ago, buena vista wanted to be a k-8 school. the opportunity was available and we thought we would provide that opportunity if we could make it work. the committees in terms of parents who have asked to be involved, we obviously, we have asked -- to be in charge to have committee so that she doesn't have -- intent at this time to apply for the position so we thought that would be a good person to be the liaison to do the planning. guadalupe has been in charge of that area but we are going to have a very open process and procedure to engage the community in selecting the principal and that you have my firm word on and our commitment on it. i hope this helps to clarify some of those issues. you know, we are working on trying to get committees together on developing the program and the plan. so you will be hearing more about that from the area superintendent there. guadalupe guerrero. thank you. >> thank you. item k is the advisory committee report by board members. are there any appointments by board members? the public education enrichment fund will be linda asato. >> good. i think she will be a great addition. >> any others? item lmp is a special order of business. there is none tonight. item michigan. we had two presentations. we are withdrawing one. one from san francisco that we will hear from in aprilened that evening, we have the privilege of hearing from the parent network, a presentation of the april 16 parent education revolution event. i would like to invite commissioner norton to invite her guests up and do a little introduction for us. >> thank you very much. make your way up to the table. parent education network, i hope i don't get anything wrong. so they will correct me if i don't get it all right. parent education network is an organization of parents, of students with learning disabilities who got together and have formed an organization to bring resources to parents and students who have learning disabilities. we have some guests, some of the students that are in a really interesting group and they will tell you more about it. they also are going to do -- they have this wonderful conference that is both for students and parents and teachers. so -- with lots of resources about l.d.'s. they are going to tell us about that. so welcome parent education network and it looks like some student education network. >> thank you very much for allowing us to speak on this evening and know that you have had a long night. we will get started. my name is laura malone. i'm briefly going to tell you just a little bit about who we are and how we started. and then i'm going to threat students and ely take over. in october, 2010, the truemain foundation recess leased a poll saying the public is dangerously confused about learning disabilities. parents and educators and school administrators confused learning disabilities with mental reardation. we know many are of average intelligence and recent studies show that 35% to 40% of entrepreneurs have disabilities. we know these students make up 20% of our school population. in the absence of educational and cultural chains, we continue to lose bright minds if we fail to support them. the national debate continues here in san francisco, a group of parents with children with disabilities who struggle to find resources necessary to support their children understood too many times the parent-educator relationship was adversarial. they met with educators and experts and after a year of discussion the parents education network was formed. working with students and educators in the community to bring academic success to students with learning difficulties. they have begun to change the conversation about learning dibblingts here in bay area and beyond. -- disabilities here in the bay area and beyond. let me just skip some of this and tell you what we do. we provide a speaker series to educate parents and teachers about probably 40% of those who attend our speaker series, which happens once a month, are teachers. we help parents understand how their children learn and we help teachers understand how they can reach these students in the classroom, regular ed and special ed. we have a branch of parents education network called safe voices. this remarkable group of high school students hailing from a variety of san francisco public and parochial and high schools have been supported to lead the day log and join the debate about how to best support students. they wrote accounts called "read this when you can" that has been used at the harvard education graduate school as an instruction book. they regularly speak on panels. they mentor younger students in hopes of instill in them understanding and self-esteem. currently they are mentoring at cobb school. several members are now college. none have dropped out of high school and they have been helped out by the unique voice. we also started a 2007 teachers education network where we provide teacher training twice a year on -- the teachers education network is dedicated to helping teachers regardless of classroom experience, discipline grade level or educational background. they help teachers understand research-based information about brain function and findings and effective teaching practices. but what we're here to talk about is an event that we put on that started three years ago called education revolution. from at&t park. a conference from students by students where they could stand up and speak out about their learning disabilities and what it was like to be learning-disabled in the classroom. we now have students traveling from as far away as new york to attend this conference. one of the schools in new york brought two students last year and they said it was the most powerful experience they had had all year, and this year they are bringing 13 students so we're really excited about that. the day consists of hundreds of resources, speakers and this year, a special afterparty for students. this year we're also really excited to be collaborating thanks to se cillia and rachel, the support for family of children with disabilities to offer our conference for the first time in spanish. so we're really excited about reaching a new demographic. i'm going to turn it over to ely who runs our safe voice program. thank you. applause >> ok. i'll keep it real short. i work with this wonderful group of kids. i grew up sharing the same experience as they did as a dyslexic learner myself. i currently work as a crime analyst for the plit. in all of my spare time i help out this group of kids. basically what we're here for today is to ask for your support and help in promoting this great awareness not only for this event but to encourage your students officially to join a community like this. as we know, we try hard to provide a lot of resources for students with learning dibblingts and districts do a wonderful job of that. unfortunately we know that comes with a set of stigmas and otherfects on students' self-esteem and social behavior and alienation. as a result of a lot of the great things we do for them. unfortunately the district cannot provide what is pretty much one of the best solutions to that problem, which is a community that can dispel the myths and stigmas and provide support for the students. 35 or 40 students rotating every year. we have been around for several years now tim here is my right-hand man. he is a graduate. hess kind of my guy who help -- he is kind of my guy who gets things coordinated and moving. they are headlining go touk about their organization and the things that they do and they are here to hopefully convince you to find a way to share this community and all the benefits it has with all the students. thank you. [applause] >> thank you. ok. the students are going to speak now. >> i'm tim. i graduated from gate way high school last year. ely introduced me pretty well. safe is a community of students that strives to empower ourselves and others through outreach. all our work comes together every year now at the educational revolution conference where we come together as a national community and a growing national community. and we're here now asking you to help us bring our programs and our event, which has helped us so much, to the public schools, where the need is the greatest. thank you. >> hello. i'm frankie. i'm a ninth grader. i go to gate way high school. i'm a new member of safe voices. safe voices has provided a community for me where students and graduates share the same learning disabilities as i do. same experiences as i do. safe voices has made me proud to have a learning disability or learning difference. it has helped me with challenges throughout school. and has also given me knowledge to spread and give to younger students who have learning disabilities. thank you. >> hi. my name is sarah. i'm a senior in the creative writing department at the school of the arts. i wanted to take a minute to kind of describe it. it has been said that it is the carnival for disabilities. it is a vibrant, life toing opportunity for kids to see a different way of being in education and being in the world. so please help us to propel this celebration of difference and diversity forward in our school systems that is so desperately needed. thank you. >> hi. i'm sunni. i'm in ninth grade. my story. i've always known that i've been an l.d. kid and my mom -- sorry. my mom has always told me that i was smart and i believed her and -- and i just hope that like if you give us the things that we need we could do -- make other kids feel like as smart as i do. i might not be like the best at school but snow [applause] >> hello. my name is adam chutes. just to end up or to summarize what we have done, we as an l.d. community and members of safe voices have come to you today to ask you the empower the individual, to basically let other students who are with your jurisdiction to basically have that same experience which we have able to make for ourselves. all i would like to say is edrev a great organization. it is that one time during the year which shows students can actually basically acknowledge their own success and celebrate it. so we thank you for your time and hope you have a nice evening. [applause] >> i will just finish up by saying we would like to invite all of you to come and experience edrev for yourselves. you have the information in your pacts as well as our books, some videos and other things that were all created by these students. so please register, spread the word, get in touch with us, our organization and laura. it will be april 16th, which is a saturday from 9:00 to 5:00, and it will be at at&t park. you can't miss it. so please help us spread the word. i hope you will reach out to our executive director and find out how you can distribute some materials at your schools. i don't think i need to say anything else. these guys always do an amazing job. thank you. [applause] >> thank you. before you go, i just wanted -- there may be some comments or questions from the commissioners. i wanted to see if anyone had anything they would like to say. >> i just want to suggest that folks from penn be at the student advisory council conference coming up on the 18th. you can recruit students there. >> and can i ask what the grade level is for participation? >> it is ages. the recommended ages are between 13-18. >> eli, there is a safe voices once a week or once a month, is that right? a meeting? >> the next meeting is saturday, march 19th at the san francisco friends school from 10 to 11:30 a.m. >> how often do you meet? >> generally once a month. we don't have scheduled meetings during the summer. >> so if students are interested in coming to a safe voices meeting, they could come to the next one on the 19th? that would be ok? >> that would be strongly encouraged. we would love to have them. >> well, thank you very much for coming. i appreciate all of you waiting for the long public comment earlier. i am personally very grateful to penn for some of the great resources is has brought me as a parent and many other parents i know. i encourage parents to go to their website, which is -- >> parentseducationnetwork.org. all one big long word. >> i want though thank you all. there are a couple of students that i want to refer that i think as a mentor have had challenges in thinking about a proper place for them. this is encouraging, and i think he will appreciate it. i get it that there are peers, and this is a safe place for all of you. thank you, commissioner norton, for bringing the organization to our attention, and we hope we will be able to encourage more students and families to attend your conference on april 18th. thank you very much for joining us. >> thank you. and we look forward to work with you more in the future. >> thanks. >> our next item is item n, concept calendar resolutions. there are no. >> item o is vote on consent calendar. it has already been moved and seconded under section f. we need a role call, please. >> that is six ayes. >> thank you. item p is the consent calendar resolutions that were severed for board discussion and immediate action. we had several items. buildings and grounds for mr. golden. items 3 a through 3 dd, would you please repeat your question? >> i just want to call the commissioners' attention to pages 43 and 45. mr. golden and his staff do a great job of doing the analysis requested by the board. on page 43 we are approving $400,000 in contacts. of this, 1.5% is going to women and 54%, which is pretty healthy is going to minorities. do you think there is room for improvement in terms of diversifying our vendors? on the following pages, 44 and 45, we are approving almost $13 million in a lot of modifications. of that, there are no women-owned business enterprises, no disabled veteran enterprises, and minority enterprises account for 1.4%. i am interested in working with mr. golden and the superintendent to see how we can train the diversity of contractors out there and how to take advantage of doing bus with them. we need to understand the larger context of the analysis that the board has asked for. >> mr. golden, do you have any comments? >> no. the statistics are the statistics. i think overall i provided some information to the commissioners that indicate in general i think san francisco unified is doing a good job in spreading the work around to all work forces in our community. i think we can do a better job. it is often not easy. we have a very aggressive policy to advertise in publications all over the city, to promote our work in all organizations, both the asian contractor associations, the latino and african-american associations. it is, however, true, there are not many large women-owned general contracting businesses that are in business building schools. that is changing, and i think we are going to see that come about sooner rather than later. but i agree we should do all we can do. >> i would be very interested to have this as an agenda item for buildings and grounds at some future date. >> yes, we can certainly add that on. thank you. so we need to vote on that, please. >> six ayes. >> item f, superintendent's proposal for first reading. none. r, board members proposals, none. >> item s is the board members reports. >> i want to thank the committee and all of the board members for coming to the last meeting. we interview six excellent candidates for elections commission, and you met the unanimous candidate for that position. i will be working with the committee on formalizing a process at the request of president mendoza. our next meeting is scheduled for march 14 at 6:00 p.m. we will be revisiting the legislative overview. and then in terms of board tols and administrative regulations, we heard a progress report from susan wong. we are in contract with the california board of education to do just that. we discussed the charter amendment, which has been moved by the board of supervisors to appear in a possible june election, and we also discussed the student assignment policy statement for the june ballot. >> thank you. just one correction. it wasn't unanimous on the vote. but you weren't here. we needed a report from the augmented budget and commissioner services committee. commissioner fewer? >> sorry. we did not hear the action item, and i think we will be hearing it at our next budget meeting, which will be held on march 30th at 5:00 p.m. >> and we heard a couple of informational items. the informational technology department came and spoke about their budget, and i think we had mr. hall there that commented tonight on our i.t. budget, and also commented that night on our i.t. budget also. and we had an update about the state budget. we discussed reinstating the one hour for t-10 security aids and got a figure amount of how much that might be to restore that one hour of work for them a week. we spoke about how we would preed during this budget process with our calendar. our next meeting will be on wednesday, march 30th at 5:00. >> thank you. commissioner madoff as? >> is that calendar on the website, what discussions you are going to have so we know? >> deputy superintendent? so you will put it on there? [laughter] >> other committee meetings coming up that we need to do, the curriculum coming up? >> we just had a curriculum this past week, but since it was not on the agenda, we will update you at the next board meeting. >> thank you. commissioner moffs? >> we are going to change the format so that the committee has a representative from a department coming and really tell us about what their department is, what they do, who works in the department, how many people they have, et cetera. although that often deals with situations of crisis, we want someone to tell us how they operate when they are not in crisis. we will have a meeting later this month on thursday at 6:00. i just don't have that report back from the commissioners. >> thank you. and then the select committee is this thursday, march 10 at 3:30, and it is going to be on summer school. buildings and grounds is usually scheduled for the fourth monday of every month, but we will be on spring break, so we are moving up one week to march 21st. and then it will be the fourth monday of every month thereafter. commissioner yee? >> i think we sometimes schedule two a month, and we are not having the second one for march. the next one will be the first tuesday of april. >> all right. any others? that's it. item t is a report of closed section actions of march 1st, 2011. the board by a vote by a vote of six ayes voted to approve. they approved code -- to authorize one superintendent to notify one. the board by a vote of 5-2 approved the following. the expulsion of one middle school student and a stipulated expulsion agreement of one high school student, g.f. item u., there are no staff informational items. i would like to turn this out to commissioner yee to close out the meeting. >> thank you. this adjournment is in memory of john joseph mccaffery, retired from the school district, who passed away on february 24th at the age of 82. he was educated in the mission district. he graduated from s.i. high school and st. marry's college of college. he served two years in the army. for 38 years he taught at galleleo high school. one of the students he coached was actually myself in basketball.