stationed in a central area where the students can utilize the hub bus instead of having nine buses running from different parts of the city serving a school. And on the right, something that we were just able to do a couple months ago, this map on the right, its quite a clustering of students in San Francisco that are crossing each other, and there are nonpublic students that are attending schools throughout the bay area as far as Northern Hill and as far as, i consider it the border of california, santa rosa. In some of those cases we have one student riding on the bus. [please stand by] [please stand by] if you got to the conversation about transportation, you would check it. That meant that you would provide curb to curb Transportation Services to a student who needed transportation. You would have to pick them up at their home and drop them off at school. What we did was changed it so it could get more specific to the needs of the students because in some cases, it might be the best interest of the student that they participate in general education Transportation Services. Or that they are they dont have any challenges that would make it impossible for them to go to a bus stop and be part of a hub service. Only about 33 ieps have had hub service. Were going to continue to push on that and see if there are ways to improve services and reduce costs. Another thing weve done is completely reimagined the process for field trips. So its a completely paper based, fax based process. Where teachers and schools were waiting all the time to hear back from the Transportation Department, can we get a bus for this field trip, and weve completely moved that to an electronic process and improved the efficiency and reduced the costs. So right now, this time last year, today, we have scheduled 1,000 more field trips than we were able to do this time last year. Weve also reduced costs. For example, with the symphony, it cost 70,000 less this year to take care of symphony than it did the year before. These are some of the kind of changes were striving to make. And another huge milestone for us is starting in january, we implemented a new routing software. The Transportation Department was using software from the 1970s that had not been updated since. It wasnt integrated. It made it really, really difficult for us to have a degree of confidence we were optimizing our routes or that we had accurate data. Within a couple weeks, weve been able to reduce buses by 15. That works out at like 2 million a year. These are the changes that were working towards. Another one issuing a request for proposal. We issued a request for proposal in august. Our current contract expires on at the end of the school year. We were hoping that by dividing it, it would create more competition in the marketplace so we would get better prices and improve services for students. We also wanted to add on a new option which is to think about commercial vans. Thats for a variety of reasons. One is to support emerging needs and some of my colleagues can speak to that if we want to go into more detail in how might a van support emerging needs of students. And we also were hoping that by splitting it up, we would have an opportunity to improve what we were offering our students at a reduced cost. We went out to bid on august 21st, for the small yellow buses, we just received one proposal. For the big one, we received two proposals. We rejected all proposals and we plan to resolicit. We got feedback from First Student who had bid on them and got very specific feedback on ways that we could what they saw as some of the barriers with our process that we had. So we want to go out to bid again for those of those services, trying to make it an Even Stronger rfp process to attract more competitive solutions. For the commercial passenger vans, we received three proposals. From three different companies. And the process that we used was the best value proposal. So its not as though we were going to select based on just the lowest price. Price was incredibly important and is, but so is quality. So all of the rfps are evaluated as a procurement which considers price and quality. Best value points were awarded across a number of criteria. One was prior relevant experience, including a track record of safety, student safety is the paramount importance. Nothing matters if students arent safe. Thats the number one thing. We evaluated based on commitment to new or sustainable vehicles, staffing proposals and approach to Customer Service. For those three proposals, which we use all of the board guidelines around public procurement, it was monitored by and supported by our legal department, our purchasing department, and our chief financial officer. We had a crosssection of staff from different departments help review and evaluate. We didnt open the prices until after we looked at the best value score. The company that was determined to be the best value is zum services. There are comments and questions about if zum safe . I want to speak to that for a moment. As i said, safety is the most important. All drivers, regardless of the vehicle type, must go through the same fingerprinting. All vehicles provided must comply with all federal and california standards regarding transportation safety. We would never i would never recommend going to a contract with any company that i thought in in i way would compromise the safety of our students. We use zum for some programs. They have an excellent track record of student safety. Over 200 School Districts and 4,000 schools in california currently use them as well, including Jefferson Union high school history, oakland unified, san jose unified. Zums requirement for drivers include they must have three years of care giving experience. They must be registered with trust line and department of social services in california. They must have live scan fingerprinting background checks, the doj, and the state and local watch and sex offender database. They must participate in safety expert training. In 2009, they performed services for sfusds shoestring program. They completed over 835 rides for 18 at risk students and 95 of zum drivers for the program have a five star rating. They also have an app so that when a parent needs something thats not available on other services, you can see where the car is and monitor it. We also have with First Student incredible Safety Record. The only reason im highlighting zum is because that has been raised in conversation before. Were also recommending First Student and their drivers do a phenomenal job of supporting our students and families. Im not highlighting this about zum other than excellence for First Student but wanted to be responsive to the board since this is something raised in Public Comment before in regards to zum. So weve talked as a district and everyone on the board knows we have a budget crisis. Every area is being asked to reduce services. Some of the strategies i talked about earlier this evening about what were doing to try to improve services and reduce cost, we are hoping that by the end of this school year, we will spend 500,000 less than budgeted and maybe more if we keep working on the strategies that were working with. I want to say that also First Student has been at a great partner and is committed to finding ways to create more efficiency. Thats a conversation we have with leadership at First Student all the time. We cannot continue to spend this much money to transport this many students. Its just not a viable option. And the only way we can do it is to reduce the number of buses that were using to support such a small number of students. If were supporting more students, thats great. Maybe thats the direction ultimately we might want to go, have a larger number of students being transported, but to transport 1500 students for 28 million is just not sustainable. And First Student is in agreement with that and in conversation with us and have offered to help us find more ways to optimize our rides and schedules. We think its really important we explore the hub routes that we continue to strengthen the process for the transportation part of the conversation when it comes to the ieps and that requires and involves Strong Partnership with our special Education Team members and transportation special education are working closely together on that. We want to pilot van services for emerging needs but also to think about current needs. Are we providing them in the most cost he he ca effectivey and the best way for students. For example, we have currently got High School Students participating in internships, and we dont have Transportation Services that were able to offer them. Like having car service or van service to support that throughout the day is part of what were committed to doing with having a contract with van service. We also recognize that, you know, in some cases, our students are to and from school on the yellow bus, but during the day they have to receive therapy at another site because its not available at their instead of having a bus do that, have a van do that. Weve got a number of children spending over 500,000 a year on students who are older than 18 who need support to get to the program, and were also trying to help them build skills for life and transition to real world. Something like a van service is going to be much more aligned with their real Life Experience than a yellow bus. So these are the kinds of things that we want to pilot with zum. You can see that were requesting a 30 Million Contract. We are contemplating our services will be yellow bus, and we want to pilot for van service and find ways to reduce it. Our assumption of reducing the budget by 2 million next year for transportation is a combination of all of these things. We also think as were looking at Student Assignment, we need to alter the routes. Its a small slice of the pie. But we need to awed hate it and align audit that and align to make sure its meeting goals. We want to explore ways to standardize bell schedules and were starting conversations on that issuing a new rfp by august. These are the steps that staff is taking to help reduce transportation costs and improve services. We thank the board for the opportunity to share this tonight, and we look forward to answering any questions you might have. Thank you. Do we have a number of people signed up for Public Comment . When i call your name, approach the podium. You have two minutes each. Goodening goodening other, commissioners. Ill try to be quick. I have a lot to stay. I a plowed you for making things for efficient, but we have concerns about safety and our jobs. So ill get right to questions i think you should know before you make your decisions. Starting with zum services be hiring independent contractors or will they be employees of zum, particularly in light of the recent Court Rulings that ubers drivers are employees under ab5. That happened yesterday. If theyre employees, will they be allowed to be unionized . Rfp called for competitive wages for drivers under scope three, and how do you determine that . Will they get benefits . Zums website say they pay between 16 and 35 an hour with no benefits of any kind. How can a company compete with a high tech exploitation of the workforce by Ride Sharing Company at least as i see it . Who will maintain the vehicles . Who will own the vehicles . Will it be drivers as the website says, or is there a new Business Model that were not aware of . If the drivers own the vehicles, are they going to be responsible for the technology thats required to be placed in these, the removable tablets, five cameras, the hookups and gps tracking and digital radios, et cetera . The scope of the work calls for light duty vehicles. Will they be vans . Cars . Suvs . Wheelchair service . Will the drivers be required to be commercial drivers . If theyre not commercial drivers, will they be drug tested randomly . Will they have their hours of service monitored as commercial drivers do . Who arranges for the pickups by z um . Parent or district . Are they recurring routes every day . I guess im cut off on that. Thank you for listening. Good evening, Board Members. Im graham norris. Im a 14year School Bus Driver. I request the board consider separating the street to approve the contract with First Student and zum. They involve two types of companies and each entity should be considered separately on their own merits, not combined into a single vote. First student contract is for a one year extension. The vast majority of the student transportation. This contract requires certified commercial School Bus Drivers and Certified School buses. First Student Employees Union Drivers who receive decent pay and benefits packages. Even under these circumstances, many of our drivers have to live far away due to the high cost of living. Zum is a Ride Share Company with hires non employee independent contract drivers with noncommercial licenses similar to the Business Model used by uber. As has beenmentioned, they receive little to no benefits, labor protections, and cannot join unions. They have to use and maintain their vehicles to transport School Children. Also misclassifying them as independent contractors is most likely illegal. Just yesterday a federal judge denied ubers attempt to get an injunction against ab5. Combining these two contracts into a single vote is highly inappropriate and unnecessary. I kindly request that the board take the steps to consider these contracts separately and vote on these two separately as well. I appreciate your time. Good evening, commissioners. I have been driving sfusd children in a Yellow School bus for 34ers i cant. I would like to speak about the districts plan to contract with zum, a company that it appears will be utilizing light duty vehicles otherwise known as Passenger Cars for transporting School Children, including home to School Transportation instead of using school buses. The proposed contract with zum states that the district expects to be transporting students with ieps and to he can pan the serve expand the service. The School Bus Industry is based on safety down to the color of the yellow bus which was chosen after studies showed it had the highest visibility in low light conditions. All the laws, regulations, multiple agency oversight, vehicle inspections, Driver Monitoring and training are put in place to ensure that school buses and those who drive them provide the safest transportation for School Children and the system works well. When the district proposes to use standard Passenger Cars, the extensive safety over sight, regulations and legal requirements for school buses and drivers are thrown out the window and do not apply. A standard Passenger Car cannot legally stop traffic so that cars wait for children to board. A standard Passenger Car is not recognized as a vehicle transporting small children and that extra care should be taken. A Standard Driver has nowhere near the level of training and continuing scrutiny that a Certified School bus driver has. I feel the use of standard Passenger Cars will set a dangerous precedence especially if the use of these vehicles continues to increase in place of school buses. San francisco is a very congested, difficult, and hazardous city to drive in. This will endanger children. I ask the board to reconsider this decision. Thank you. Good evening, commissioners. My name is gale. Im a state certified instructor for School Bus Drivers and a School Bus Driver with 19 years driving with San Francisco unified. I would like to address it issue around safety. On z ums website. They say they undergo Safe School Training courses with vector solutions. It appears that this is an online course. We did not know this training ha this training involves nor how many hours of course is, but what we do know is the chp and the California Department of education requires our drivers to go through to become certified School Bus Drivers. Thats 40 hours of classroom and behind the wheel training just for starters. The applicants have to attend classes in person and prove they are the person who is applying for certification. The training has to be logged on a form and verified by the chp. The applicant then has to take a written exam in the presence of the chp coordinator. They cannot leave the room. Then they have to pass a drive test with the chp officer. Every year, they are required to attend ten hours of safe driving classes. This attendance is documented on a legal form. The driver will lose their School Bus Certificate if they dont complete this yearly training. The School Bus Certificate must be renewed every five years to remain valid. This renewal requires the driver to repeat all the original requirements. Written tests, drive tests with the chp. This is what is requires of a driver to get a certificate and to retain their certification. We doubt the zum training is anywhere near the training required to get a School Bus Certificate and keep it. The chp oversees the training and verifies the compliance. Nothing less should be required of those tasks with the safe travelings of School Children. Then theres the serious issue around safety training. Are vehicles really prepared to transport our San Francisco children safely in these cars . I highly doubt it. School buses are the safest most of transportation. Thats a proven fact. Weve never had a child fatality in school buses. With San Francisco being one of the most changing disease to drive in the u. S. , zum vehicles and drivers are not up to the task. It will be a crime and so unfortunate if a child has to die in a zum vehicle before you realize they are safer in a school bus. Thank you. My name is shane hoff and ive been a San Francisco School Bus Driver for 24 years. Weve been before this body many, many times over the last few months, citing the safety features of the school bus, features that have been developed over decades. Features like superior rollover protect and high crush standards, steel reinforced sides developed specifically to keep occupants alive in any high impact collision. The national Highway Traffic Safety Administration on their website states, and i quote, students are about 70 times more likely to get to School Safely when taking a school bus instead of traveling by car. School buses are designed to be safer than Passenger Vehicles in preventing crashes and injuries. Thats end of quote. Our concern is that district transportation is embarking on a course to gradually replace school buses with less safe Passenger Vehicles and other light duty vehicles, and in the process, circumventing using certified School Bus Drivers to drive them. The contract under consideration tonight of scope of work three stated an intention to use these vehicles home to school. We are concerned is this the direction transportation is taking or intends to take in the future . We have said it before, but we have 45 years under our Union Contract and weve not had one single child fatality in our buses or by our buses. Millions or maybe billions of miles traveled. Does the School District want to keep this record . Or is it going to pursue the course of these much less safe vehicles and less qualified drivers in order to save money . Good evening, united educators of San Francisco. Im rising in support of these very experienced School Bus Drivers who are members of a union, and that means i mean, we have often talked about as uesf how the best way to support our students is support the people who work with them. These are individuals who have years of experience. Theyve described the safety features that are everyday part of their jobs and their vehicles. We should value the adults who are with our students just as we value our students who they take care of. Thank you. [ applause ] thank you for the Public Comments. Commissioners, delegates, if you would like to comment or have any questions. Commissioner cook. Thank you for the presentation for everyone who came out to speak. Is there a representative from zum here . Is there a representative from zum here . Okay. How long have you had a contract with zum . First year . Second year . This is our first year. Is that correct . Yeah. Its for the shoestring program. We dont currently work with them. Were trying to institute a contract. We do have a contract where we transport 18 students as part of a shoestring program. We can explain more about what that Program Looks Like and how its working for us now. Zoom. We do have a contract with zum. Its an Early Education intervention. Many of you have come out to see it already. Its they are transporting students who are general education students between the ages of 3 years old and 5 years old. Its on ten weeks its on a tenweek cycle. Currently, its six kids, but it can be up to 10 kids for every 10week cycle. Okay. And is the are there any the changes that are happening from this year to last year with the existing First Student contract, is the level of Service Going to be consistent . Increase . Decrease. Thank you, commissioner. So the contract for zum thats before the board tonight is for ten vehicles and for First Student its 230 vehicles. So were still contemplating that all of our students will get to the the majority will get to and from school on the large yellow bus. We are reducing the amount that were proposing to spend on transportation in general next year by about 2 million. Some of that will be achieved by optimizing routes and schedules and trying to design hub routes, and some of it will be achieved by seeing if we can start to explore some of the services being covered by van service instead of by yellow bus. So, for example, the students who are 18 and older that are part of a cat program, i hope thats answering your question. Im specifically interested in finding out if were going to be consistent from this year to next year with our First Student service, or is it decreasing or increasing. We are hoping to decrease it because we cant continue to sustain regardless of the direction we can, we cant continue to spend this much money on Transportation Services. Were looking for ways to build in efficiencies in order to reduce the amount were spending on transportation. So for our existing contract with First Student, whats the amount that we spend on transportation per year . So this year, its budgeted at 32 million, approximately. What were asking the board is to approve a contract for 30 million. So thats 2,286,000 less than what were currently budgeted for. Were hopeful that we can achieve the services for students at that price. And not to say these two are connected, but what is our existing deficit . Is it the same number . 32 million . Okay. And how much of the existing deficit is attributed to our transportation costs . Not really connected at all. I know we talked about this last week. Yeah. Talked about spending at a deficit yearoveryear. Right. Correct me if im wrong, but that figure is related to a variance in our current year falling short of our required fund balance of which weve identified solutions except for 8 million which were still in the process of identifying. So i dont think that any of that is specifically related to a unexpected variance in transportation costs, but correct me if im wrong. Thats right. For current year, there are were not anticipating going over what was budgeted. So its not as though that kind of change this year is as a result. But i will say that the cost is increasing every year. So since 2015, the cost for transportation has gone up by 38 . So were going weve gone up as far as 32 million. Last year the year before it was 30 million. So we were on an upward trajectory, but we want to turn it into a downward trajectory so we dont keep continuing to spend at that rate. And how long has zum existed . Im not sure how long zum has existed. I also didnt we didnt invited any of the providers whose contracts we are putting forward tonight to come because the process that we went through to select zum was if we want to move in the direction of van, we have to go out to bid. We had all these requirements, driver requirements, vehicle requirements, and First Student bid on vans as well as did another company. When the proposals were evaluated, it was determined that zum was the best value. So in other words, their approach to their track record and approach to safety, their student centered proposal and the price point, like meeting all of the requirements that we had put out for van service, they met all of these requirements and were the best value provider. I know with regard to ab5 which some of the drivers talked about, that they have committed to us that theyre going to comply and will continue to comply with all state and federal regulations. So that is something we expect them to be fully consistent with as well. Student delegate sandoval. This company was founded in 2014. Right. Hi. I hear a lot of talk about how were going to save a lot of money with this change. Im wondering how exactly this affects students since this is i dont know much about zum, but how exactly will this affect all the students were transporting since its a major switch from traditional buses to, like, uber, i guess . Thank you so much. I appreciate that question. First of all, were not proposing to transition from yellow buses to zum. Like i said, were asking tonight the board to approve a 30 Million Contract for 230 buses with First Student. Were also asking for 600,000 for 10 cars over a period of 18 months. In order to explore some emerging needs which we can speak about if you want to talk about that. Then i can come back i just want to say one thing before you do that about the Student Experience. We never think about just reducing costs. Its always reduce costs and improve services. Its the two. We wouldnt compromise the Student Experience. So with the zum, instead of an 18yearold or 19yearold having to get on a yellow bus to get from home to school for a program to help them to transition to the to life, they would now have a van service with an app where they can see when the van is coming, and their family would be able to see where the student is at all times when theyre being transportedded. So thats some of the value add for students through the zum service. Ill let jennifer speak to more about that. Good evening. Were really excited to try to build with vision 2025 more College Readiness for students. So, for example, a van service would allow students to be transported from a small high School Program to city college for dual enrollment. We have been able to triple dual enrollment in recent years. By reducing transportation barriers is one of those reasons. Were also excited to have students be transported from their high school to internship placements, like at 1 00 p. M. , transportation is a can be a barrier for students if theyre coming from a far away place and trying to get to their internship. We hope the van service will help with these kinds of actions. Any other response . Just in terms of light duty vehicles, which theres concerns thats been raised about it, thats something that a lot of partner districts are doing in order to improve services and provide flexible means for transportation. Thats why we include it as parts of the rfp. Commissioner lopez and then lam. Thank you for the information. Im wondering about the reason behind separating students who are in special education and how and why were still doing that, how we can connect that to more efficient routes. What is the background behind that . Right. So if a student has on their iep the transportation box checked, up until the middle of last year, it meant it was curb to curb service. We would have to pick you up at your door and commissioner sanchez at his and so forth many there wasnt an opportunity to say, your child Transportation Services are required, and these are the types of options that we have available. Like theres a general education or we could design hubs or maybe even some cases muni and other modes of transportation are appropriate, but the form didnt allow for those conversations to happenment weve just started to indicate that. I also want to say that a lot of the students with ie ps have high needs, really high needs. They might have mobility issues. In other cases, they might need a para to travel with them on the bus. So we are talking about our highest need students as well. So thats part of and then as we pointed out earlier in the presentation with our choice system and the fact that certain programs are only in one or two schools and, you know, we have to take students to wherever the program is that meets their needs and the school theyre choosing. So its a variety of factors that created the current context. Got it. And now that you have this option to find other routes, what does that look like and how have people and families participated in that . So we havent yet started to explore what we were talking about in terms of options. We want to pilot it this year. Thats why were asking to enter into a contract for 6 600,000 over 18 months to pilot and see what it looks like. Then we can come back and see how its going. Is it improving services and reducing costs . If it is, what are the implications for that. So aside from the work were doing with shoestring and we dont have any other contracts that provide us with the flexibility to offer students van service. Commissioner lam. Thank you for the presentation and the information. Just wanted to express, you know, a great job to the team for the work that you have all done around efficiencies. Just one thing, it brought me back when youre talking about paper and fax, on the parent side to be able to fill out those foams every time for forms every time for a field trip and administers and educators have to go through every day. Those efficiencies are a better Student Experience at the end of it. I had particular questions around the next steps. Im very interested around what that audit, the general education routes and everybody is ises and how those align with the policies. Im excited to hear about those developments. My question is related around whats the plan for the Family Engagement or any focus groups that have occurred either with our special education cac or just in general . It sounds like from what commissioner lopez raised about the form. So whats the history or where are we moving forward to be able to have that qualitative understanding of what the overall experience has been for students and for families, similar to what the food and Nutrition Team has done, a tremendous amount of work, for example, related to our connection with our food vendor and quality of food there. Thank you, commissioner lam. So a couple of different things. One, the rollout of the process for the iep is something that when youre trying to change it at a systems level, its really difficult because it means that everyone thats involved, every teacher, administrator, and para professional, all staff needs to be aware of this change. So thats something we are working with the special Education Department to roll out. We took our first glimpse. Data and it looks like at least a few dozen have checked something other than curb to shall curb to curb. Thats promising. In terms of family feedback, unfortunately, the majority of the conversations this year and earlier in the year were around on time service. Luckily those issues have been addressed through Strong Partnership, working partnership with First Student and the changes that they have made. We havent yet begun to engage around kind of the routes and services and alternatives, but that is something that well Pay Attention to. Commissioner lopez. I know that the public has been coming out in support of school buses, and i think im wondering about the hit theyll take. I havent really heard numbers or how thats going to affect this shift. Do you have any idea what that looks like and what alternatives are . I dont think what were proposing will have any impact on the number of drivers with First Student. Even though were going to see a decline, theres been a struggle to make sure that we have enough drivers to provide all the services at the level that were at today. Thats something that on an ongoing basis kind of recruiting, hiring, training, and making sure theres enough drivers. So even though theres going to be a reduction, i think that its going to match up with kind of the capacity to make sure that there are enough drivers for the services that are needed. We were informed there was a parent in the audience, a parent of a special needs student and would like to comment on this if theres no objection from the board. I think there might be more than one of us. All right. I greatly appreciate [indiscernible]. Good evening, my name is michelle, and i speak to you now not as the pac coordinator but as a parent with a student with an iep who was placed at a Nonpublic School in palo alto. I made notes. Im going to look at them quickly. First, i think its absolutely ridiculous that we spend so much money to send our students to school outside of San Francisco on both tuition and transportation and i believe we need to be better at serving our students within our district and our city and much closer to home. It is not equitable to send students out of our students with a twoplus hour commute. This impacted my family this year. Secondly, the process i went through to get bus service lined up for my student was infuriating as a parent. It took two weeks, even though there was another student in the city that was attending that same school. I had to arrange for transportation for those first two weeks for my student or they would have stayed at home unsupervised. The communication process with First Student was archaic, and i had to do any pro act everybody reaching out to get the answers i thought i have the skill set and the reverse resources to do that. In regards to zum, i have spoken to people and looked up responses in different districts that used the service and i have a personal friend in the bay area who first her student had an injury and he had a scooter because he had a cast. First he was transported in this other district by First Student. The drivers refused to assist him getting the scooter up on the bus and as a result he had to carry it up himself and further injured his foot. Then they got zum and she was pleased. She could track. She got notifications when he was dropped off and picked up. He loved the rides. The driver made sure he stayed off the foot, helped him with the scooter. I have no negative feelings toward bus drivers. I greatly empathize with them. Im going to answer a couple more seconds. We absolutely loved our bus driver this year. This is really about how were serving our students and families and i would like for a student to step up and acknowledge its not about their drivers. They are sending their drivers to say its not okay for us. Its not about the drivers. Its about the way theyve done their business. Thank you. Hi. My name is christina share, and im the parent of a kid with pretty serious cognitive disabilities. Listening to the talk about changes to transportation, i dont feel she would be safe in a zum situation, in a hub situation. The safest place for her and it really does matter is on a school bus with a trained School Bus Driver. Its distressing that sometimes the buses were not coming. That would be wonderful if buses were fully staffed and had no issues in that way. But i really hope this is not opening the door to getting rid of school buses in our district. I know theyre expensive, but some students, they really need it. Thank you. [ applause ] hi. Thanks for taking the time to hear us. Im a parent of a student with an iep. He goes to a school i knew it was going to happen. He goes to a School Across the bay, and its crucial that he has his school bus. Its crucial that he has transportation. Unlike our last speaker, my son is very intelligent, but he is autistic. There are times that you may think that he could go on some other way, and he cant. He experienced that this summer where he was supposed to go on the t line and it was offline and they had a bus going down third and he refused. He could not do it. Okay. The other side is, our experience with First Student has been challenging. I understand the union and some of the system when a new driver shows up unexpectedly, he does not want to get on the bus. He cannot experience those kinds of changes without knowledge. This year, prior years there was an issue about him ending up at the deep owe depot and he freaked out. The driver needed to use the rest room and i got phone calls of him panicking, why am i here . Why am i here . How long am i going to be here . Then trying to get through an archaic system to get to somebody because he comes back so late, who was in their office who i could talk to. I dont know where he is on the bus. He comes home. We have a temporary driver from l. A. Right now. Mom, we went on some strange route. I dont know where we went. I dont understand where we were getting to school. He does en end up late sometime. I had to fight and im appreciative to the people in the district who helped originally this school year he was coming home two and a half hours to get home. He couldnt do homework. He couldnt study. He was a mess. Im grateful to people who helped us so that he can get to school on time and get home. I just want to say one last thing. Currently, we have a temporary driver who this past week showed up with a bus that the emergency door didnt work. The windows couldnt go up. There are problems, and i hope that we can fix them in a way that supports our students. Thank you. [ applause ] im speaking on behalf of a parent who is not comfortable standing up here giving Public Comment, but her son is severely impacted and rides the bus every day. A bus is what the the school bus is appropriate for him, but the challenge is there have been sweet bus drivers who have shown up to pick up her son this year. But it has been about a new driver every two weeks. The last driver, who was fantastic and lovely, mentioned to her that she was here from l. A. For a twoweek stint and then two weeks later, theres another driver. I appreciate everything that First Student is doing to fill the vacancy and meet the needs of students, but for many of our students, especially those with communication and social issues, that change in personnel is very disruptive. That School Bus Ride to school, that can either set a student up for a successful day or it can derail them for a good solid couple hours depending on the student and their abilities. I have a student who is sending to high school next year. I would love to see as part of his transition plan some Public Transportation training. Why does it always have to be a school bus. Can we provide mentors who go with students on not on school buses but Public Transportation and give our students skill sets for later in life starting in high school wiping out the expense of the school bus altogether. The cac welcomes the opportunity to partner as wassening inned earlier was mentioned earlier, we would love to participate in that. Thank you. [ applause ] we have one more student delegate. Did you have any comments or questions . Hello. Thank you for everyone is this on . Yeah. Okay. Thank you for everyone who stayed here all night long. I know its been a long night. Ill try to keep this very short. I think i mentioned earlier that when i was also in Elementary School, my family relied on school buses because my parents didnt have a car, and i had no one else to take me to school. So i relied a lot on the School Bus Drivers. I was grateful for my bus driver who sometimes if a student didnt show up, she would go back again to the students spot they were supposed to be picked up at. She always made sure we got to school on time. I was really grateful for that. Also, i guess just my biggest concern around this is about the little ones, the ones in Elementary School especially the really small ones because i know that in a van, some might need a bumper seat. So im just wondering if, like, they were to do this van, would they be provided with bumper seats by the parents or by zum . I can answer that question. Currently, we are using zum for students ages 3 years old to 5 years old. They do have booster seats. They also have plush toys in the cars to kind of help with some transition issues. And the students that were serving in zum are students that do not have ieps but they have some pretty intense behavioral issues. So they work very closely with those students. They provide a warm handoff and are theyre welcome to feedback on how they can improve the services. The smaller the vehicle, it feels better for the kids rather than a big van for the small child who is going, who is maybe one student in the car. Do the parents request the car, or does the school do it for them . How does that process work . So, again, i can speak to how were currently doing it with the shoestring program because its a consistent schedule for the students. They are picked up at their preschool classroom, and then they are brought to the shoestrings program and then transported back to their classroom. So the parents bring them to the preSchool Program, but then zum transports them back and forth. And thank you for that question. I just want to reflect on hearing the parents compelling comments today as well many of them i have spoken to throughout the year to help them solve the challenges around transportation. It really will always be the parents choice. Transportation services will be offered during the iep process, and what we are trying to do is make sure we have more options for families so that we can help them solve some challenges and have the services be unique and flexible so they can be responsive to what their students needs are. It will always be in conversation with parents as part of the iep process. Also, just want to acknowledge the comments from the parents. Thank you for Public Comment for us to hear from them. I think it really comes down to families. Families getting the support they need. People getting the support they need. Hearing a lot about the shoestring program and that we have an existing partnership with this company is compelling, and having trained drivers is compelling. Before my dad started driving for muni, he was a paratransit driver. So i hear you. So trying to balance all these things, you know, simultaneously is important. I really just do want to appreciate the diligent work of the Transportation Team of trying to resolve all these issues as theyre coming up because were talking about the difference between 2 million and we have a very serious deficit, but when you hear our parents and the type of commute barriers theyre having and the types of things coming up for their children, it brings it back to focus. So i do think it does make sense to move forward with staffs recommendation, but i i would be the first to i think its unfortunate that i know this decision has to i think that was a mistake. We need to hold all these people, accountable. Its one thing to say youll be in regulation with ab5 and its another thing to talk to you about your serious commitment to that at the outset so we can all have it on the record. So were talking about one year . I would recommend this time next year, whoever we have a Vendor Partnership is here before we vote. First student is here. Okay. Great. Okay. Got it. I think she was saying she didnt invite either. They came on their own accord. Commissioner collins. Ive been listening to this, and this is not an area where i have as much of a knowledge base, but honestly, it is concerning that zum isnt here. I mean, weve had these contract discussions with revolution foods, and even when it got hot like last year, they were here to answer questions directly. Whether theyre invited or not, they know theyre on the agenda. That raises some concerns for me around being present and being accountable, not only to us as a board but to the public and just being a part of the community is being in the room. Then i guess additionally, i have questions and concerns on both sides around how to best meet students needs and sometimes the existing structures that we have in place dont meet Student Needs and so we find workarounds, but ultimately, we want to create a system that works, and that means fixing the actual system. That means working with labor and within our different policies and requirements to make sure our system works. But i also want to recognize that we may not always be able to do that when we have emergency kind of needs for students, and then additionally, im concerned about i know students with specific needs like autism and things like that really need consistency and really need relationships. Thats part of them feeling safe in the world and being functional when they arrive at school. Listening to families, ive gotten phone calls from my kids like where are you and i dont know where im going and the bus driver didnt pick me up. Thats ninth graders getting to school. Thats not students that experience terror and fear when their routine is disrupted. So we cant always ensure that we have the exact same person every single time because people get sick and people change jobs and things like that. But i think its very its one of my utmost priorities that we have that sense of safety for both students and parents because its also terrifying for parents to receive phone calls like that. Its traumatizing. So im i kind of wish we could have the two separate conversations and have one conversation about just like the general contract and then have like another conversation. I feel like this is helpful dialogue, but, again, its another situation where its kind of like right before we have to vote. That also is concerning. We cant know about every single thing were voting on, but some things are more important than others for us to be informed about. So i just wanted to share those thoughts. I want to echo concerns of both staff and families. Yeah. I dont know how we make decisions if we dont have its like im hearing a lot of anecdotes. I dont know how theres a way for us to evaluate whats actually happening as far as the different, you know, perspectives that are being presented. Thank you. So i just the number that really sticks out is 18,654 which is 103 a day, which is over 50 one way to school and 50 to get back. Its just not sustainable. Youve said that. Its gone up every single year. Its not okay to spend 30 million a year on transportation. It has to be reiterated. Its absolutely out of line to be spending that kind of money when were in a deficit year. Even if we werent in a deficit year, its not okay. [ please when they send in their information or you work with them on packaging the information around the public contracts, so when we are talking about their Safety Record, how are they working with their local School Districts like oakland, like san jose, i believe, and if there are other types of aspirations for their Business Development model, essentially, because i know they were founded, again, as surveying on individual basis, like for families and for children so its interesting that they seem like they are expanding now into serving School Districts. I would be curious around their Safety Record specifically for their public contracts. Thank you. I wanted to ask you did offer us a profile of the students with i. E. P. Es. Do we have a profile of the students that in the general ed routes . The general ed routes operate kind of like muni where children can hop on and hop off at buses so we dont have ridership identification. We do have a registration tool where we dont think its 100 percent reflective of all the students riding the bus. We didnt bring that tonight but we can followup with that profile. This is information i asked for at least a year ago that i really feel its important to know who is on our buses. And we have that information, because for the students with i. E. P. Es, we can get that information. But i want to know how many students are in our general ed who are using our bus services who have means and could pay for it. I dont think we should be paying for students from families with means. I think especially when we are talking about this kind of money being spent for transportation. I would like to know i mean generally want to know who is on the bus. I would like to know that so we can figure out if we can do a means test and then be able to charge if we needed to with a sliding scale. But i think thats really important. I want to talk about for student a little bit, i think last time we were talking about that here, ms. On keefe, you mentioned there were on average about 300 calls a day coming in. We were assuming those were not happy calls. I dont know what the ratio is on happy call to unhappy call. But can you talk about that a little bit . Yes. We will tag team here. Sorry for the confusion. At the time there was a point in the year where we were getting sometimes 600 calls a day and most of them where where is my bus . Im happy to say they stepped up and started meeting with us on a regular basis and employed a number of strategies to increase the number of drivers that were there to increase their ontime service. And we have seen a significant decline in the number of calls that we are receiving. And they can give a more detailed update, but things are definitely trending in the right direction. Mrs. Sanchez created an app that would allow families to register if their bus was late. We also provided a hard copy where families could provide that information back to me. I created an online tracker that goes directly to the Management Team of First Student. And since that creation, we were able to on the spot find out why was bus 200 late for that day, can we do something about that. Students have to get school on time and safely, and we have seen a significant decrease in those calls because of that action. So how many calls on average now . Probably receiving about 100 to 120 calls. In some cases the bus might just be around the corner and the parent is just checking to see or the parent could also be calling to change the pickup time or drop off or to also inform us that the student is not riding that day. So they are not all angry, unhappy calls. Not trying to imply our bus drivers are doing a bad job at all. I think being a bus driver in this in this city must be one of the hardest jobs there is, trying to navigate the roads and pick them up on time and get them home on time. If theres any commissioner that would like to take these contracts separately, let me know, we can do that. Otherwise we will take it as one vote. Roll call for both contracts. Thank you. [roll call vote] thank you very much. Thank you all for coming out tonight. Six eyes. Ayes section i, discussion of other educational issues. There are none tonight. J, discussion and vote on consent calendar items, removed at previous meeting, none tonight. Section k, proposals and assignment to committee, none tonight. Student delegates, thank you so much for staying past 9 00. Check out the votes in new hampshire. Section l, proposals for immediate action and suspension of rules, none tonight. Section m, board member support. Well wait until the room clears for this part. [background conversation] all right. Lets get going. Section m, Board Members reports, report from recent committee meetings. We heard already from rules. Committee of the whole, well wait until the next meeting, regular meeting and then curriculum and Program Meeting was held last night. Commissioner collins, you want to wait until its cleared out . Okay. Here we go. We had a packed agenda at the Curriculum Committee meeting. We talked about wellness for our teacher, which i think is really important. The main issue we discussed is that educators need to be able to selfregulate and be centered and happy and healthy and well in order to model those behaviors for students and also manage student behaviors and support them. So i suggested on that note, i think it would be a good topic to discuss in we discussed it in the Curriculum Committee, but i also think its a question of whether its leading to teacher burnout so it might be a topic to look into as to what operational practices do we have to support educators in health and wellness. So i can follow up with commissioner lam, but i think it would be something to follow up on. We also got great presentation on black History Month. One of our students in sfusd presented on experience as well as the liaison for the alli team, and i encourage Community Members to go online and check out all the resources we have in celebrating black history. We got an awesome presentation on sports libraries arts and math, otherwise known as slam. Theres a lot of exciting updates in those regards. Most notably i heard about some amazing programs in sports and p. E. And libraries and also in art and music, we are seeing lots of changes and improvements, and in music we have increaseed instrument access. And that has resulted in an increase in participation across our schools, and we are going to have even more updates coming up. So i encourage folks to check out the presentation, but also stay tuned. And then the middle school redesign, there was a very interesting conversation. We learned about a lot of the improvements that are being implemented currently at four of our pilot middle schools that are implementing the middle school redesign. And most notably, teachers spoke about the importance of having projectbased learning in schools and that the operational aspect of having block scheduling allows them to have the time, not just to do directive teaching but actually engage students in Group Activities where they can actually lead their own questions, come up with their own inquiry and then produce actual projects that demonstrate their mastery. Where we had a lot of questions, and i would love to engage with the board on this and get more input is there was concern because we currently only have the ability to do a sevenperiod day. And this is very important when it comes to i think on the one hand, okay, so this is an issue. Previous to this pilot, not all students were getting access to arts and music or getting access to Computer Science or the health curriculum. And so because of that, if you are an english learner, if you are a student with an i. E. P. Or a student receiving extra support in math or reading, you basically dont get to do art, and you dont get access to curriculum like Computer Science, which is inequitable. So at the pilot schools, having a sevenperiod day allows students to do that in a rotation, but students that dont have english are not in e. L. D. Classes do not receive specialized support also have access to a full year of language or a full year of like orchestra. So theres still some really serious equity concerns where students in general ed programs have more access. And my greatest concern is i want to make sure students that love music and art in middle school, they have opportunities to apply to schools like the school of the arts or students that want to pursue a full year of language in depth have the opportunity to do that and even within the current model for the pilot program, any e. L. D. Student would not be able to participate in a full year of language or a full year of art under this model. So its a concern, and its a question we need to continue to explore, and also want to continue to listen to sitebased educators in here where their experience is at different sites in implementing the model and figuring out what works and whats not working for them so that we can scale it up to the entire district, and thats also a question as to how fast we should go with that and also about our ability to sustain and support a full district scaleup of the middle school model. Thank you. Any reports . Seeing none, all other reports by board remembers . Just wanted to say my appreciation with the sfusd team for hosting the parent meetings for Student Assignment. I went to the one in bayview. Thank you, president sanchez. And i was accompanied by commissioner moliga, somewhere in his neighborhood. Where were we . Capital avenue. I remember the parents i met, though. They were all great. And it was a lot of awesome engagement around the concepts. So thank you to district staff, thank you to parents of Public Schools for spreading the word. And thats my announcement. Thank you. The next Community Workshop on Student Assignment is going to be tomorrow at 10 a. M. Its at Community Well, 78 ocean avenue. Its cohosted by Community Well and it will be hosted in spanish with english interpretation. Thursday, february 13 the day after the 5 30 to 8 00 at the Childrens Council of San Francisco, 445 church street, hosted by the Childrens Council. I want to thank our staff for doing this as well as p. P. S. Okay. So calendar of committee meetings, standing ad hoc and joint committees of the board of education. Budget and Business Services is wednesday, march 4 at 6 00 p. M. Buildings grounds and Services Monday february 24 at 6 00 p. M. Curriculum program is monday march 9 at 5 00 p. M. , removing curriculum from 6 to 5 00 p. M. Start time. Rules policy and legislation march 2 at 5 00 p. M. , Ad Hoc Committee on personnel matters, Labor Relations and affordability, the next meeting is wednesday, march 11, 6 00 p. M. , Ad Hoc Committee on Student Assignment is monday, march 16 at 6 00 p. M. And the joint city School District and city college select committee, friday, february 28 at 10 00 a. M. And the meeting is held at the city hall legislative chamber. Section n, other informational items is the state of the station report. Section o is memorial adjournment. At this time we will accept Public Comment. We have none. We recessing this Board Meeting and will resume after a closed session. Section p is closed so we are reconvening. This is a readout of the february 11, 20 closed session. One vote on student expulsion matters, none tonight, two report from closed session in one matter of location the board by a vote of five ayes two absent, provided direction to the general counsel in the matter of hs versus sfusd number 201920046. The board by a vote of five ayes, two absent give the authority to the district to pay the stipulated amount. The board by a vote of 6 ayes approved the nomination of probationary employees. The board voted approved the election of one probational, two certificated employees. The board by a vote of 6 ayes one absent, approved the nonreelection of one probationary, two certificated employee. The board by a vote of 6 ayes one absent approved to nominate the election of one probationary, two certificated employee. This meeting is adjourned. [please stand by]