people that come up and speak about an issue they are passionate about makes someone my age feel very good so thank you for showing up today. i represent the private sector and the past president of partners against abuse and president of the san francisco education fund and serve on the mayor's task force against human trafficking. i have dealt in the world of domestic violence and i know the cycle of violence and to me all of the work and research shows the sooner you break that cycle of violence and deal with prevention then we can deal with this whole issue more holistically so i want to back up any prevention work the district can provide. thank you. >> thank you. thank you so much for being here. seeing no other members of the the public and no cards i will close public comment at this time. i want to say this is the first hearing at the city and school district select committee. clearly there is so much to delve into it and we thought this was going to be an hour and we clearly went over that timeframe but good to see what the organizations are doing and the status of women and the school district are partnering with them and hear from the youth that are initiating so much that some of the members of the school board didn't know about the projects that young people are initiating in their school so it's important for us to hear about this and i just want to say i didn't understand what consent curriculum was until a year ago as an adult and shows how much we have to go and prioritize this type of education in our schools. this is just to highlight the need. it's not an opportunity just to criticize. we want support a more robust health curriculum that incorporates many of the young people have articulated in the room what we want to learn in the schools and creating the culture and how important that and i appreciate all of the comments made today. are there any members of the committee that would like to make some brief closing comments? commissioner nyugen. i -- commissioner wynns. >> i want to thank everyone for being here and i want to appreciate everybody's work and dedication in this area. it's so important as we know but i also think our job -- a lot of questions have been raised here that are thoughtful questions about the health curriculum and that we i hope from this committee will refer this to the curriculum committee of the board of education so that we can pursue some of these exact questions about the nature of the curriculum, the nature of the professional development that we do and the appropriateness of and comprehensiveness of the curriculum so again i want to thank everybody and we rarely have the opportunity to make such -- excuse me, such a direct recommendation from this committee to a committee at the board of education and we should do that in this case. >> thank you commissioner. commissioner fewer. >> yes, i would like to thank you supervisor jane kim for bringing this topic forward. i learned a lot and i think my colleagues did and how we're partnering with our cbos and deepen our relationship and supervisor kim we look forward to working with your office around this issue and discussing next steps and how we can further the education for the students also encompassing what we heard from many speakers today and in particular i echo commissioner wynns our students. >> thank you commissioners. i look forward on working on this dialogue. it looks like there is a need for resources and funding and we need to institutionalize the programs and curriculum so it's consistently done throughout the schools and not an ad hoc way and i want to appreciate that the school district identified the gaps and it's easy to cover up and say everyone is getting some curriculum but i want to appreciate addressing the shortcomings and a starting point to get to the next place and i look forward to bringing this back to the committee and working with the board of education so if i can take a motion to continue this to the call of the chair we can do that without any objection. [gavel] mr. clerk can we please call number two and thank you to everyone who came today on this item. >> item two is a hearing to receive update on the community based partnerships and financial support and rapid re-housing and eviction prevention strategies for homeless families. >> this is the second item today and we have two heavy items and i want to thank the members of the public for this item. i know we're 30 minutes over. colleagues as you know addressing homelessness is a top priority in the city and one of the top priorities from my office since i represent this district. when i was on the school board i was struck by the stories from students and the impact on education; the education of which is an important tool to get out of poverty. i know we have teachers and principals in the chambers today and have the heart break of teaching students dealing with anxiety, depression and other outcomes of not having a stable home outside of the school and we know a home is a place of refuge and students learn and discuss with families, working on homework assignments, doing play and other types of activities. since 2007 the number of homeless and marginal house housed students have increased by over 90% and we're hearing this number continues to grow as the housing crisis worsens and families in particular struggle to find two and three bedroom units. the three decades of research on homeless children alone concur. many outcomes that we would expect that children in homeless families are sick four times as often as others and likely to have emotional and behavioral consequences that it can lead to chronic stress, inconsistent relationship and the damage is long lasting. homeless children are five times more likely to be homeless as adults. the effect on education is dramatic and we will hear from sfusd on some of the data points. only 51% of kids that don't have homes reach reading standards and 40% reach standards in math. because of the ongoing issue or the publicity of this issue over time from a lot of our community based advocates here in the city private entities have taken notice of this issue two years ago we had funds devoted for services and google committed $2 million to three organizations doing work to help reduce the wait list for homeless families in it is shelter system and also funding for transitional college age programs and preparatory programs and an organization to direct giving application program that our office used to fund raise for families that lost homes in the tenderloin due to fire. this is a positive step in addressing the great need of the homeless families in san francisco and this hearing is meant to continue the dialogue on this important issue. we want to understand what we can do as a comprehensive long-term strategy to address service gaps for our students that are unstably housed in san francisco. i don't need to talk about the wealth gap we're seeing here in the city. often a point that we hear at the board board of supervisors. we know at a time of success there are folks struggling in the city and an important issue for all of us to take up so we have a number of presenters here today again on this issue. i want to recognize first we will have joyce crum and staff from the division and kevin truit and staff from sfusd too talk about the data and sfusd. we have staff here from the mayor's office of housing and community development but they're not presenting officially and i want to recognize the hamilton family center present wg the coalition of homeless and rebecca is here on behalf of google that provided this grant to kick start the initiative in our schools so before i have presenters come forward would any members of committee like to make any opening comments? seeing none we will have ms. crum and commissioner you're welcoming to join us at the dais . >> good afternoon. i am from the homeless and housing program and manager of family and prevention services. i think you have a handout that describe the programs that we have for rapid re-housing service. they're listed by service type, a description the services, the agencies that we contract with to provide the services and the number of households that are served annually. hhs has been -- h.d sa has been funding these programs before it became a nationally recognized best practice and along with our partners we provide services to house people who are homeless and maintain housing for people at risk for homelessness and one time grants for deposits and back rent and need and outreach and a variety of issues regarding tenant rights and responsibilities, dwerkz and -- diversion and access to care for homeless families and targeted to low income households who are the most vulnerable to a housing crisis. some programs specialized and those at greater risk including veterans and others and -- ellis act evictions and grown in the last years. while the general fund provides much of the resources we receive state and federal funds in the recognition of the local need and the success of locally funded programs and i am happy to answer any questions. >> thank you so much ms. ward. >> thank you. superintendent truit welcome back. >> assistant superintendent. thank you and thank you for calling both these topics on the same night so i didn't have to come back again. >> [inaudible] >> i am trying to find -- just one second. it is here. here it is. got it. thank you. it didn't like that you did that. okay. how do i go to the show? good? yep. all right. thank you and good afternoon again. my name is kevin truit and associate superintendent in the community support department and oftentimes when we report on our homeless students we're just to stop at the number and that numbers have been repeated and that's the end of the story most of the time. what i would like to do today is focus on a new partnership a strengthen partnership that we have specifically with hamilton family center to further address and strengthen our approach to supporting families who find themselves homeless. but first i will start with what are the numbers so actually supervisor kim i can go you one further so since 2006 a 250% increase so you were going with this 2008 number. oftentimes again we look at the number and people say what is homeless? now kenny vintso will tell you that homeless is defined as students that lack a fixed regular and adequate night time residence that include the following and we consider homeless if i break out the number from the fall semester we had 295 students identify as home little and of that number 1288 were -- let me go with the numbers here. so 546 -- that's it. 546 were in temporary housing. 242 hotel motel, 1288 doubled up and 26 unsheltered. some agencies and other people know this data better than i will when you see lower reports of homelessness where there can't be this 2095 this is what people are breaking out and only the 26 really count because the state will often say if there is -- homeless is only when you don't have a floor to sleep on that night so with that being said what happens when -- what is the impact of children who find themselves homeless? supervisor kim mentioned some of the impacts. yes, the students are sick four times more often and hungry twice the rate of others and three times more emotional issues and stress and exposure to a violent amount and four times more likely to have delayed development and to transfer will schools with shelter opportunities at least once a year. that being the case this year we entered into december 2014 a special mou and partnership with hamilton family center. in the past on the third tuesday of every month the family youth and transition council meets with various agencies, several of which can are in the room right now and i will list some of them. there are several agencies that meet the third tuesday of each month for the council. out of that we established a relationship with hamilton family center and we strengthened that relationship this year with great help from the director who is also here today. what we do with this partnership does is our staff will -- our staff in all of our schools -- the hamilton family center trained our nurses and social workers -- they all report to my department and we offered the train training and contact them when the family is at risk and have meetings at the school when appropriate and train the social workers and nurses and counselors and help them disseminate information to staff and students. we send an hfc staff member to school within -- so this is what they do when we contact them. they immediately deploy a member to the school within three business days. often time that school community is who the family trusts to share their experiences with and when that happens in the past we would give them a contact number. you can call this agency. now we call hamilton family and they come within three business days when sfusd staff identify a family they provide eviction prevention services for 24 families referred by sfusd each year. they provide rapid re-housing service for 48 families referred by the school district and coordinate with the school staff on how to best identify and assistnies families and maybe one of the last items is the greatest benefits we've had and i'm going to actually show you a video in a little while but we have been talking how do we identify homeless students? for administrators and teachers that are trained and social workers and counselors and nurses each may have different indicators they could look for to identify there is something going on with the student. maybe i need to specifically to ask what is your living situation? are you homeless? so we can provide services. that goes down to the secretaries, cap tearia workers, et cetera. since a partnership is established since january there have been over 70 calls from our staff to consult about homeless or at risk families and 35 were referred directly to the staff at hamilton family center. of the 25 there were 12 that p e evictions and some didn't follow through and this relationship has been tremendous and as an example of some of the support we're getting to understand how we can best support the families who find themselves homeless there is a series of videos that help our staff so if they haven't met with all of the social workers we have three videos and i would like to play one now as a sample. they're actually very good but this is the type of thing we're talking to our staff about specifically about homelessness in san francisco. so i think i can -- all right. we're going to have a volume thing here. >> [inaudible] in the san francisco unified school district and increase [inaudible] since 2007. just like you hamilton family center is here to help. this video is a resource for school staff to help facilitate the partnership between the san francisco unified school district and hamilton family center. we're coming together to help connect you to essential resources available for homeless families. this video will show you what to look for so you can tell if a student might be homeless and direct you to the services available to help the student and their family get on the road for stable housing. not addressing this problem is robbing children of their potential and their future. >> the student and family maybe embarrassed about their situation and not ask for help. sometimes a student may seek help. other times you may only know by seeing certain signses the student is homeless and see the student with the same clothes or arrive early or leave late. the student might be hungry or hording food and not signs are not staying focus or staying in class and have trouble with homework and might be aggressive or territorial or the opposite and overly a affectionate. >> and [inaudible] and always ask the students and the parents. you should be sensitive about the situation and ask them carefully but be direct. are they homeless or threat of eviction? >> a homeless family might be couch surfing or in a car or doubled up with friends or relatives. >> they might be in a sro or single occupancy unit. >> hamilton family center can probably help but we need the date of birth at least one of the parents and please have that information ready to share and we are here to help students who are homeless be successful in school. >> once you find out that a family is home homeless or under the threat of eviction we must ask quickly and we can help. click here for more information. if the student is already homeless there are steps that the family should take immediately to access emergency shelter and look for stable housing. click here for more information. hamilton family from was established in 1995 and one of the largest providers for homeless families in san francisco and have a email and hot line and school staff should contact us when working with homeless families or dealing with eviction. we can come to the school and assess them for eviction prevention and rapid re-housing services and call for more specific information how we can help. >> that's just one of the videos. there are two more helping families facing eviction and facing homelessness and these videos can be carried on to our staff so that they can have that in house at the school to watch and train themselves and again increase our knowledge because this is something that is rapidly rising in the city and we're finding ourselves -- i have no idea what this is. it's a commercial. it's not my computer. sorry. all right. that's it. i'm good. >> thank you. thank you mr. truit for presenting. so at this time i am actually going to open up for public comment so we can actually our presentations to occur and as a technicality we do that over public comment time and of course we will let presenters talk longer than the two minutes so i want to bring up hamilton family center and one of the fundees in the google grant and provide services finally on site with the school employees so i want bring up the executive director who will introduce members of staff also speaking about this new program in the school direct to recognize we have one of the principals here as well. thank you. >> good afternoon supervisor kim, supervisor, members of the board of education. thank you so much for calling this hearing and talking about topic with us. before i speak i we would like to have partners from the school district speak and some of the line staff who are actually working out at the schools so i will turn the mic over. >> hello. i am the bilingual case manager with the center and the lead case manager. we had two families here today and unfortunately they had to leave but i would like to share one of their stories. they came to us from sanchez elementary. one of the parents lost their income and their job and therefore couldn't pay the rent anymore and found themselves struggling. the children were not going to school because the parents had to take them out to search for jobs and that's not ideal either so they asked -- they commented to the school and the social worker called me and i came out within three business days and the family was able to stay in the family in san francisco and had the eviction prevention strategies program and this is helping us stabilize the housing where they are now and we're trying to find them new housing because the space is too small but with the rental subsidy program they can achieve that. thank you. >> thank you. >> hi. good afternoon. my name is dennis chiu and the principal of [inaudible] elementary. i can tell you we have a outstanding relationship with the family center. in the fall of last year we got a call saying we were going to have a family that was homeless and before they actually arrived some of them from kevin truit's office gave us a call and a head's up. we had a counselor from the office escort the family to come with the registration and that really helped out. as the family came and we made them acclimated to the school and right now we have two sites we had a couple of issues in the beginning because transportation was an issue. i thought that it was something as a school how can we help out; right? so kevin truit's office explained to the family if you get your kids to come to school everyday on time our office will provide the clipper card so that was one pard that helped. after that so we found out that our students to start not come to school and tard and he stopped coming so as i. >> >> investigated that what happened the adults -- not the children were at fault, and after some counseling we took care of that. hamilton family center was instrumental in assisting. the students are now coming to school everyday on time, and if it wasn't for the support of hamilton that would never happen so i just want to let everyone here know that the school district, the school site, [inaudible] is a very night knight and close working relationship. >> >> and i appreciate when hamilton says they will have someone out there within three days even before the three days before the arrival they give the kuftacy and the professionalism of the phone call to let us know they're coming. >> thank you principal chiu. it's good to see you. >> hi. i am tara and a counselor in the school district and work in a kindergarten through eighth grade school and working for the support department the last eight years. supporting homeless youth is near and dear to my heart. in our position as you know we have a lot of respond it is but mainly. >> >> responsibilities but mainly to build relationships with staff and families and within the school and families and other community members. in

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