involved in -- they have all been the same s.r.o.s out of ingleside station at june jordan , at academy soda, i struggled with a young man with a loaded pistol, and then this here at balboa. the other two incidents impacted me, but this issue this year, it was my son. it totally impacted our family. it impacted me, my relationship with the school district, and it impacted the way that a look at things differently. so i ask you to pleas hold people accountable to when things like this happen. we have been fortunate that nobody has been killed. please be ready for when it does one of the things that i do ask as we do better training for staff, for line staff. i have been in the district 20 years and i have never been trained. the con -- the people that get trained are the administrators. i administrator trained as last year but now she is leaving. so now we need to keep continuing making sure people are trained correctly. when the incident happened at balboa, they said that there were councilors in mental health nobody was sent out for six days i had the e-mails communicating with the department of health lady at the clinic. they were sure to go on the news and say there was councillors there, but there was no therapy there. i was in the back. we need to do a better job of that. we also need to have a check off list so when this does happen, it ministry there's no what they need to do, and make sure all parties sign off every year that they read and understood the m.o.u. it is not fair that for people to have to deal with kids and not know what is expected of them. so with that, i thank you guys for this and hopefully we will create some change to make our schools safer. >> thank you. next speaker. >> good afternoon, good morning. my name is deirdre. i am a teacher librarian at malcolm x academy and also a parent of a junior at burton high school and who -- my son frequently gets into altercations and i feel fortunate to say he talks to me quite a bit about his life, and i know that when he does get in altercations with other students , the last person in the world that he would ever want to go to, or have involved is a police officer. i know that we all understand what i mean when, you know, when i say we have to consider police conduct in our communities, particularly black and brown communities a public health issue because too many people are harmed. our black and brown people, our community members, are harmed. what i want to say is that the community needs more opportunity to look at this memorandum of understanding that is being presented today and have opportunities to give feedback. thank you. >> thank you so much. next speaker. >> good morning. my name is annabella. i'm an attorney would legal services for children. we represent young people in it dependency court, immigration matters, guardianship, and expulsion proceedings which frequently run parallel when there is an incident on campus that requires police involvement two things, first, this issue, of course, is incredibly visible right now because of the incident at balboa, but i want to flag that this extends further than that. we had an m.o.u. pass in 2014, it has been five years now, and we are still trying to figure it out. i want to highlight this is an issue the community knows very well and that we should appreciate there has been some involvement there of trying to get that community voice into this. i also want to talk about the question about court involved youth and the notification requirements. in particular, i would suggest the involvement of contacting h.s.a. social workers. each dependent has a social worker assigned to work with them and has a trusting relationship. in particular, it is great to contact resource families if a young person is any family where there is an adult who is able to respond and we could have young people who only have social workers is a constant in their lives. they also have quote -- court-appointed attorneys. i would also recommend involving those people as well. i want to highlight the agreements like the m.o.u. are only as good as they are being honored. is much as i appreciate the willingness to listen to the community and the willingness to have a complaint process, ultimately, there are no guarantees that a complaint -- these complaints could result in any changed behavior. on behalf of the young people that we work with, i am requesting more robust measures of accountability in the event of violation of this m.o.u. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker. >> i am tracy. i'm here today as a parent and i'm here to talk about what happened that day at balboa. there are clearly a lot of things that we can learn from, but i also want to point out that there was an incident at june jordan where things were handled so well. apologies were made, students had community circles, there are some great ways of how to address this. in the balboa incident, it just did not happen. there was no restorative circle with the family. as a matter of fact, when i went back to take the student to school, we were told that we couldn't have a restorative circle, or reentry or the principal and administrator was there. i know from experience of the incident at june jordan had the community reaction that we needed. the way we want to see things happen in the community and in the school district. if we are really about restorative practice, i want to say for the record, the harm has not been restored. this happened almost a year ago. there was never an apology by the school district. although, board members and commissioners have apologized, nothing from the school district there was nothing for the students to say, hey, this was not the kid that was portrayed all over the media. hey, i'm sorry your kid was looking like he was a criminal all over t.v. there was none of that that happened. we need more training for teachers and other administrators, the police. i agree with a lot of the recommendations, and lastly, the s.r.o.s, like, what are there schedules? can they work more games in the evenings? we want to be able to have an m.o.u. that works for everyone and we need more student input. there's a captive audience of students, and you only have 100 people give input is really just not acceptable. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker. >> good morning. my name is lydia. diego is my son. i have several recommendations on this m.o.u., but i would first like to address the fact that i believe there was a lack of community outreach in the sense that having 100 people comment on this issue is a little disturbing to me, being that there are so many schools here and so many parents would love to be able to provide feedback. i also would like to note that the schools where the community meetings were located at were not a neighborhoods where more of the kids affected by this m.o.u. live. so that is an area of concern for me as well. the other thing is, one of my recommendations is i would like for this m.o.u. or the children 's rights to be addressed in some type of assembly to kids at the beginning of the year so that every year, they can be explained their rights, so they know in the event that something happens, what to do, and what their rights are. second, a big thing for me is i want staff, if there is an event that another traumatic incident happens, that the staff involved are required to take some type of mental health training or counciling to help them cope with their feelings about what happened because i can guarantee you that my son was mistreated throughout the rest of the year that he was at balboa and any little action that they felt required discipline was completely taken out of proportion. any disciplinary action that was taken was not in line with disciplinary policies. i believe that that stemmed from whatever feelings where, you know, still impacting them. those are two things i would like to see, but i would love to thank each and every one of you for being here and being part of all the conversations that are happening, specifically supervisor safai who has been a tremendous help to our family, supervisor walton, and also supervisor ronen in proceeding with the ordinance. [indiscernible] >> thank you so much. next speaker. >> good afternoon, supervisors, commissioners, and trustees. i'm here today wearing many hats i'm a grandmother of a child in an sfusd school, i care about what happens at her school. i am a mother of a former student at thurgood marshall, and we have a huge police incident which prompted the redo of the m.o.u. that you are now looking at. it has been revised quite a few times since that incident in 2002 and i'm here today wearing my essay -- sciu hat for the san francisco unified -- san francisco unified school district. i want to know and appreciate the comments made by some very specific groups. huckleberry youth, they gave some really good outstanding comments. advocates, take these comments seriously. if you have forgotten some, go back and review the tapes. the youth commission also had great comments and there were many folks also from other groups, patty, here as well from the public defender's office. all of these are so necessary and need to be put into this document. city college needs to have a joint m.o.u. so we can create a network all across city college campuses that are mirroring what is happening in our sfusd school sights. they need to be included in this process more robustly. i also appreciate that the department of police accountability is here with materials so that -- one of the things they also want to say is kevin truitt is retiring if i am correct. who will take over this legacy of work now that he is leaving the school district? i am hoping this person is on board right now so can start transferring that work over. it is deep and it is a lot of history that we will lose when he leaves, you know, nothing against kevin, there were ups and downs around this, but we need to make sure that -- >> think he's a much. any other members of the public who wish to comment on this item please come forward. seeing then, public comment is closed. i just want to think members of the public for their patients today. i know we had a lot of presenters. this hearing was a number of months in the making, so i appreciate your patience. i also appreciate all the different departments that came out with my staff and supervisor walton staff to put this together. just to respect everybody's time , if we have any follow-up comments or questions, i just want to keep it about the m.o.u. i think there's a lot of things we could dive into today based on the data, based on the conversations that we are having , i think we learned a lot today. i want to thank specifically the families coming out and sharing their story. i know this has been a tough year for them, but i would like to say i think there is some light at the end of the tunnel. i think there are some really good, positive conversations happening, and i think this m.o.u. is better because of that incident, because of your engagement, because he didn't walk away, and you insisted on making sure that your voice was heard, and the voice of your son was hurt, and i think we are all going to be better for it. i would just like to summarize a few things that i heard. having, in terms of the recommendations, first i want to know, maybe from the sfusd and people that are in charge of that, when they are planning on having the m.o.u. finalized, what other opportunities will there be for the community to be involved in the process of ensuring this m.o.u. is finalized in a more inclusive way, as much as we can. one of the really strong recommendations is -- they are all strong recommendations, but having private space for interviews when and if an incident happens. i think that's really, really important. having the students explained their rights at the beginning of the year in an assembly type of environment, i think that is important. training for administrators, as well as front-line staff. that was kind of the point that i was trying to hit in terms of you have gone through this document, you're talking about training, how does that trickle down to others that are involved it is not just the principles, it is front-line staff as well. that was a good recommendation. i also like to the point that mental health, after incidents, is an important aspect of it. not just for students, but for staff. i think putting a time limit on that, that there will be a requirement of one mental health services have to be provided, we often will use the term of 2448 hours, but knowing that that deadline is there, and it has to be met, i think that would be an important piece of putting that into the m.o.u. so that we have something to hold everyone accountable to. the question about the s.r.o. in terms of when they work, and can they work after hours, i leave that up to the board of education and the police department to negotiate and negotiate hours of when they work and the work schedules i would just say that the board of education and the sfusd and the police department can come together on that, it makes sense to me that if you have things after hours and on weekends, like football games or sporting events, or whatever they might be that draws people, having presence there, if you look at the statistics -- again, if that is what the community wants. i don't want to make that assumption, but i heard that today, and -- and what accountability is built into the m.o.u. if the m.o.u. is not followed? what consequences are there, if any? those are a number of things that we heard today along with a whole host of things, but all i would say is there a reason we would want to continue this item to the call of the chairs we want to have a public setting where the board of education, our trustees, and the board supervises come back to see the progress that was made and finalized this and i want to thank the sfusd, as of p.d., and all the community advocates that have been involved in this, and community members, and everyday parents. it sounds like there is a call for more inclusive process to expand the number of people that can have input on this document, and i think that would be important. so we are about to go into our august recess, so maybe we can work with the chair, and maybe sometime in the fall we can reconvene. i would like to ask mr. truitt to come back up if he can just give us an idea of what the process is going forward in terms of what the idea to finalize the m.o.u., and what other processes will be made based on what you have heard in terms of spending the opportunities for involvement. >> sure. right now the m.o.u. is being reviewed by sfpd. we have not received their comments yet. our legal office has taken the first pass through the m.o.u. we got a number of -- all the comments and feedback that the community gave us, it is probably comprised of well over 300 pages of notes. everyone received those comments we try to incorporate as many of them as we can, gave that to sfpd. they are going through their legal team and it comes back to us with their comments. our plan has always been that this would go to our own board of education to review as the superintendent's recommendation. the superintendent superintendent would review it. the chief would agree and say yes, this is ready for my signature. we then put it on the agenda at a board meeting as a superintendent's recommendation to approve the m.o.u. and it was our intention that that would happen at the board meeting in the second one in august the beginning of the school year. >> okay. my office will summarize those and send them over to you. i'm sure you guys -- there has been a lot of information going on, but we can send you that information. thank you. >> thank you. >> commissioner collins? >> i wanted to thank you for the list of questions. they were my list of questions, i think it is important that there is follow-up and the big picture is, what i am hearing, is also being specific. time, who is doing it, time limit. when is it happening, and what we are seeing also is there is an accountability. we are focused on this m.o.u., but there's also responsibility for the school district in terms of training staff or in terms of providing support or coordinating with social services. i would love to work with commissioner cook or president cook and others to also outline a list that has come out of this meeting of actions we need to take as a district in terms of staff, the work we need to do with staff, with the work we need to do with providing emotional support or supporting schools because those have also come out. i also heard one more, which is educating students, how do we do that best, checklists for staff on what they are required to do, and also, i do believe that we deserve -- the june jordan community and specifically the family deserve an apology from the district. i would also like to work on, in order to repair harm, you have to acknowledge consequences. i think in order for that community to move forward and for us to acknowledge what should have happened or what we would like to happen in the future, that is something we have to work on is well. >> thank you. any other trustees or commissioners want to make -- oh, trusty selby? >> thank you. i will be very brief. i want to say that i really appreciate the -- that you guys are having this conversation. i apologize for coming and in in in the middle, but as you know, i i'm sure you have police officers unarmed at city college in one of the things that might be interesting is to have them in my opinion is that they are experts of de-escalation because they don't have firearms and they do manage -- maybe there is a way can work together to have police officer that or an armed and be able to participate in some way, partner in some way with this. the other thing i wanted to say is that you may have already mentioned this, but there's a book called the end of policing. i thank you guys are all touching on this right now, but police officers are not necessarily also social workers, they are not also -- i'm not going to belabour this. i think we all know this. i think sometimes that what we are asking our police officers to do could be done by other trained professionals, be the social workers or the mental health professionals or whatever i don't know if that is in the scope of this m.o.u. i think it possibly is, but just thinking a little bit about whose role is what role is it worthwhile endeavor. >> thank you, president cook. >> thank you. i especially want to thank everyone who came up and spoke in public comment. and also the former commissioner involved in the comments at the end. one of the big things that i took away that i think is important that we revisit is the amount of student input on the m.o.u. i heard you mention that we only had 100 people that participated and i am wondering who can come up to talk about how we can increase that number so we can have more voices in the process. can you speak to that? >> one of the strategies that we had his we created a facilitator 's guide and we provided people -- we didn't count the number of people who participated with coal and aunt the youth commission did their own session. they provided us all the feedback. so any agency, any c.b.o. can have their feedback session. we provide them the materials to you and you can give us that feedback. we had the front for community meetings which provided a ton of responses, and like i said, this opportunities for any of the community group c.b.o. his to do their own self facilitated session. we provided the materials for that. the alliance for girl says here. they did a session, also. i don't know how many people are included in theirs. are you requesting that we have another community meeting? >> i'm suggesting that we find every opportunity we can up until the august vote to continue to engage publicly around what they want to see out of our partnership. i think it is important and the other thing i wanted to say was related to just the execution of these incidents as they happen because i know that there is a long-standing career in different who spoke from sfpd, how much they care about doing this the right way, but when we are in the moment, things play out in ways that don't always reflect what we write down and, you know, we had the father who we apologize to personally and he talked about never being trained, or we have constant incidents that we hear about on campus where teachers are saying , you can't come on campus , and then they say, well, actually, they have to. so the disconnect and information. that is not what you will necessarily speak to. it is, when stuff happens, either people don't know, they forget, things get complicated, and people over react. i was a student at their good martial the day that a major incident that was referenced several times today, i -- a ton of overreaction. so, you know, it is one of these things that it is hard to say that we are going to be able to prevent overreactions, but hopefully, through the learning process over time, we can put people in place that intervene in the appropriate way. that is a process and committed to figuring out with all processes involved because like he said, once a gun is pulled on somebody, that is permanently imprinted on their mind. i know we all care about having that happen. we never wanted to happen. >> that would be the opportunity for feedback. they were previous sessions that we have had and those have been on the current m.o.u. the next iteration, once we get the comments from sfpd have had a chance to come up with an actual draft language then the next time that would be a good opportunity for us to have more community meetings or us to look at the new one. >> thank you so much for having this hearing. i think i and others at city college share how this might involve us, but i think that the conversations today i think there is a need for us to be engaged on this, especially as we're having a large number of students come into the city college in the san francisco campus. i will be following up with our staff and sfpd and maybe your staff and others can see how we might want to make sure that students are protected when they are taking class on our campus. i would add that little piece. >> i'm just making sure the city college either through joint m.o.u. or a separate one, whatever process is the process is to make sure that students who are attending classes at our college have the same rights and protections that the m.o.u. students have. i don't want to have a loophole where they are in classes at our campuses and don't get the privacy of protections or partnership with sfpd that they are afforded if they go to school at the same time during the day. >> great. if you could send something over , i will try to put that into words. thank you. i know we're also joined by commissioner lopez. >> thank you. i will actually have kevin come up because i need some help here i appreciate the work that is being put in and everybody being here, but i think we need to highlight that this is yet another policy that the number of people who have to implement it will have no idea it is in place. i say that as a teacher who is pretty active in the district. i didn't realize there was an m.o.u. until i became a commissioner. thankfully i have the skills and the heart to support my students if an incident arises, but there are a number of people who don't have that and i think we also need to point out the adults that are part of the escalation that get our students into these situations. i guess i really want to understand, what are we doing to the people who have to notice this information -- is it family-friendly? is it available in multiple languages? >> as part of the administrative training, the security guards are trained in the m.o.u. and also active shooter increases response. all of our paraprofessionals are not. it is not part of their training it is not part of their teacher training. there is all the administrators that are trained and there is -- there are the important parts of the m.o.u. that talk about, you can't call the police for disciplinary reasons. those of supposed to be reviewed with the teachers during the opening p.d. days. so if you are saying you have it , i think it bears messaging and strengthening that message that what are the things that we do have to inform the teachers of? we build it into the teacher training because our p.d. schedule is so jampacked right now. so we need to think more about that but i hear your message that people, our line staff, where people who are interacting with students and not aware of the m.o.u. itself, so what parts of that to be need to review? how do we best do that? somebody mentioned making sure the whole entire m.o.u. is in the handbook. i have said to many people that i don't think the handbook is the answer because the handbook is becoming a phonebook and people are not reviewing it. i don't know what the best communication tool is for us to get that message out. the m.o.u. has been translated in the past. it is accessible in different languages. it is not a very popular document. so how we emphasize that, it definitely needs some more attention and strengthening of that message. i agree with you. >> thank you. thank you for joining us today, commissioner lopez. i will wrap up by saying i think the summary of the items that i have listed out we will send over to you and to sfusd and we will follow up. we think it is important to reiterate for the record that there be more community involvement and that many of these recommendations be incorporated into the final document and we will continue this conversation and we will ask the site and be continue to the call of the chair. and as we hear more updates in terms of the progress on the m.o.u., then we will reconvene, but hopefully we can move forward and finalize this document so that we have some clarity, and also ready to go, as you said, mr. truitt, the training can be there for the beginning of the school year, including maybe some other recommendations like having assemblies and having students know their rights and some of the other things we talked about today. i want to thank everyone for coming out today. thank you do all the departments thank you to all the community advocates and students and parents and the youth commission for their involvement working with our staff and supervisor walton's staff and sfusd for their help in terms of working with us and sfpd for helping to work with us to move this conversation forward. thank you, mr. chair, and thank you for everyone to come -- for coming out today. >> thank you, supervisor safai and supervisor walton for calling this hearing and thank you to all of the commissioners and the trustees and the departments who are here. i think this is exactly why we have this committee. this is, of course, something that is incredibly important to the safety and well-being of our students but it is also an interdepartmental issue and one i think by bringing us all together we can hopefully get to some solutions. i do want to know a couple things. positive note, i am happy to see the number of students arrested and detained has been going down the last few years. i hope the thing is we are doing , the parts of this m.o.u. would that have been working that we continued to make sure we do those things. i have seen, in some cases, when i was a schoolboard member, that we would see things moving in the right direction and then something would change and it would stay going to the bag so i just hope that for the school district and for all of us that we really recommit to make sure we continue this trend because ideally, we would like to get down to zero, no students being arrested on campus because we are doing all the right things in terms of de-escalation and supporting them on campus in other ways. i like the trends here, but at the same time, we know when we don't get it right or when there are gaps in our m.o.u., or the way that we are implementing it, that it can have very damaging impacts, so i want to underscore also some of the recommendations that were made, and also the ones that were here from the youth commission. i think these are ones that we should really take very seriously and including. and when i say we, this is more for the school district now at this point. it is up to you all. i do think that they have made some really good recommendations here. finally, i think it will be great for us to continue this conversation and who few months for an update and that we will be capable to get you back to that point and i want to appreciate everyone he was here. i think our m.o.u. has been viewed as a model in many ways. when i was a school board member i could contact other school district and say we want to do something like that, and they don't have anything like this. it was clearly something that was wanted by the community and really pushed for. i want to give a huge shout out to the coleman advocates and getting to this point. we could always make it better. we can always improve on it. there's a lot of things that we can do to even improve on what is already something that is critical to the way we operate as a school district and as a city. with that, we will revisit this again in a few months with some updates and again, i want to appreciate you, supervisor safai , and all of the folks here who really engaged with this conversation in such a serious way. with that, with nothing else, this meeting is adjourned -- >> is there a motion? >> can i have a motion? and take that back. >> there is a motion on the floor by supervisor safai. >> do we have a second? >> second. >> motion is taken without any objection. we will continue this at the call of the chair. the meeting is adjourned. thank you. >> we're here to raise awareness and money and fork for a good accuse. we have this incredible gift probably the widest range of restaurant and count ii destines in any district in the city right here in the mission intricate why don't we capture that to support the mission youths going to college that's for the food for thought. we didn't have a signature font for our orientation that's a 40-year-old organization. mission graduates have helped me to develop special as an individual they've helped me figure out and provide the tools for me that i need i feel successful in life >> their core above emission and goal is in line with our values. the ferraris yes, we made 48 thousand >> they were on top of that it's a no-brainer for us. >> we're in and fifth year and be able to expand out and tonight is your ungrammatical truck food for thought. food truck for thought is an opportunity to eat from a variety of different vendor that are supporting the mission graduates by coming and representing at the parks >> we're giving a prude of our to give people the opportunity to get an education. people come back and can you tell me and enjoy our food. all the vendor are xooment a portion of their precedes the money is going back in >> what's the best thing to do in terms of moving the needle for the folks we thought higher education is the tool to move young people. >> i'm also a college student i go to berkley and 90 percent of our folks are staying in college that's 40 percent hire than the afternoon. >> i'm politically to clemdz and ucla. >> just knowing we're giving back to the community. >> especially the spanish speaking population it hits home. >> people get hungry why not eat and give >> we are so excited -- i am cheryl lynn adams, director of market street youth services, and we work with young people to 24 who need laundry or place to hangout or come in from outside to get the tools they need to begin to resolve their homelessness. we have lots of programs and lots of educational and behavioral health supports that are here throughout the city. we are excited to be here with our partners to launch or to be a small part of the effort to address child trafficking. larkin street started years ago with huckleberry to fight youth trafficking. we know without intervention on the streets, children are at high risk for trafficking if we don't get to them soon. i think the most wonderful thing about this partnership is the prevention and the early intervention and the collaboration and us bringing together so many partners to work on this issue in a very profound way. we're excited to be here and excited to be a small part of it. and i am always honored and delighted to get to introduce our -- our mayor. mayor breed has been in office for just about a year now, right -- tomorrow? wow. [applause] >> she has been an active supporter of homelessness, of youth homelessness, of diamond youth shelter, which is one of the -- our part in this project, and so much more in the city to support young people to help all -- to help so many of us -- so many residents in san francisco thrive, and i am deeply honored to introduce you this morning, so welcome. [applause] >> the hon. london breed: thank you. i am excited to be here. thank you, cheryl lynn, and thank you to larkin street for all the work that you continue to do to support young people in san francisco and huckaberry, i'm excited to have this organization as well as other organizations for partnering what we are announcing today, which is a $9.3 million grant from the department of social services for the state of california, which is absolutely incredible. [applause] >> the hon. london breed: this was a very competitive grant, and it was awarded to ten partnering organizations who helped to deal with the challenges that we know sadly so many of our young people face around sexual exploitation. in fact, in 2017 in san francisco, we had over 300 reported cases from young people of sexual exploitation. and in most cases, they were women of color and women from our lgbtq community. we know that just last year, cheryl lynn and the folks from larkin street, we announced the rising up campaign where we are determined and committed to end youth homelessness in san francisco, investing millions of dollars in providing the kinds of support and wraparound services that young people in order to get their lives on track. we know that all young people may not have that safety net, may not have that support. i did not have that support in my family. in fact, i was so lucky that i had a grandmother that took in my brothers and me and raised us. my grandmother was very strict, very focused, she determined to make sure she did everything she could to protect us. when young people don't have that safety net, when they don't have that support, when they don't have that protection, sadly, that's when they turn to predators and do things that they never thought they'd do. and this $9.3 million grant allows us to provide services and housing, and to track and find out what we can do better to keep this from happening in the first place. so i'm excite todd to see how is going to change the lives of so money youany young people i city. we are well on our way to addressing so many challenges that we know we face one at a time. it takes dedicated partners, it takes dedicated public servants, it takes dedicated people from the public community who care about addressing these issues, and so i want to thank each and every one of you for being here today. this is an amazing, amazing grant, and i am looking forward to the implementation and changes that i know are going to come forward as a result of this funding. thank you so much. [applause] >> the hon. london breed: and with that, i'd like to introduce the director for the commission on the status of women, emily murase. [applaus [applause] >> commissioner murase: thank you so much, mayor. i wanted to recognize the mayor for empowerment of youth and her focused commitment to housing individuals who are homeless. as you know, commercially sexually exploited children are mostly homeless. it's really one of the root causes of this problem, and now, it's my great pleasure to introduce the executive director and founder of freedom forward, alia whitney johnson and doug styles, my second grade classmate and director of huckleberry youth program. please give them a warm welcome. [applause] >> good morning. thank you, cheryl lynn for hosting us this morning, and thank you, mayor breed and commissioner murase for the work that you do on behalf of young people in our community. i realize that commercial sexual exploitation is a story of failures. times that we have failed to meet young people's needs, and these young people have taken their needs into their own hands. times to fail to respond with compassion when they needed us has added to their story. but within this story is a story of incredible youth brilliances, a story of navigating the system, a hustle that is purposely resourceful, resilient. knowledge that is absolutely critical if we want to build a vibrant, healthy system that works for all. these are the voices that we are centering in this continuum. they deserve choices, and they deserve a system that works for them and a voice in what that system should be. by ensuring young people are a part of our design process, and that we build in feedback loops to honor their input, we believe we will build a more effective system of care for all. so what is this collaborative that we're building and here today to announce? through this grant, we're bringing together 11 community partners to develop a continuum of services that we hope will meet youth where they are, recognizing that meaningful change is rarely linear and needs to meet youth when they are ready. this continuum includes five major components as well as a protocol for navigating those components and a rigorous evaluation. we hope to openly share our successes learned, and if effective, to replicate what works across the state. the five components of this continuum include first, a drop-in center where youth will be able to access services under one roof whether or not they identify as being exploited or currently being housed in the continuum. second, a launch pad shelter for youth transitioning from life on the streets or unsafe living situations. third, a short-term residential treatment program. fourth, a new model of family-based foster care right here in their community with wraparound support. and finally, 24-7 response and emergency services. family first will be leading the foster and family services. we a our role will be to facilitate and coordinate services from across our community, bringing the best our community has to offer, remaining accountable to what youth want. in early 2020, we also aim to launch our family-based foster care pilot. as many of you in this room now, problems in foster care often lead teams to being moved around -- teens to being moved around, isolated, surrounded by only professionals, far from loved ones and the people who they care most about. all of this instability and lock of connection makes an environment that's ripe for exploitation. we plan to pilot a new model of foster care that will provide stable family homes right here in their community and will wrap youth and families with both the professional support that they need as well as a real emphasis on the relationship with family and friends that youth want in their lives. this pilot will engage a great team of providers in what they do best, including family builders, west coast children's clinic, huckleberry youth programs, and this pilot will also include additional caregivers, who provide what grandmas do, like what mayor breed talked about, so often, aunties and grandmas show up to support our youth. as i step back and think about building a community where every young person can experience all that it means to be free, i want to end today with a quote from a young person who grew up right here in san francisco and was interviewed by our friends at the elements freedom center. she said, freedom is when we reach back and pull the next sibling with us because we see your brilliance, and we know that you will shine when surrounded by real love. let us pull each other with us, and let us all move forward with love as we move forward. thank you very much, and it is my pleasure to introduce doug styles, the executive director of huckleberry youth program [applause] >> thank you, alia. thank you, mayor breed. thank you, my classmate, emily. thank you to larkin for hosting this fabulous event. it's an incredible group of people for this collaboration that's been brought together. what we need to start with is that trafficking, sexual exploitation happens here in san francisco. these are our children. it is a systems issue, not an individual issue. no one chooses to be exploited. trafficking and exploitation inhibit the entire community from thriving. that's why we've all come together to change the trajectory of lives of young people affected by trafficking and exploitation and to prevent others from becoming more deeply involved. in 1967, huckleberry youth programs established the first youth shelter for run aways in the country, addressing reasons why people found themselves on the streets of san francisco. unfortunately, our 52 years of experience, we have seen too many young people commercially sexually exploited and too many young people at risk of human trafficking. but every day, we also experience the resiliency of young people. this project is an attempt to bring together various experts from various fields to provide the needed supports for young people to heal and to provide the chance and the necessary tools to reduce the risk of further exploitation. as one of the partners in this project, huckleberry youth programs will provide case manager and mental health support to divert young people to a safe and healthier life. our experience, working with adolescents in challenging situations, whether it's mental health counseling, juvenile court diversion, we know that young people thrive when they direct their own future. our process is to listen to each youth, hear their hopes and dreams, regardless of their current situation, to traem thtraem -- treat them as human beings and become a catalyst for changes. huckleberry youth services will be part of the crisis team to provide services to young people when are they need it the most. we'll be able to work with young people to maintain their current living situation, and for those with less permanent housing, a placement coordinator will help determine a safe living environment for their future. we will provide residential counseling staff. finally, if emergency shelter is needed, huckleberry house will provide temporary safe home environment. as a native san franciscan myself, raising my daughters in this city, i am very proud to see this collaboration come together and very excited to work with this incredible group of people. i look forward to a future where we no longer need these services or these programs. when all of our children are safe, healthy, treated justly, and are well educated. but we have a lot of work to get there. by working together with the support from the california department of social services, i believe we can build a stronger community. thank you. [applause] >> thank you so much, doug and alia. in closing, i want to introduce the san francisco continuum team, the department of the status of women, just give a wave. huckleberry, youth and family services, family builders, west coast children's clinic, edgewood center for children and families, claire's house, learning for action, berkeley human rights center, and of course larkin street youth services. [applause] >> finally, i want to give a shoutout to the mayor's office of human tracking. through these bodies, san francisco has odd voe indicated for critical services. through this grant, we're going to be tackling homeless service and housing options. i want to thank the housing advisory board and youth advisory committee for putting this all together. thank you for joining us. [applause] >> item number one call to order. [roll call] do we have a quorum? >> wonderful. before we begin the meeting some order of business that we would like to view. the first is to think samaha for his 10 years of service to the treasure island development authority. [applause] he has seen the gamut of what we have done. since treasure island was just a thought. he was there for

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