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tv   BOS Joint City and School Dist Committee  SFGTV  October 9, 2020 10:00am-4:01pm PDT

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brap >> testing for sfgov. >> testing for sfgov. >> testing for sfgov.
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>> thank you mr. chair, we're ready for the meeting. >> this meeting will come to order. welcome to the october 9, regular meeting of the joint city, school district, and city college select committee. i'm supervisor haney, claihair the committee. do we have any announcements? >> yes, due to the covid-19 health emergency, to protect board members and the public,
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the legislative chamber and committee room are closed. members will be participating remotely. this is pursuant to the local state and federal orders. committee members will attend the meeting through video conference and participate in the meeting to the same extent as if they were physically present. public comment will be available on each item on this agenda, depending on your provider, cable channel 26, 78 or 99 or sfgov.org are streaming the number across the screen. each speaker will be allowed two minutes to speak. you can call the number streaming on your screen, 415-655-0001. the meeting id is 146-032-3750.
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press pound and then pound again. when connected, you will hear the meeting discussions and then you will be muted and in listening mode only. when your item of interest comes up, please press star and then 3 to be added to the speaker line. best practices are to call from a quiet location, speak clearly and slowly and turn down your television or radio. you may submit public comment in either of the following ways, e-mail myself at ericamojor@sfgov.org. >> thank you madam clerk. please call the roll. [roll call]
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>> moliga absent. >> williams absent. >> selby absent. we have corium. >> are there any changes to the agenda? >> there are no changes to the agenda. >> madam clerk, will you please call the first item? >> yes. hearing of the impacts of covid-19 on san francisco unified school district and city college of san francisco.
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and members of the public who wish to provide public comment on this item should call the number streaming on the screen. the meeting id is 1460323750. please waited until the system that indicates you have been unmuted when we get to public comment. mr. chair. >> thank you. i appreciate that. so committee we have one item, which is an item that we are very familiar with, the general update from each of the respective institutions about the education that is accessible and available to children and families and young people and
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our residents during covid. this committee has been incredibly useful for us to provide answers, to problem solve, and to discuss solutions to meet the needs of students and families during this very difficult time. today, this is the only item so you know, i don't expect that long of a committee, but i do appreciate as always the many different representatives and institutions that are here with us. i know there is a lot going on and people are working really hard and we appreciate you spending time with us and working very closely with the members of this committee. we will hear presentations and updates from city college of san francisco, the department of public health, the department of children and families in that order. again, we have to balance a lot of schedules here so i want to note that the d.p.a. representatives need to leave at
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11:00 as does the director, but he may be able to return at noon if there are further questions. again, i want to thank everyone for their time and all of the work they're doing during this very challenging situation for our city and its students. so with that, i would like to jump in, but are there any committee members who want to comment on this item before we begin? seeing none, i would like to bring up our first presenter, which is the city college of san francisco, if the presenters will please state their name and affiliation before beginning the presentation. thank you. >> good morning, this is tom. i am the vice chancellor of academic and institutional affairs at the college. i'm joined today by two of our
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deans, dean lopez and dean cayhill. i see i've been promoted to presenter so let me put up my slides. hang on a second. great. so today we wanted to make a brief presentation about the impact of covid on our non-credit programs and really two of our major non-credit programs, instruction in english as a second language and our transitional studies high school program. so just a couple of quick
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background steps. city college offers credit courses in a variety of areas, 80% of the students live within san francis san francisco and the two biggest areas is english as a second language and transitional studies. i'll note and i know we had presentations of this in the past in addition to serving adult students, it collaborates with our colleagues to offer credit recovery classes for high school students. these non-credit programs are an important part of our college and important to the residents of san francisco. the american community survey, we have about 75,000 adult san franciscans that do not have a high school diploma and 165,000 san franciscans that report to the survey that their level of english is less than very well.
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about 20% of the population. so, these are important programs for us and i wanted to give dean lopez and cayhill a chance to talk about how we have been managing during the time of covid with these non-credit programs. so dean lopez to talk about english as a second language. >> hi everybody, how are you supervisors and everybody there in the meeting today. so, in the area of e.s.l., we had a few challenges in this new semester. we also had wonderful success as well. we generally have registration each semester on campus, and usually how we done that is when we are in a certain semester at
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the end of that -- like the last week, we register them the following semester. so when we had to leave the institution in late march, we were not able to do that this year, so we had to really rally around everybody on campus instruction, academic affairs, student services, you know, everybody on campus really had to help because of historically what we offered is usually on campus, on site. you know, with a lot of our e.s.l. students, a lot of them have resources available to them. so in terms of the areas of technology, we also found that it was a challenge because a lot of them had no wi-fi, had no internet at home. a lot of them were working, you
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know, with others, within a household and as you may or may not know, a lot of the people that we serve are living in small apartments or an entire family is living in one room. so just having the resources available to them, a lot of them are using cell phones, which is not usually high-tech, obviously, but we have that as well. a lot of those who are in the e.s.l. classroom as well had to really learn how to use online resources because a lot of those who are hired at the college have worked there years. so a lot of them are use to the on campus work only. lastly, we really had to go by -- we had to learn as we went. you know, it's really a wonder to me and in terms of an
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institution so large and that is in a hub where we have earthquakes and other natural disasters, that we never had all of these wrap around services and resources that we were able to have in case we have a huge earthquake in san francisco and now we can actually move forward in a way if there is another pandemic, hopefully not, if there are earthquakes, et cetera. we're able to really rally around what we actually impleme implemented there at the college. as someone who moved here a few years ago, living in l.a. i thought, our institution was the hub of just high-technology. we really aren't there yet. in terms of our successes at the institution, what we found as i mentioned earlier, we rallied
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around each other at the colleges where we worked sometimeses with individual s o silos on campus at an institution so large. we really unified in such a way where academic affairs is working with admissions in records and they're working with academics and it really is very important now with all of the institutional initiatives and those in sacramento, we really can no longer afford working in individual silos in higher education. in terms of flexibility, i amount of the opinion because i was raised with a mother who was not able to go to school because it was either work or go to school, this is actually helping us in terms of flexibility because for a woman who is a working mom, who is maybe living
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in a homeless shelter with her family or the head of household who is working two jobs, you know, remote instruction is not necessarily a thing we should look at negatively. it gives those the opportunity, if they're able to you know, register remotely and you're able to work, and it gives you an opportunity as an instructor and as somebody enrolled in the class. i mean to really enjoy the learning process with those in your household because if you're a mom or dad learning english and you're in a remote learning environment at home, you can work on homework assignments with those living at home with you who are either in elementary school or high school. then lastly, in terms of equity, you know, if we really wanted to talk equity in higher education,
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in the workplace, we really have to give those at our institution the equitable service that we offer on campus. we can't just offer, you know, embedded tutoring, advising on campus. it has to be for veterans, for non-credit e.s.l., for working moms, for working men and women who need, you know, advising on an evening weekend where you're not able to do that because you cannot go, you know, there to the campus. so, what we're really seeing is just a huge shift in higher education, not only within our institution but all over the u.s. really, it's really a very important time for non-credit e.s. e.s.l., non-credit high school
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programs to look at that, rather than being a negative, we can't serve those we want to serve. we should look at it in a light where how can we help those, as well as help those who we serve on campus? with that said, i'm going to leave it over to my colleague. >> thank you very much for having me. it's a pleasure to be part of this meeting today. similar to that challenge, you know, the transitional status department at city college of san francisco had similar challenges for our students. for example, claiming the ram i.d., which is something that the students need to have in order to access their learning platform.
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summer 2020 marked the fourth year of partnership with san francisco unified school district. we offer a 40 credit recovery course for our students. from that experience, we learned that our students need a lot more support. so what we did is create a virtual help desk through our non-credit admission office, the transitional studies department itself, and we also had instructors who had dropped in. all of this happened a lot. it was intense at the beginning of the semester because we believed that's the time we needed to help and support our students. the first week of school, instructors dropped zoom hours for their students. in terms of faculty challenges, and all the support, you know, teaching online is not easy for anybody. shifting and moving from in
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person to teaching remotely is not easy. i am happy to say that transitional status was already ahead of its time. beginning in fall of 2019, there were almost five transitional set of instructors that went through the instruction to online teaching and learning. they already had the training to teach classes online because we believe we have a lot of students that are older students who have family and they cannot come to the campus to take their classes, so we were slowly thinking already on offering online courses. so when covid hit, we had to shift and the office of online learning offered training, so our instructors went through the temporary remote distance learning instruction. you know, we had instructors in
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the summer who were using the platform, so what we did is for the fall semester is paired some of the struck -- instructors who felt comfortable and strong in teaching online with those who were starting to use the platform for the fall semester. so there was a nice collaboration with those who knew more with those who were just learning. we also have a dedicated faculty who was assigned to work with the instructors, helped them develop and create their teaching modules and that was also positive. this time, you know, we are in a challenging time. transitional studies enrollment is good despite our current situation. our lowest class has 15 students and the highest is 47 students and the average is 20 to 30 students. so we -- this situation is
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helping -- i mean it's pushing us to think differently, to be able to not only support our students but also our instructors. now in terms of class schedules, you know, there is always a challenge of taking classes online for our students. if there are too many people in the household, there may not be enough computers for everybody to log in at the same time or the wi-fi bandwidth may not be sufficient. in terms of schedule and flexibility, we can also say that now that the parents or students are able to take classes, they don't have to walk back and forth on the center , the admission center to their home so they have the flexibility to take their classes when it's best for them. in terms of technology, the college has provided the chrome book loan program and it has personally helped a lot of my students, transitional students
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and those go on the website and help them fill out the application to get the chrome book and many of them did. so there is fill a lot more work to do in the area, because there are still students that don't have access to a computer or wi-fi. that is still a work in progress. that is something we need to prioritize and you know, and facet sill at a time this for our students so they can attend classes. in terms of family responsibility and remote instruction, so we have a lot of older students who have family. if they live in a smaller place, you know, it's difficult to take classes and especially they have small children because they come first. so we are working on right now, the city college family resource center and the mission campus family resource center are collaborating and working on a
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plan so we can offer limited daycare for our students. it will be limited, but at least that's something that we're offering to our students so the parents will come to the college with younger kids, leave their children at the daycare, and then they have to stay on campus, so they have a place to do their school work. we're hoping that it will be another support that we're offering to our students. now in terms of transitional studies and immaterial -- improving transitional studies, it has been difficult to communicate with our students. we have been doing it through e-mails now, besides e-mails an phone calls, we created a very simple gmail web page. our college web page is wonderful, but it has its challenges. so in the meantime, we have the gmail website where we're hoping to have it ready soon and send
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the message to our students on how to reach us, whether they are trying to take credit recovery classes or just our regular transitional status courses. this past week i met with the head of the students affairs and we have talked about improving through her office, we're going to be able to improve our college website and we're going to have clear steps of how to enroll in our transitional studies program. then in terms of partnership as i mentioned in the beginning, we have been partnering with san francisco unified school district which has been amazing. based during our experience during the summer, we noticed that we have a lot of students with learning differences that need accommodation. so what san francisco unified
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school district did is signed teacher assistance for the classes. so they help the students, the unified school district students in the transitional studies courses. they have access to the student portal, whatever the students need to do in the class. there is somebody helping in the class and we're hoping to replicate that for our college, our city college students. so in terms of college-wide support, you know, we have been collaborating a lot with our students affairs department, the i.t., the non-credit office has supported us a lot in terms of helping the students register and getting the paperwork necessary to get them into the classes. lately we have been talking about -- i just became part of the next gen implementation because we noticed our transitional studies have had a
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difficult time accessing their educational plans and their transcript, especially for those who need the hours to qualify for ab540 or ab68. this afternoon we have a democracy know -- demo of the transcript and the student transcript which is great. the next step is to get all the forms, the educational plans and any of the other forms that we use in transitional studies and make it fillable, do it electronically so it's easier to communicate with the students and it's easier to process the paperwork. also, i'm very happy to share that in collaboration with student affairs with city dream, the non-credit admission office, the counselling unit, we are currently working on bill -- the assembly bill 554, where
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students in a high school deemployee that -- diploma or equivalent can enroll in community college part time and those courses count towards their college and their high school diploma. this is something that we're working on and hopefully soon we will be able to implement and offer this amazing support to our students, our undocumented students. with that, i complete my presentation, thank you. >> thank you so much dean kayhill and dean lopez. briefly, the city college serves 24,000 students annually and non-credit, but there are more san franciscans that can benefit from these programs. i'll mention that right this second, we are starting up a cbo
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summit. they have been invited to participate in the summit, to learn more about the college. we love to see some more folks join us. with that, that concludes our presentation. we will be happy to answer any questions. >> great, thank you so much for that and for your work and we appreciate those updates. i see trustee randolph has a question or comment. >> yeah, thank you chair haney. i want to thank both of the deans for their presentation. we had a similar discussion yesterday at the student success and policy committee, which was really exciting to see all the work that both of you have done respective to the department and centers you're overseeing. i want to go into detail on some
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of the community partnerships that you have to kind of support the various initiatives that you're doing. i know that dean cayhill, you have a close relationship with m meta and other organizations and we work a lot in chinatown with the ymca and self help for the elderly and other organizations. so, i know there are about 200 organizations today at the summit, but maybe you can explain a little bit more about how we're working with some of our community partners during this kind of global pandemic. >> thank you for the question. dean, do you want to say a couple words about the work in the community. >> yes, i just started a group meeting and conversations with meta, which are working and have a partnership with mission higher. our goal is to -- besides
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looking at the data, to find a way to create a bridge where students from those two high schools will have an easy access to city college. we're already doing amazing work at city college, but i know we can do more. we can always improve and the goal is you know, we will create -- well, those two high schools are close to the mission district, so that's why i'm focusing on those two. our goal is to create a seamless process where our students can take the city college classes and go from there. we are at the beginning stages of the conversation but that's something i'm looking forward to discovering more. >> great, thank you. >> thank you. >> supervisor fewer. >> thank you very much and thank you for your presentation and your work. so is the bulk of the non-credit
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classes for high school students credit recovery? >> yes. >> okay. so have we ever thought about -- so it's credit recovery for high school credit, is that correct? >> that's correct. the credit recovery classes are targeted towards high school students that may not have passed a class and need to stay on track to graduate on time. >> okay, so have we ever thought about combining as i think what the dean was saying and make it more of a -- instead of just a semester of credit recovery, but more of a program that actually is a smoother transition to city college. so we have talked in this committee before about the dual
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credit, right? normally we talk about students who are already achieving at a very high level, that will be able to take a college level course. i am wondering if there is an opportunity here with credit recovery to actually be a program which transitions into college credit. so they can actually see this credit recovery leading actually to a pathway of something else. i don't know how that would be, but i am also thinking about the same thing, the credit recovery about your two year certificate programs and how we can make this a smooth transition because most people who want to also take classes to beef up their english skillings that are looking for greater opportunity in employment areas. i'm wondering if we can do credit recovery and connect it to our two year, your one year
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or two year certificate program that can lead to more opportunities afterwards. so that is incorporated with it. so i just want to say i'm just putting that out there. i don't know if you put there out there already. i was one of those students, full transparency. i barely graduated from high school and went to city college, but i think this connection from getting these credits to graduate and seeing this pathway to something at city college -- it just gives you hope and pathway. most of our high school students who need to make up credit are wondering what is my pathway. to take an s.a.t. or to go to california state college, they don't see a pathed -- pathway to
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that. i wanted to mention that and i wanted to thank you for your work. thanks for listening. >> i don't have anyone else on stack or in anyone else has any questions. i do want to move to our next presentation. i don't know if you can hold your questions for city college or maybe there aren't more as we're balancing a lot of time constraints. it doesn't look like there are other questions, so thank you so much city college and deans and we really appreciate your work and your time and we will see you in a couple weeks and there may be more follow up questions then. thank you so much. >> thank you for the opportunity. >> thank you. >> so we want to move on quickly
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to the next presenter from the department of public health. >> good morning commissioners, thank you for allowing me to come. i don't have a slide deck. i'm coming to give a brief update on any changes to our directives or guidance since the last time we met. the update is related to city college so we expanded the services that higher ed and adult ed is going to serve so that if there are any outdoor or remote instruction that is not possible because of the need for specialized space or equipment then indoor, in-person instruction is permitted, as long as there is the completion of a prevention plan and that higher education program that
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can complete this prevention plan and can self certify that and post all the requirements can begin operation and that we are no longer limiting indoor instruction to the category of core essential services, we did put a limit. we removed the limit of two hour instruction for outdoors and so classes can be as long as possible outdoors, but the two hour limit still does apply for indoor instruction and then we included updated recommendations related to testing into the directives for higher ed. that was the most major update. we have no updates to our out of school time guidance or directives, which is what the community hub falls under. we did make an adjustment to the
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school directive related to testing and making sure that any schools that are working with testing labs, that they are certified with the state and the cal re cal ready program so we can receive the results as a local health department. we have had some reports of schools working with labs that are not cal ready certified and then we don't get the results and that's not the intent of working during this pandemic. we amended that in the directive. those are the main directives i have. i do have to leave at 11:00 for another critical meeting, i'm sorry. are there any questions? >> supervisor fewer. >> yes, thank you very much. i do have some clarification on the two hour limit for indoor instruction. are you saying that they can be indoor, no longer the limit is
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for two hours and then if you were to take a break, could you do another two hours of instruction? >> it's per class. >> so if you have one class with two hour instruction. so if you cleared out everyone from the room, take a break, and then could they come back after the break of an hour or two hours and have another two hours of instruction. is that possible? >> i -- >> i just want to say in an instructional day, you could really have eight hours of instruction. so what i'm wondering is,
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because i'm hearing there is a two hour indoor instruction limit, is that for the morning and then a two hour instruction limit for the afternoon or is it a two hour instruction limit for the whole day? that's my question. >> i am pulling up the exact language in the directive right now, so i can better answer your question. my understanding is that it's a two hour limit for each class, per day and that is in accordance with all the other layers in the prevention plan, making sure the schools have adequate ventilation, adequate cleaning protocol, and that everyone is using face coverings. the idea being that if the class goes longer than two hours, it's the same cohort and there's no cleaning and there are no mitigations in between, there is a commutative effect of the
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droplets in the room. that's why there is a limit of two hours in the classroom. >> so say they cleaned the whole area, could you have instruction two hours later, let's say after lunch, after whatever, apoth apothem -- and then come back for two hours of instruction. that's my question. i also wanted to know if it requires any temperature check before actually people enter the two hours of instruction. so for the facilitator of instruction or for the students. >> we are asking for schools to do symptom checks, not just temperature. all the symptoms related to covid. looking at our guidance, it does say that the indoor, in-person instruction involving two or more students or instructors
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requiring the use of specialized space and equipment, such as indoor laboratories may be offered with the posting of a prevention plan. there doesn't seem to be a limit to indoor classes and programs must be scheduled to conclude in no more than two hours. higher ed programs must prohibit students and personnel from congregating before and after the scheduled classes and programs. that is the most we offer about the two hours. it doesn't say if you can have two hours in the morning, two hours in the afternoon. we're not that prescriptive with the schools. we wanted to give them flexibility on how they set their schedules, but making sure there's a mitigation plan and prevention plan in place. >> okay, personally speaking, i think that's very vague. because it doesn't allow -- the city college actually to fully plan an instructional day, if
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they were to, just f.y.i. i just sort of, you know, the two hours of instruction, i am just wondering if there could be then a series of two hour of instructi instructions throughout the day. i think that's my question. >> so, to be clear, the indoor instruction is very limited. it is only for classes that cannot be held outdoors, that need specialized equipment such as chemistry, biology, or anything that has specialized equipment that can't go outside. so it is not for the full course offerings that one would typically see for a full college offering. so it is a limited amount of classes. >> okay. thanks.
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>> supervisor ronen. >> yes, thank you. i was wondering if d.p.h. is working directly with the school district on meeting its -- so the school district has laid out a series of conditions that it has to meet prior to reopening the schools. the last time when we were speaki speaking, she explained that they didn't have information yet and hopefully we will get it today on where they are on meeting all of those conditions. i'm wondering if dph is working directly with the school district to trying to help them meet those conditions and if you're monitoring at all your progress in meeting them. >> we are working with the school district and helping them
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with the meeting our guidance and directive about school reopening. we're not monitoring the -- another not monitoring, but helping them achieve the conditions. i'll just editorialalize this for a second because it doesn't seem like this is happening, that children and families are suffering enormously right now. i do not believe that we are doing enough to help every single family. i think there is almost nothing more important to our economy than getting kids back in school so parents can work. i'm getting more and more e-mails every single week with parents in tears because they can't work and educate their
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children properly. children are not learning because they -- because remote learning doesn't work as well for small children and because families often live in conditions where it's impossible to learn from the home. the achievement gap is growing and this is an endless future that we have in sight. it's 100% unexpectable. we need all hands on deck from the city side to help the school district open back up so that families can have some relief and children can be learning. i just don't know and haven't seen quite frankly on either side, but i'm going to focus here on d.p.h.'s side that we are doing everything in our power to help the school district achieve its conditions so that it can reopen. i'm wondering what we need to do in order to get there. >> so we are working to support the school district and we have
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a safer schools reopening task force within covid command and it will be finalized next week, drafting how we're going to operationalize testing, contact tracing, case investigation, and outbreak matter of minutnagemen schools when they're reopening. we're researching testing labs, seeing how that can be extended to the school district to cover some of the testing requirements. so there is a lot of effort being -- >> wait, i'm sorry. so there is a testing r.s.p. going out? that's for what? don't tell me that we're providing the tests for private schools open. >> no, no. the city has released the
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general r.s.p. on testing, the testing lab and we are using our r.s.p. resources to see if we could see how those services can be inclusive of the school district as well, with the testing lab. our requirements with the directive and guidance is that if a school is charging tuition, they are to enter into a contract with the testing lab themselves to cover the testing cos costs. so we are not covering the cost for private schools on testing. >> thank goodness. so one thing we're doing is creating a plan for testing and contact tracing we will provide to the district at no cost to the district. >> the plan will be of no cost to the district, right. >> okay, and we're very close to being able to implement that, that plan should they meet the
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other conditions to open? >> we are assembling a team within covid command to make that all happen, yes. >> okay, is it possible for me to join that team? >> i would have to go back and ask. we can give you -- >> i'm making a personal request to join the team, so if you can send that back and i'll talk to mary ellen as well. in my opinion, we are not prioritizing this enough or moving fast enough for the level of heartache and damage that is happening to children and families here in san francisco. i want to join every committee just like i joined this one to put pressure and work. i'm willing to join and do this work myself, but we all have to step it up, including me.
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we have to step it up. i want to see how d.p.h. can assist the school district to meet every one of their conditions as quickly as possible to reopen schools. so, i look forward to making sure that the testing plan is up and running and seeing what else we can do so that we can provide any assistance to the school district that we can. so i appreciate that and i look forward to working with you more closely on this effort. >> trustee randolph. >> yeah, thank you for that. a quick question, since i heard something about testing, i wanted to make sure. i know that the college board, city college hasn't really had any information yet around testing and i'm really excited to hear and see your guideline that allows us to bring back some classes in person, specifically some that you can
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online, like the labs and some of the allied health classes like nursing and e.m.t. that you have to have in person instruction. i know that part of that is kind of community spread and keeping that low and testing is an important piece. so when you discussed testing and charging for testing for educational institutions that take tuition, is that only for k-12 or how are you going -- >> those requirements are only for k-12 schools. >> so what are the testing requirements that you have laid out for the city college of san francisco or higher education institution? are we expected to potentially pay for testing or equivalent things or is that going to be provided by the city students as
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well? >> that is not as strict of a requirement about requirements for testing as for k-12 schools. the language and the directive and the guidance is asking schools to consider scheduled periodic surveillance testing for screening for asymptomatic students and staff, especially for those living in school owned housing. the programs are encouraged, if it's feasible to cover the cost of testing. it is worth noting that all teachers and staff are considered essential workers by the state department of managed care and those tests are then covered by health insurance. there are labs that are now setting up testing that can directly bill health insurance
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at no cost to the institution that is setting up a contract and that would be we are working on getting a list of recommended labs that we can share that out, making sure again that they are certified with the state and meet the basic requirements that we are asking for testing. >> okay. so basically if somebody has insurance provided by city college of san francisco, whatever the city plan might be that is offered as part of the employment, they will be able to go and get tested and have that charged to the city college of san francisco provided health insurance. >> yes. >> okay. what i noticed because i did look up some of the city's testing sites that are currently offered. city college of san francisco is not considered an employee as part of the list. you just said that our staff and faculty is considered essential
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workers, but when you go and have to enter a new employee, the city of san francisco is not listed and the prompt is are you a city employee and when you answer yes, you have to have a d.s.w. number, which i don't think city college of san francisco staff of faculty have, but wouldn't they be considered semi public city college, semi public city employees or how would they manage that? >> i think it's actually a bigger picture than that. it's that while it is not just what's at our city sites, but any one that has any health insurance, the state department of managed care has changed their policies to all teachers and staff can get tests and get covered for that. so it's not just through our labs, it's everywhere.
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so it's up to the -- and that's why we're encouraging everyone to go to their primary care provider because then it can get covered by their health insurance because the state changed the requirements to make this much more accessible. >> is there a way to include city college of san francisco as one of the employees that are listed on your drop down menu when you try to go to one of the cities' testing sites? >> i will have to take that back to the people working with our testing labs and see if that's feasible. >> because that is one of the concerns that i received from one of our classified staff that they were trying to get tested and they were confused on the sign up project because they couldn't find city colleges and employees. so thank you so much. >> commissioner collins. >> thank you. i appreciate the questions that are being asked and this is a really, really appreciate
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supervis supervisor ronen's comments and questions. i'm speaking to many parents across the city and i think we're all very clear about specific populations that are in need of school and struggling with distance learning so i appreciate the urgency on that. i guess, this isn't specifically directed to -- well, i guess i had one specific question with the hubs because i know that's now something that we're trying to do to meet that need and i was wondering if d.p.h. could release the data for under 18 cases in their programs, so we can have a sense as a public, i think there's also families that are going to be more likely to want to return to either participate in the hubs while we don't have them or participate in hybrid learning, but we also needed to have a sense of safety and just get a sense of what it
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looks like with kids in programs now. so can you release -- is there data you can release to the public so we can see how that's going? >> i'm sorry, the data related to testing? >> yeah, for cases under 18, for children under 18, so we can get a sense of just what's the data citywide and what's the data around children participating in current programs, full time programs. >> we have our data posted by age group on our dashboard. [captioning will resume momentarily.] thee
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. >> and i'm seeing a whole bunch of them that are basically just falling off the radar, but
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because they seem independent or they seem like they're doing okay, we have no communication systems with high school parents. we have laws, as well, so just, chair haney, i've been doing research on a.b. 77, which is a law that gave the school districts extra money, but then requires we do extra outreach to parents when we see kids are absent. we have even huger absence rates for kids participating in distance learning at all levels. so that's just something that's on my radar, and i wanted to have a follow up where we can really address -- we're looking at pulling kids back into school, but there's going to be a group of students -- i don't see when they're going to come back to school in the near
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future because they're not the first ones on our list, and yet, they are still also in great need of their education, so that means offering a high quality distance learning program and making sure that we're doing anything and everything that we can to support them, and i'm seeing problems with kids, you know, not knowing how to turn in homework and things like that. i just wanted to put that out there. >> supervisor haney: and maybe it's something we can have a future meeting on. and also, i'm going to call up sfusd next. i know that our presenter has to go for an important 11:00 meeting, and director su had to go, so we had somebody from dcyf who will present, and we may get director su back, but
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we're going to have dcyf go next. >> hello. good afternoon, commissioners, and trustees, and members of the board of supervisors. today, the presentation that we'll be providing is the community hubs update, information around the enrollment. we were able to obtain from dcyf the number of students enrolled in the sfusd hub, so we'll be able to provide the population demographics related to that enrollment. we don't have attendance information at this time because we will be presenting that to our board of education commissioners first probably at our next board meeting, and we'll be bringing that to the
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select committee. so my presentation is relatively short, and then, i'll certainly take questions that members of the board of supervisors or school board commissioners have. dcyf has designed the hubs for community school-aged children, and i think we are four weeks into the first phase one. next slide. and as you also might remember, i can't remember a few joint select meetings, we presented that the board expressed their support that dcyf and sfusd work together with the hubs. we are continuing to look at
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needs for space with dcyf if we need to continue the conversations on space. next slide, please. then, the other thing that the board of ed commissioners expressed support for was that sfusd would support communicating registration information on the second phase, and i'll talk a little bit about that later on in this presentation. you can go to the next slide. so what we were able to receive, if you look at these two -- this slide, the upper table shows you what our fall sfusd demographics is for pre-k through 12, and the lower table shows you the enrollment sfusd students who are enrolled in hubs. we don't have attendance data yet, so we can't tell you out
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of the sfusd attendance who is attending the hubs, but i'll give you a quick update. but it shows that we are reaching the students that we wanted to. this is a time when we say usually, disproportionate, but it's not. 84% of the students in the hubs are elementary school students, and that's compared to 49% across the district. the enrollment in the hubs for african american students is 15.6%. same thing with latinx. 37% enrolled in the hubs, and we have 27% enrolled in the district. pacific islander, it's 1% versus 8%. for english language learners,
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it's 27% versus 24%. foster youth -- i'm sorry. i cannot see that. i'll go back to that. for students living in public housing, 18% are in the -- 18% of students enrolled in the hubs are in public housing versus 4.3% in the districts as a whole. for students living in s.r.o.s, 4% compared to 8% district wide. and i think -- yes. so those are the comparisons, so we are reaching the priority populations that we were hoping to reach in this first phase,
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and i believe it's 980 students in the first phase. go to the next slide. so phase two is only going to include 340 slots, and that's in the k through 6 grades, and dcyf provides us a number of slots and the zip code, so we have to do some matching in the last few weeks [inaudible] when we took all the information we had, and we could compare it to the 340 slots by grade level and zip code, we were able to match -- can you go to the next
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slide. i think that has the data -- that we'll be sending out invitations next week to families both by mail, e-mail, and then, schools will be reaching out individually because we'll be providing this information individually to each of the school sites, and their coordinated care families will make sure that they receive it by e-mail, mail, or they'll get a personal phone call. of the 340 slots, 141 of the students being provided are in public housing. 139 are english language learners, 31 identify themselves as homeless. 192 have less than 40% of [inaudible] and then 251 are low s.e.s. and as you can tell by these numbers, that means a number of students are more than one of these categories, if that makes sense. and then, next slide. this is also the breakdown by ethnicity and race of those 340
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invitees. and next slide. i think that may be it. so i mentioned this already. we're doing the outreach, translating the letters into all the different languages in the district, and then, we are going to continue to monitor applications come in, and we'll continue to work with dcyf if space -- if sfusd is needed if warranted by demand. and hopefully, the person from dcyf might speak to some of the other factors re space besides demand. so short and sweet, and i'm happy to take questions. >> supervisor haney: supervisor ronen? >> supervisor ronen: yes, thank you. i am a little bit disappointed because i thought you were
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going to come back this week and report on conditions for reopening. >> mm-hmm. >> supervisor ronen: that was my understanding that you were going to do that this week. perhaps i misunderstood for that update. >> well, i misunderstood because i thought this was the update. as i spoke the last time, we were developing, because of our board of education commissioners' request, a dashboard on reopening our schools. dr. matthews mentioned that last tuesday, that we would bring that into our october 20 board of ed meeting. that will be the dashboard on where we are in the reopening. with respect to -- i mean, there's a lot of operational indicators and testing. we have met with kaiser and
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other health care members. we've been meeting with d.p.h. the past couple of weeks talking about how d.p.h. and others can meet our testing strategy. in the last few weeks, we mentioned how d.p.h. can provide guidance for that. we're meeting with d.p.h. later today to discuss that. i don't have anything much closer, but those are the activities that we have been involved with. we are waiting for information from d.p.h. for example, a directive came out just on wednesday with a whole bunch of other information we have to do with testing, as ana mentioned, so as soon as information comes to us from d.p.h., we're making plans as quickly as we can. >> supervisor ronen: so chair haney, is the next join city,
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district, and college meeting the 23rd? >> supervisor haney: it's the 23rd. >> supervisor ronen: so by the next meeting, you'll be able to share with us the dashboard -- >> we'll be able to share that. >> supervisor ronen: in the next meeting, we'll be able to discuss where we are. and in the last meeting, we discussed the need for parents to just know what you know. are you able to say that you believe we are going to open this semester for any students? >> that, i cannot say for sure because there's so many different parameters, and i hope that on the 20th, we'll have at least where we are and how close it is and whether it's feasible. but again, totally understand how frustrating this has to be not knowing this information, and i definitely hope that by
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the 20th and -- that we can start communicating with families. at least you'll know it'll happen or we're hoping it'll happen, like, some tangible information so folks can plan, so we're well aware that that is the request, and i apologize that we don't have the details today. >> supervisor ronen: okay. but by next meeting, we will have a detailed presentation because i've been communicating with mary ellen carroll, who's the head of the director of the emergency operations center, and it looks like i will be joining the safer schools committ committee at the e.o.c. i want to push those programs forward at the city's end so you can get every assistance needed and there's no delay on our end, but we need specifics in order to get this, and the public needs specifics. parent families need specifics,
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educators need specifics. we feel like we've been given the run around for a very long time now, and it's time to give clear information. and if it's bad news, we'd rather have the bad news and know it than everything up in the air constantly, so i appreciate that you'll come back to us with that information. now getting back to the hub, since that's the only thing we've got helping parents at this point and families at this point, i visited a couple of hubs. i know that supervisor haney, chair haney did last week, as well. one of the hard things about it is because there's such limited involvement from the school district with the hub, that the kids all have different
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schools, and so you can imagine on the -- you know, that was the hub at the presidio center. you have these education providers who are experts in outdoor activities. they want to get the kids out and get their minds and creative juices flowing, and do music and other enrichment activities, but they are all day juggling schedules, and it is extremely hard to do enrichment because of that. and i'm just wondering, in this next phase, where it seems like sfusd is finally rarpting a little bit more and coordinating with the city on these hubs, whether or not there's any effort of getting kids and hubs that have the same schedule so that, you know, they can be learning
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together and not, you know, hearing different voices. i mean, they're in relatively -- you know, socially distant spaces, but nonetheless can hear each other, so it's hard to concentrate if they're not all doing the same thing. i wonder if we can get to that next level of coordination where we're trying to put kids in hubs where they're on the same schedule, if not in the same class. >> you know, i can't say that we're going to do that very well for this phase. that is really complicated. i'll have to think through that because we are limited by grade level slots, zip code, and students scheduled in a hub may be scheduled different. you know, they meet less than 40% and all of that. so we can run some to try to
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think about is what i saw.
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and the site at st. peter's was much better because it's a different setup, obviously, but they were all in the same class at the same time. and they were -- oh, my gosh, i was tearing up. they were happy, they were engaged, they were normal, they were joke, they were talking, they were -- oh, my gosh, it felt like school. and i just haven't seen kids in that mode for a really long
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time, and it was one of the most joyous things i've seen since we've started, and i just know we can do that in these hubs. >> yeah. these are things we should thing about. one of the things, since we just got the enrollment data, we're sharing that with the schools. i don't know if the schools know all the students and where they're going, so that is an area where the schools can also figure about, oh, maybe this is a way we can get this to work with the different organizations, so that will be at least the first part of thinking about better coordination. >> supervisor ronen: okay. and then, on the flip side, the referrals from the teachers to the hubs. so a teacher friend of mine who teaches at flynn, fourth grade
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class -- fourth and fifth grade class has three students that are not participating or not learning, and she said oh, my gosh, if i could get them in a hub, then i could help them. how do i get them in a hub? so i said, well, you mail maria su, and they'll put you on the list. >> we're trying -- we ran the numbers based on what we have, and we did get, here and there, people referring people, but we didn't have a process to take all of the referrals and do some of the backwards mapping because there are some students who may need it who aren't getting referred. so that has been a challenging and complicating process, and we have 340 slots, and so i
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think i probably got about -- i mean, i just got a whole bunch of referrals for students we have no slots for because they're all 7seventh graders, and we have no seventh grade slots. we're trying to figure out a way that it can be equitable where you have a student who needs it and no slot (. >> supervisor ronen: and i'm just, at this point in this process, we need to be nimble, and we just need to be able to meet students and teachers where they're at, i wonder if
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we should -- the educators know better than anyone, and i've been saying this since day one, and i feel like i've been beating my head against the wall. who needs help in classes more than anyone? nobody knows that better than the educators who are with these students and responsible for their education every single day. so what's worrying me about this invitation only process -- and i understand why you did that in the beginning, when sfusd wasn't collaborating. so up until now, what dcyf did makes perfect sense to me. but now that we have this
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collaboration, my big concern is we are limiting ourselves by the spots and never understanding what the true need it for these community hubs. if every teacher -- and i don't see -- this doesn't have to be rocket science. we just let every teacher know in elementary school -- we'll start there, and then, we'll go to junior high and high school, because i think commissioner collins is right. can we just say that every teacher can give the principal the name of students who they're worried about that are not getting the education they need through distance learning, and then, we can see what the universe is through that regard, and then, we can say we have enough funding and space for 2,400 slots or whatever it is now. we went from 6,000 down to
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2400 -- and say okay, we all need to fight as a city to get slots, and that's how we'll know if we need sfusd schools for locations or not. but we'll really understand the universe -- if i can finish. can i finish, please, and then, i'll pass it over. i appreciate that, as well. but if we pare it down and create the universe, then, we know what the universe needs, and we can create those spaces. i just understand why we haven't gone about it that way, and i still feel like i don't understand it, and every time i talk to a teacher, whether it's my own child's teacher or teachers that are friends of mine, they say we don't even know this exists. of course, i can tell you right now who needs the spots. you know, if i knew, i would
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have been fighting to get them in those spots from day one. so i just think that we really need to move in that direction, and that's the easiest way -- remember, we were going to do surveys before, and all these complicated things. we don't need to do that. we just need to know how many students in your classroom need the most help, and then, we get our full universe list. and i know sfusd has been incredible, but i just want to know how we do this. >> no, i understand and agree. we had social workers reach out to us directly and teachers reach out to us directly. i think what maile laid out was what the school district did decide what the process was going to be.
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we did tell school districts and social workers to let them know, here's your list of kids, but sfusd came up with their process of how they were going to identify. we're open to whatever process they were going to use, whether it be just take direct referrals from teachers or principals. i think where it does become limiting is if there's no space in the neighborhood that a family needs, that's where we kind of run into an issue, so that is where the neighborhoods come in as far as sfusd saying this is how many slots are available and -- you know, in neighborhoods across the city. but as far as the students, we're fine if they get the direct referral from principals, from teachers, from social workers, and then, you
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know, create the outreach from there to see, you know, this is how many slots we were able to give sfusd in the western addition or o.m.i. or bayview and look at the referrals that they've received from the principals or social workers or teachers, and then be able to outreach to the community that way. [please stand by]
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>> and see what the need is as you mentioned supervisor ronen and try to then understand where we have limitations in grade level, zip code, type of thing. >> that's fantastic. that's really helpful. >> if it's possible to share some clarification that answers your question hillary, but i also want to be respectful of process. i feel like there are state laws that address your question.
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if it's okay with supervisor fewer, i was wondering if i can share that with the committee. >> sure. >> supervisor fewer -- >> i'm asking if that's okay. >> i just wanted to say that it is very, very short alison, otherwise i'm next in the queue. >> okay, i just wanted to let folks know that it requires the school districts to ensure we're reaching out to families that are disconnected and we have to provide a process for that. it's a tiered process on how to engage students and get them the support they need or connect with in-person learning and we're calling that the coordinated care program.
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that's the process you're asking about. so i think we need to know what the is coordinated care plan because that's how we're currently identifying students who are not learning. >> thank you. >> and alison, isn't that the responsibility of the city of san francisco? i think these issues should have been brought up with the board meeting because that is under the responsibility of sfusd. we don't have the authority to do that. i just wanted to make that clear. >> yes. >> supervisor fewer. >> are you done supervisor ronen? >> yes, thank you. >> so i just want to ask, i am a little disappointed about this getting an update from the committee. you're getting this information, this is something that we can easily access as supervisors of
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the city and county of san francisco. i think that we come back to the same conversation and what i think this committee meeting should be doing is moving us forward a common goal of educating 60,000 public school students. i understand that we have community hubs that are serving 2,000 students, but actually the responsibility of the san francisco unified school district is to educate 60,000 of them. how often is the school board meeting? >> we're meeting -- oh sorry. >> go ahead alison. >> okay, so we have regular board meetings, twice a month for the regular board meetings. we have committee meetings that have been intermittent, depending on need so normally we
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meet once a month. those have been suspended or we had twice as many meetings, that kind of thing. it's been irregular. >> so i worked on the school board for eight years. this is a crisis situation, the fact that the business of the school board is only meeting every two weeks is absolutely unacceptable and ridiculous. alison, you are on this committee and who else is on here from the board of education? is there anyone else on this call? speak up if you are please. nobody. okay, this is -- alison, this is completely unacceptable. you should meet at least every week. >> i agree. >> committee meetings once a month? that's ridiculous. i can't believe you have not instituted board meetings every week. this is where you do the business of the board. it is ridiculous you would meet
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every two weeks. in two weeks, a whole lot of shit could happen. excuse me, i probably shouldn't have said that one. i also think that we are spending a lot of time talking about the community hub, which i think is important, however, when i see the numbers, it is typical of what school districts do. we get the numbers. i want to know how are we measuring the educational impact and the educational success of these students in these community hubs? to say a we have students in seats is not doing a damn things, it's not doing anything. we have black students at seeat at school sites and they're not achieving at the same level. when you come back and give me data that says we had so many of these students in seats and we had so many of these students in
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seats, i am done with this. what is the measure for educational success? this is a gap we are trying to close. this is not just by filling seats but delivering a curriculum that is having them actually achieve educational excellence and closing our racial achievement gaps. when i see this conversation and no offense, but quite frankly when i see the data that shows me how many seats you have warm does not tell me how they are succeeding. how are we closing the gap on this? this is a job of the school district. this persist tents gap, this persistent gap amongst english learners and kids with different backgrounds, this is ridiculous that we're given data on that we had so many kids in here, we are doing on these kids. we're not doing good on these
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kids. how do you know? what measures are you taken to actually measure educational success, to get these numbers -- we can get these numbers ourselves from dcyf. don't waste our time on this committee, tell me how are the students doing? are they providing more than baby-sitting? are they providing an educational experience for them? this is why we have this committee. it is our job. now we push back on public health. man, we cannot do this without you. the idea that i am hearing in the news about time, we're going to rename schools, just god. just educate them. let's get on the same page. i think this is a band-aid for what is happening. this band-aid cannot stay forever.
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this is not the normal. we will not accept this as the new normal because if we had a racial achievement gap, you're going to have an impossible situation after this. this gap is growing right now as we're having this meeting. the gap has been growing and growing. so those of us who have resources, whose parents are college educated, whose parents can go to these small groups and pay someone to supervise, yeah, those kids will probably be okay. we do that public education is challenged, this is a gap. this is about education. so at this next meeting when we
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come to it, wherever this is, what i would like to see, where are we in enrollment? what are we in enrollment for our high schoolers? we want them to attend college. we want to give them the opportunity. i gave a suggestion, if you think it's ridiculous, otherwise i want information about it. don't tell me that it's just money. if that's the case then let's just do it. i'm tired of these meetings where we're walking in circles around it, but we're not getting to the core education. you know what? the board of education should be meeting more than every two weeks. we look at your leadership actually because at the san francisco board of education, you are the top of the food chain. you are the executive board.
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the fact that you're meeting every two weeks is ridiculous. you know, when i think about we will further -- we will have further discussion on whether or not it is necessary to open up school fights for community hubs. this is a city that had a $94 million rainy day fund for our schools. this is a city that invests in about $80 million every year for
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funding. this is the idea that you would have school sites empty and say we're going to consider the idea of opening school sites for community hubs if we need to. the city and county of san francisco, i think has been doing their fair share on this and even more and i have been out to community hubs too and i've been speaking to executive directors of these non-profits. i am going to be out of this game in a couple of months, but school board, it's your responsibility. as someone that served there for eight years, we know the work of the board happens at those school board meetings. this idea that parents don't know when schools will open and
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supervisors don't know when schools will open and every day, we're closing the achievement gap, i think it's unacceptable. so i'm asking more of you. we can have these committee meetings and go over and over and over, but i feel like we're going in a circle. we are not going to get anywhere if we don't start moving the needle. i am firmly requesting that the next time we have the meeting, what i would like to know, what is the plan to reopen, do you even plan to reopen, if you do, what are the things that the city and county of san francisco needs to help you reopen safely, and keep everybody safe. also, i would like to know what are the educational measures you are using to actually measure educational success or achievement during this time among our most vulnerable students and also what i would also like to know is get an
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update on where we are on this dual enrollment, which is something we can do so quickly with city college. they already have the curriculum, why aren't we doing it? then i just want to say that i think this arena is used for problems that we can all solve. do not bring issues to us that is an sfusd issue. we have no jurisdiction on that. hopefully our houses together can create a community where we can educate children and once and for all close our racial achievement gap that has been plaguing us for decades. thank you chair. i'm done. >> supervisor fewer, commissioner collins. >> yes, thank you. so i just wanted to respond a
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little bit and also echo similar concerns. i think that this is an urgent time and i am also in agreement with supervisor fewer. i don't see an urgency in our response. as a board member, i feel personally responsible for how our district engages with the community and how it takes action and i don't see a responsi responsiveness that i would like. i want to be specific when i'm talking about the coordinated care program. i think it's important for us to all use the same language and what i want folks to understand is that when supervisor ronen is asking questions about how are we identifying students, we're saying that the way that we do
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that is a coordinated care plan. so i need people to understand that because i didn't know that. when i was asking a lot of these questions, so i would like to see -- i think that's something that we all would benefit from being educated on, if we're looking at how are we supporting the students with the most need the way the state defines that is students that are not in school 60% of the time or three out of five days. what i'm hearing from families is that i talk to a parent, she was actually identified by one of these coordinated care programs. she was called and told her son was not in school for about three or four weeks. this is a child that is in one of the demographics we worry about. he is a latinx student, low income, and then the parent and family is very involve in this child's education and there is no reason why he should not be
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going to school. i turned out that one of the teachers assigned an assignment that he didn't know how to turn the work in. she put it in google slides and he said i don't know how to write on the slide. this is a seventh grader, sweet heart, he was embarrassed and he just stopped going to school. the parent didn't know about it. i have been working with this parent to try to understand, not just to support her, but to understand how we as a district are supporting families like hers and i checked on her a few times and in the process, they basically just helped her log in to a parent view, which is the way we're communicating with families. she doesn't know how to use it. they didn't connect her with a counsell counsellor. she needs help now coordinating with all of our child's teachers to get her kid back on track. i reached out to the state to learn more about what our
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requirements are as a district because i feel like it's my responsibility to know those things and we haven't been educa educated. we're supposed to have a plan for this. if it's unclear to me and teachers and parents that are being identified, that's a huge problem. it demonstrates a real lack of transparency, a real lack of partnership and accountability to us as a body, to the public, and to the families that really need help right now. so i have made continued requests to get information on just what we're doing as a district and i will continue to make those requests. i agree with supervisor fewer. we do need to be meeting more,
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but i also think having meetings to continue seeing presentations is not doing the work. so all i can say is i agree, 100% with supervisor fewer's comments. we are not doing enough. we are failing our students. i am doing everything i can to hold our district accountable and also doing as much as i can to educate community as well so we can work together to make sure we're serving students that have the most need, but i see right now at the middle and high school level that our young children are getting behind. we're going to have amazing drop out rates, amazing -- just amazing as in bad and i
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requested our grades came in for high school, not this past friday. they were turn in last friday by teachers. i requested grades for students so we can look at dfn lists and compare with last year. there is a crisis right now that's a hidden crisis that we're really not talking about and we're not asking. so chair haney, i think one thing that would be really helpful and i'll leave this to your discretion, but if we understand what the district is doing to identify students and what the state says is we must identify a tiered program to reintegrate students for every child in our district. in doing that, we're saying as a district, that we're doing that at a school by school level, but i have no idea how that's happening and how we're monitoring that it's happening
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and what i'm hearing from one parent, which is just a sample of one, is that it's not working. so, i'm extremely concerned. so, i would like for the district to be able to share that with all of us, because we should all be concerned about how we're supporting kids that are not connected and additionally, i think we should be looking at middle and high school students, looking at what supervisor fewer said, having se seats, butts in chairs is not learning and also having parents logging in to a communication system that is not useful to them, that doesn't mean they're engaged. i'm looking for ways that we can monitor real performance, like real academic -- really assess how students are doing and so i'll be asking for the grades, but i think there are other
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measures too that we can ask the school district to report on as well. so, i can work with you on that in terms of reporting on other assessments that we're conducting in this kind of environment. thank you. >> thank you. yeah, i just -- i'm going to go to trustee williams, but i do -- this committee is challenging for a number of reasons. you know, we have different institutions, we have updates that we want, we have questions that folks want answered, and we also want to use this base for problem solving. sometimes i feel like it's the balance of things we do here can sometimes get pulled in a lot of different directions. i appreciate what you had just said and what supervisor fewer and supervisor ronen has said about what we want to see and
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supervisor fewer as another member of this committee, for us to work together and to get your input in terms of what you want to see happen in this committee. you know, i think the fact that we're meeting every two weeks provides an opportunity for what can be done here, but i think that i'm taking the feedback from you all in terms of how to better use this space. i can feel pulls in a lot of different directions and i'm sure that the institutions feel that way as well. supervisor ronen. >> yes, i just had one additional question because this is a big concern for me as well. at the beginning, we had 64,000 students in the sfusd, correct? of eastbounding -- okay, so my question is what what has been
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the overall reduction in enrollment to students in sfusd this academic year compared to last? >> i don't have that information on the top of my head. i have reports from our education replacement center but i have to go back and look for that. i do know that what i showed you this morning, the enrollment data for the fall says 52,764 students so i have to find out what the difference is. we're not at 64,000, i know that. we're around 54,000 or 56,000. i have to look for last year. >> yeah, we haven't been in the 60s for a while. it's been under. >> i guess for the 23rd, if we could know how many students we
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lost this academic year because in addition to the long-term consequences of the achievement gap that supervisor fewer talks about, i'm becoming increasingly concerned that we're never going to overcome for the students that missed since march of school, that we're also going to lose so many students in the district if we don't start picking up our game in terms of how we're educating these students, that we will be doing long-term damage to the institution overall and the amount of funds coming in, and the amount of students that choose public school as their option. i'm just very, very concerned about it. so i would like to have that ongoing conversation as well. >> president williams, sorry i
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skipped over president williams. sorry about that. >> i just appreciate your comments in regards how to use this space to support each other and be an effective space to move the needle forward. i also want to appreciate commissioner collins's leadership. i know you are here today and this is a critical conversation and just as someone that's an sfusd graduate and one of those youths that fell behind, i feel this conversation and the importance of the work we need to do here and wanting to offer myself to you commissioner collins and to sfusd and figuring out how do we get this out there, you know, to really sound the alarm. i really, deeply appreciate supervisor fewer's comments, supervisor ronen's comments. this is critical.
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folks will be left behind. the new normal we're in is unacceptable for a number of our students and we know the most hard to serve going into an all virtual environment, it's just -- i just feel it. i feel it in my heart, you know, and i want to be of service to you all and figure out how we can do this and maybe city college, if there are ways with the credit recovery programs we have. i know supervisor fewer mentioned the dual enrollment. i don't want folks to slip through the cracks and with all of us here together, i think this is a powerful committee. this is a place for problem solving. we have a number of our own problems that have been brought before this committee and we had some candid conversations on how we can do better. appreciate this and i want to recognize your leadership because i know this is your passion. i know that you are dedicated to ensuring our most vulnerable
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students in the system and sfusd are seen and they're not going to be invisible. i just want to really just say that my heart is in this with you all and you know, this is a really important critical conversation that we can all work together to elevate in some way, so i just wanted to offer that. >> thank you president williams. i could not agree more. supervisor fewer. >> you're on mute. also, director is here if we want to move soon. >> i just wanted to say supervisor haney, i'm happy to work with you on an agenda around what the areas we should discuss. i also just want to say again, that this -- the purpose of this is because how can the city support what is happening and right now the biggest issue at hand is how we're going to get kids back to school, quite
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frankly. i actually do think that it's detrimental to public education as a whole. there is a fallacy out there that people believe that private education is better than public education. we know that in ourselves to be not true and false. i just think that this committee -- so you have a list of things that either -- and supervisor ronen just added something in. what i would like to see is actually a plan where you actually -- and perhaps it would be beneficial to have commissioner lam here because she represents the office of the mayor for resources on how we then can coordinate as a city with the resources to help you get to a point where perhaps we can look at reopening our schools. i have not heard yet what you need to actually do that.
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i think that we have heard what community hubs need, blah, blah, blah. done. i just want to know, what do you need in order to open safely? this is one of the richest cities in the united states. we have over a $13 billion budget. we have one of the lowest -- birth to 18 population in the united states. if we can't do this, we should just pack it up and give up my jobs. well, i am giving up my job, but i do think that this is where we all come together to solve these problems. if what you have to say is not within the authority of this -- of all of our committees, then don't bring it here. this is a problem solving committee. i also want to say, good
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intentions without good work means nothing. we have to have actions. we all have good intentions. people depend on us to do more. it's not about where your heart is. it is kind of like right now, where your mind is, and actually where the will is. i think just come on, can we just get to the work? these meetings are so frustrating because we are not actually moving the needle at all. so i'm going to encourage everyone to do that and actually supervisor haney, hold me accountable because i will help do a more streamlined agenda that we can send out together of what is expected of the members of this committee and the city and county of san francisco, sfusd and city college also. okay, thank you very much. i'm done. >> thank you. happy to work together and i can still handle the agenda. i think that the important thing here for us is that we're also
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having things changing all the time and people want updates and they warrant -- want to hear those updates. i'm getting tons of questions and people want to ask those questions that we spend a lot of time on. i think part of what i'm hearing is that we want a more streamlined focus from what we can do to support and help sfusd and it sounds like with the indicators coming forward in a couple weeks, and sort of the questions around reopening schools, really focusing on the role of the city on that and how we can be supportive and definitely supervisor fewer and i will work together on that. so we have director sue here. i think i'm going to bring you back in and trustee is here.
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>> i haven't been here so i don't know what you have discussed. coming in as i have now i appreciate the supervisor saying we want to get the kids back in school. i know there has been a lot of emphasis on how we do distance learning well. i know city college, i'm proud of the strides we have made in distance this and distance that. you know, i would love to see us move a little bit faster, safely yes, but very clearly what are the steps we need to do to get this done? this is not just at the k-12, but also at the community college level. we're losing the people, potentially permanently in this case. we're losing people through
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distance only learning, which is the situation that we find ourselves in almost all cases. i know that for the faster we can figure out how to push that forward, biotech in particular, i will tell you i've been having a lot of discussions with them. their actually pews where they do the labs are separated already. they're already sort of, i don't know if it's plexi glass or what it is, but some of these things should be able to move quite quickly. i don't know if you saw the article the other day, but we're testing all of these people for government jobs in a room, 50 people to a room, or whatever it is, with no windows and that's going on. there's no reason we can't be helping the people who matter the most, next generation of san franciscans, and the folks that are trying to get ahead through community college.
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>> thank you trustee selby. i know a couple of people have to go at noon or have left us. director sue. >> thank you chair haney. i actually have just a few slides to share so i'm going to thank you. everyone on this council is very, very passionate about the work of the city and the city college and i know that the work is really hard. i just want to recognize that everyone is working really hard and are super passionate about this. so i wanted to give a quick update on the community hub's
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work. our mayor announced this back in july and i do want to acknowledge that we are working very closely with the department of public health to ensure that not only are the children in the hub sites safe and the staff is safe and the families are safe. we adhere to very strict health protocols where we are testing all staff before the launch happens, before the launch date. we are working with the department of public health to ensure there is regular testing available for the staff. we are also requiring masks for children who are 10 years and older and ensuring the 6 feet of physical distancing, regular hand washing, and the stable cohort. here is a quick status update of where we are as of today.
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so we have 55 hubs that are operating throughout our city. 47 of them are operated by our non-profit agencies, our c.b.o.s. eight of them are operated by our rec and park partners. all the hub sites as i said earlier, staff are asked to get covid tested before they launch and then they will have to go back and get testing regularly. sort of the focus outreach, we have worked really successfully with our human services agency, hope sf, and recreation and park, and our department of homelessness and supportive housing. we helped over 3,000 families and out of that population,
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1,095 young people registered and placed in our hubs. moving into phase two, we are working very closely with sfusd to outreach to those students and then engage them in our hub. very quick reminder of the priority population, so once again, priority population is to our low income neighborhoods, african american children, hispanic, latinos, latinas, pacific islanders, low income asians. our focus outreach is to use inpublic housing, young people in ink is -- single room onni occupancy hotels, and our english language learners. so here is a count of all the children in the hub as of yesterday. so, we have 373 children who
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identify as african american, 121 identify as asians and 376 who identify as latino, latina, latinx and the rest are comprised with a multitude of different ethnicities. in terms of our focus population, we are serving a large number of spanish speaking families and then after that, our chinese speaking families. we are targeting the highest needs neighborhoods that have -- that has the largest number of children in public schools and then the side numbers are the breakdowns of children in each one of those focused outreach populations. so 310 children living in public housing, 91 who are homeless, 40 in our single room occupancy hotel and 16 in foster rooms.
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this data is for our k-sixth grade population. this is a breakdown of all the children who are enrolled in our hubs right now totaling 1,095 children. then here are all the hub sites that we are planning on standing up for the entire initiative. that is it for my presentation. i am happy to answer any questions. >> a -- are there any questions from the members of the board? i'm getting a little bit of an echo. is this similar to what we heard
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from sfusd in terms of the information, so i think that a lot of the questions were asked there. are there any questions that folks have or sfusd is still here if there are questions for sfusd. >> i have a quick question. thank you, that have wonderful and glad to hear it. i'm curious, the number of young people who are in these hubs, how does that compare to the need for the number of kids? if you look at the total need and the total as well. >> thank you trustee selby for that question. this is a question that supervisor ronen asked us in terms of do you have a wait list?
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because we are being very focused and targeted in our outreach, we do not have a wait list, but we are -- i see our staff joining. we do -- we are collecting some increase from families right now. >> we are collecting -- we had families who reached out in various ways through other service providers that we taken their information and what we called these ad hoc referrals and we are keeping on that information compiled and we have based on extenuating circumstances where it was like glaring that they needed to be placed. we have pulled some folks off of that ad hoc list, and we are starting to generate a wait list in that regards.
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>> so my question is do you have a sentence of how many young kids out there need this as opposed to -- and you may not. i'm trying to get a general sense of it. also, would this continue when schools are brought back? would that go away? we will have the hub services until the end of the school year. when the school district goes back to in-person, we will definitely continue to have our conversations with sfusd on trying to figure out how to ensure that the children who go back and i don't know whether it's children going back full, five days a week, or if there is a hybrid. so those are all questions that
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we have, that we need to work through with sfusd. however, the hub and our dedication towards this is to ensure that there is stability and continuity for families who choose to stay in the hub for the full school year. >> in terms of your question about need, i do have some data on that. i don't have it available on me, but i would love to forward some of our data gathering, the data that we used to think about and plan for the hubs because we did use data to determine. >> yeah, i am sure there is data and i love to see that and understand that we have 1,000 kids we're helping, how many kids out there could potentially need that help? thank you.
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>> so i had a question earlier supervisor ronen brought up some points which also i observed when i visited the hubs, which are some of the challenges around having a lot of students who are in different schools, with different schedules, and all of the coordination around timing that, that brings about. we had a bit of conversation with chief smith about this. is there a particular way in the interest of problem solving on the spot here where it might be more ideal for you all and the feedback you're getting from the hub operators in the sense that if there was a way, there was a way you organize the students or sorted them in cohorts based on similar types of schedules and things that would be helpful to recei
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receive that maybe you're not receiving or ways they're coordinating schedules to make things work more smoothly for students at the hubs. >> so i can answer part of that for you. we have been trying to you youth by school and certain hubs. some it's easier to do than others. depending on the neighborhood that kids are coming from, 10, 12, 14 different schools in a neighborhood and need access. we have been successful with several of our hub sites that you know, it's only one or two schools for example. they're focused on webster and they're setting up their pods so they can be able to pretty much have pods by school sites or grade level within that. we are trying to do that whenever it's possible and makes the most sense and we're like
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okay, maybe we'll just do all the youths that will be at the hub and it's goal based and goal focused, but it's not always that easy to do when you have, you know, 60 kids and they go to 13 different schools and they need access to that particular hub site. we are trying to do that when possible. >> i would like to add that yes, it would be so much easier if we were able to have one class of all the kids or at least a few different groupings of kids that all go to that particular class so there is a little bit more coordination and just clock learning with the kids. i think supervisor, when you went to one of the rooms down at the rec center, you saw the
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majority of the kids in the room were from the t.l. community schools. it was great. you saw the interaction and the comradery that was happening between the kids because they know each other and they're friends and once again, part of the reason that we're designing the hubs is to ensure that we continue to support our social and emotional development for these children. they need to have friends and that interaction. at minimum, we should try to the best of our ability to bring kids that are at least in the same school together so they can just be each other. when it's not possible, we try to cluster by age, by grade. yes, in the ideal world, it would be great if we could group the kids by their actual class, so that there is common learning on what's happening and then by
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schools. we do have great examples of great partnerships with sfusd where there is coordination with our provider at some of the hub sites and for those sites, it's working really well. >> great, yeah. i did notice when we went to the run in selma, with most of the students being from betsy, that it was a much smoother experience and easier to support the students and all of that. i think that is to the extent we can do that or at least have a common schedule as best as possible. great. i know this had come up and supervisor ronen has asked about this as well.
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our c.b.o. staff is able to access staffing easily and effectively from the feedback you're hearing and are there challenges around that and if you can tell us if there are any requirements around regular testing that the c.b.o. staff have to do, regardless of symptoms. >> yes, so we are working very closely with this permanent public house and we have asked all of our c.b.o. providers to get covid tested before they launch. our c.b.o.s are actually doing regular testing throughout the program times. right now, c.b.o.s are accessing
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eating the city testing sites or the pop-up sites, which have been amazing because they are able to just go in and out and our c.b.o.s are essential workers and they can access those services. >> great, that's great to hear. yeah, i noticed there has been an improvement in terms of the ability to get tests quickly and get results back and all of that, which is fantastic. great. so are there any other questions or comments from the board -- from the board, i mean from the committee before i open it up for public comment? all right. >> thank you mr. chair. looks like we have one listener. >> okay. >> if you can queue in the
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caller. >> so i've been listening to all of y'all for a really, really long time. it's typical of san francisco unified school district meeting where you have a long agenda and you listen and listen and listen. so you eluded to some other ones. what you have here is people who really do not have their heart in the right place. you cannot do a needs assessment. they want to kick the trend down the street. so if anybody has empathy and compassion for our children, they will make a sacrifice. so when the san francisco unified school district decides in a pandemic to have a meeting once a month, that is not only
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disgraceful, that is utterly unspeakable, that is so low. it is something that needs a revamping of the entire san francisco unified school district. that's all i'll say. thank you very much. >> thank you, and to be clear, i believe they meet once every two weeks. dme members -- >>. >> mr. chair, we actually have one more caller. next speaker please. >> hi, this is julie roberts. i want to speak about the importance of d.p.h. providing public health information for covid cases.
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it's unabderstandable but not relevant. the previous data was released on 8/3/20 and also the hub information was released by ucfs on august 10th. that's crucial information for families to have the planning. as long as we're not focusing on the intersection, we should be able to provide that data. previously that meant that we're able to see 64% of covid cases were latinx and bay view had the highest percentage of cases increasing from 19 to 23 over the summer programing. i would also like to add that what i most like to see at sfusd is them telling what funding and support our students need.
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regeneration has shut schools because they haven't had other options. i am hearing in our wealthy cities right now that we want to do more to support them during this challenging times and i like to see the district put forward that mission and do what it takes. thank you. >> that completes the queue. >> thank you. anymore questions or comments from committee members? all right. well, it does seem that we have some clarity on some of the things we want to hear updates on in two weeks so we were also really focused our agenda and our expectations from the
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presenters around those issues and i think we will be coming out of that week, a presentation to the school board about some of the indicators and dashboard about reopening. so we'll have an opportunity to hear that in this committee and also really focus our questions and comments around how we can support that and what the outcomes of that are and what other information and data is needed. the last couple of weeks we focused -- the last two meetings, we focused on the community hubs and i think there has been a lot of interest from the committee members around those and i think it sounds like for the next meeting we won't have as much of a focus on the hubs as on how we can be supportive of sfusd and the data and indicators and of course we will also have a similar conversation with city college. it sounds like with the new health guidance at city college,
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we will have decisions to make and we'll have an update from them around how the city can be supportive there. so, with that madam clerk, are there any additional items before us today? >> that concludes the agenda for today. >> great. thank you so much everyone. have a great -- >> would you like me to call the roll? >> we will continue this item to the call of the chair. >> okay. on the motion to continue to the call of the chair, supervisor haney. >> aye. >> supervisor fewer. >> aye. >> commissioner. >> commissioner collins. >> aye. >> commissioner randolph.
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>> randolph absent. trustee selby. >> aye. >> you have four ayes. >> there are no more items, then we're adjourned. thank you all.
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>> the regular meeting of the board of education of san francisco school district is now called to order. roll call, please.
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>> [roll call] >> thank you very much. >> commissioner: i want to welcome the public for joining us today. welcome superintendent and staff. i hope we have a productive meeting. we have opening items. we have to approve the minutes we need a motion and second.
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any corrections? seeing none, roll call, please. >> clerk: [roll call] . 7 >> thank you. >> the last time the board of education met set a set of criteria we were using to determine to move to in-person instruction to select students population. we announced we would start
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in-person instruction to youngest learners in pre-k and individual education programs and special education for those in our special day classes. the san francisco unified there's almost 700 students who currently receive these services. staff, families and students are understandably curious about what progress we're make in-person options we're work tirelessly to continue providing distance learn and putting things in place to safely welcome back students. the criteria within our control as long as we can identify the resources both human and financial to complete the necessary paths. these include things like a testing plan, facilities assessment and staff training. there's other factors that are only partially wage -- able to
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control such the spread of the virus and contract tracing. to make our preparations more visible we'll have a dashboard and following the discussion we'll plan to post this dashboard online. this will allow the public to consistently see the progress that the district is making towards moving forward with in-person learning. the dashboard will contain all the criteria for phase 2a and 2b for re-opening. we'll be sharing what has still not begun and what has just started, what is in progress and what is complete. here's some examples of work that is underway that we'll be reporting on in the dashboard. we'll conducting school site assessments with regard to vend
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-- ventilation and light. and we're creating plans for those at increased risk for adverse infection and identifying providers who can oversee regular covid testing. we need to identify who is providing the services and how it will be funded. based on what we're hearing it could cost as much as $300 per month per person tests. the public comment is closed hit san francisco unified at a time when resources were diminished and we were several years in making budget cuts to central services. the very staffing infrastructure needed to support an approach to supporting school, staff and students and families during this time. every one on my leadership team is juggling multiple responsibilities right now and as we work through criteria to re-open we're trying to find ways to re-assign staff and
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pause other work as other work is not economically feasible. the families and community members eager for us to open to in-person for our youngest learners we hear you and it is a priority to return as safely and quickly as possible. i also want to be real. we're not a single school with a small number of students and staff. we're not a private school that receives tens of thousands of tuitions and endowment. we're essential to the lived experience to over $54,000 students and families and 9,000 staff and families. i can assure you we're taking this seriously. i'm excited to announce the sfpl go go pop-up book service. it's a partnership between sfusd and the san francisco public
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library. it will bring library service to three public school locations and treasure island. on tuesday to thursdays 2:00 to 6:00 the fleet of book mobiles will park at josé ortega elementary school and willy brown middle school and john o'connel high school and treasure island tuesday 2:00 to 6:00 and they can receive holds at each location. at all three sfusd sites they'll have access to the schoolyard. families will not be permitted to enter school building. sfpl go-go is a school side pick up only. you must reserve materials ahead of time we're expanding access to reading material for all public school students.
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for more information visit sfpl.org/sfpltogo. congratulations to an elementary school for being selected as a national blue ribbon school by the california department of education. it's an honor. it goes to schools who have achieved high performance or closed academic gaps. once again, congratulations. indigenous people's day is monday october 12. all san francisco unified school district schools and offices will be closed. and finally, i want to remind everyone once again the importance of voting. ballots are arriving at registered voters households this week. i want to remind everyone san franciscans will vote on proposition j it address as a legal loophole to continue providing funds to sfusd and a
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state measure to increase revenue for public education and other services. i have a vocabulary lesson to share. have you heard of valid fatigue? it means that some voters run out of patience or knowledge as they work their way down a ballot. for example, nearly every voter will make a choice in the presidential race but may not be familiar with state and local propositions at the end of the ballot. with that in mind i urge everyone to look for and sign and cast a vote on those two measures. san francisco proposition j and california proposition 15. each would increase the amount of funding schools receive. while i cannot say how to vote on these and other ballot measures, i want to encourage all san francisco voters to exercise their democratic right and responsibility by voting including on these important measures. in case you haven't registered to vote the deadline is october
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19 so you still have time. don't delay and register and vote early. thank you president sanchez and board members and members of the community. that ends my report for this afternoon. >> thank you so much, superintendent mathews. we have student delegates report. ms. hines-foster and ms. almanza. >> first we have committee breakout groups. last night at our meeting our student leaders held their community breakout groups where they brain stormed project ideas and elected committee chairs to lead and facilitate student engagement and projects management. our goal is to provide an established executive committee to our projects are vetted with oversight and recommendations.
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our committees will meet once a month on the project they're on. i'd like to thank all for organize and facilitate and hold us to the highest member where the sfc is accountable on student engagement. >> two, community election. here's this year's committee chairs. we have a senior at lowell high school and environmental law a senior and student support a junior at burden high school and a junior at washington high school. for host committee we have a sophomore at galileo high school. for district and accountability we have a junior at lowell high school. >> third, we have a youth vote. when youth vote is a fiscally
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sponsored nonprofit and increasing youth voter turn out and we send texts about action items related to issues you are interested in. sfu wants to work to increase youth voting and activism participation. this was introduced to us yesterday at our meeting and thank you to co-founder and the student delegate for giving this presentation. more info about where the vote is at when youth vote.org. >> four, there was a presentation on how to effectively facilitate a virtual voter registration for our youth community. our goal is to aim to promote
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our student peers to vote and learn wade to be sifk automatically engaged. the present was this monday at the last meeting. we'd like to thank ms. leah sanchez for presenting this and spreading the word about pre-prej administration to our school -- pre-registration to our school sites. >> and we have a program with libraries and music while supporting over educational opportunities in academics and student and family support. our goal is to distribute this opportunity towards constituents to have a total of seven students nominated to serve as student voices representing our students. yesterday at our meeting student delegates announce the official representative for this year's crew. thank you to the cabinet team for helping us make our decision.
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>> our next meeting will be october 29. it's a public council and anyone is welcome attend our meeting. if you'd like to attend, make a presentation or like a copy of our up and coming agenda contact our supervisor mr. salvador lopez. >> thank you. we recognize all valuable employee awards. superintendent mathews i don't think we have rewards but i think we have something else. >> we do, thank you, president sanchez. this evening we have a video to share with you. this is in honor of the many educators and district staff and community partners who brought their talent to the sf love tv show. we want to share a five-minute video made by sf gov tv and it's
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a one-hour educational television show created by our district in partnership with ktvu for our pre-k through second-grade students to continue education while in distance learning. season one aired on ktvu plus from april 20 through june 2, 2020 and started back for season two on september 14. sf loves learning airs and the content is created entirely by san francisco unified public school educators and partners. the school provides daily culturally affirming academic, social, emotional and movement and creative content from our district's educators, students, families and community partners.
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the san francisco unified school district would like to thank the city and county of sg gov tv for the inspiring video. >> i came out singing and dancing. >> hello, friends.
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i'm deputy superintendent of instruction but you can call me miss micky. what you'll see in the next hour has been made by san francisco public school teachers and especially for our youngest students. >> we were trying to reach families who disproportionately didn't have access. >> we worked with the little ones. how are they supposed to keep learning and keep engaged? >> i thought of it as reaching the students who didn't have internet or computer and i wanted them to turn on the tv
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and at least get some connection with my kids that way. thank you, friends. see you next time. >> hi, friend. today is tuesday, april 28, 2020. it's me, teacher sharon and i'm back again. i got an e-mail saying i had an opportunity to be on a show >> i got an e-mail from early education department saying they were thinking of doing a tv show and i would selected to be one of the people on it if i was interested. >> i was scared, nervous. i don't like public speaking and all the above. it worked out.
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talking to a camera, waiting for a response. it felt weird. i'm used to having a class room of 17 students in front of me where they're all moving around and having to saying sit down, turn around, just listen to just a camera. >> i kind of have stage fright when i'm on tv and i'm quiet. >> and she's not normally quiet. >> i'm never quiet. >> they were like i saw you on tv. it was exciting and you can see how the community started watching. it was a lot of fun. pushed me outside my own
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comfort zone having to make my own visuals and coming up win -- with my own lesson plans was fun. >> thank you. thank you families and friends for spending time with us. it was a pleasure. have a great summer and see you all in the fall. >> i'm so happy for you. today is the last day of the school year, yay. >> it helped me. i'm excited to go back and teach my kids. >> we received amazing feedback from kiddos seeing their own personal teacher on the television. >> when we would watch as a family, my younger son especially during the filipino episodes was like, wow, i'm proud to be a filipino.
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>> being able to connect with someone they know on television was important for the social, emotional development and confidence of our early learners. >> thank you, president sanchez. you the show will return. it has returned. we started september 14th and it's on monday through friday on ktvu plus tune in.
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it's well worth it. i hear many students and talked with students. we're not just boaroadcasting t the entire bay area and we're proud of that. thank you. >> we want to commend the work of s.f. love learning. i think a couple of the commissioners have been a part of the read alouds so far. section two is public comment, while i'm reading the protocols mr. steele can you check and see for hands raised? >> if you care to speak on an item in general comment raise your hand at this time.
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>> please note public comment is an opportunity for the ford -- board from hear comments from the public comment refrain from using a name 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, superintendent will ask the staff follow up with speakers. >> thank you. >> hello, maya?
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>> caller: i was a district parent for 15 years. my son is now a college senior and my daughter a college freshman. i'm calling about the app and if that happens i suggest using the web browser and log in on your laptop or log into the phone web browsers and the web tool is more reliable i found at least. and also, and my daughter and my daughter was a senior last year and we were sick of my
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involvement. and i know it's not the most reliable tool either and could use improvement. on that end i suggest all the districts who use energy pulling their customer base together and going to synergy to ask them to work with google to improve the tools and make a more stable less buggy and more intuitive and that's a win-win not just for the district but synergy make their tool more marketable and robust. thanks. >> thank you. >> go ahead. >> caller: i'm vivian. i'm here to remind us of the importance in providing mental health resources to transitional
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agus in san francisco. i found it challenging to find mental health resource for myself and others because this were not many stages to go through. it is also hard to ask for help when you don't know where to go start the process. we can fix the problem up advocating for youth. we can fix the problem by listening to our youth and gaining their feedback by inviting them to the table so they can work with you the stakeholders. this will allow my group and i to expand our research on the population in order to use the data for stakeholders and i'd like to share barriers in accessing mental health services. we need to be attentive to our youth community and build a safe foundation for youth so they can
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seek mental health resources. a space where we allow this by letting them know their voice matters on issues like these. thank you for allowing me to speak in the public comment because time is appreciation and voices need to be heard. i look forward to working with you in the future and i will follow up with an e-mail with more information on our action team and advocacy project. thank you. >> >> caller: 415424 number. are you there?
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kaul >> caller: my name is mimi and i'm a youth advocate who was born in raised in san francisco. i'm here with a mental health association of san francisco because i know that we all want our youth to have a space where they feel safe, supported and heard. we can do this by create youth-specific wellness center separate from the school system in our community. as a youth myself i didn't have a place like this when i needed it. though there was a wellness center in my high school at the time, that is where i was facing a lot of my problems and i didn't feel comfortable using the services all the time. in addition i was not able to access the services outside of school hours if i wanted to. i ask you listen to the youth telling what you the youth needs. we need you to support us on this ask and help build a youth
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specific center where we can get support and i ask you please give us 15 minutes on your next agenda to further explain our ask and what it consists of. i look forward to working with you and thank you for your time. >> thank you. hello, hope. >> caller: i'm a treasure island res den and mother of two. thank you for your tireless work to bring resources to treasure island. just hearing we'll now have the book mobile will definitely bring more opportunities as we're trying to even out the playing field on treasure island. i wanted to thank you all for all your tireless efforts in working with me and helping me
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to bring the resources to treasure island, technology, nutrition services and i look forward to working with you guys as we continue to bring our children the best. >> thank you. julie? >> caller: this is julie roberts. i wanted to call in and appreciate some efforts to improve transparency and communication. especially efforts to improve the parent view tool. i think it's very challenging to reach a lot of our families especially our immigrant families which are not online in this moment. some of the improvements have made it a useful tool that could be more powerful especially if we invest in the functions. one of the tips i wanted to share with parents is if you
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text yes or si to 67587 and you have a mobile number that automatically sets you up to get text messages from parent view. it was exciting last we can to get a text from our school with information. i understand it requires having the mobile message set up and for school sites to use school messenger to send information out. one area we can use improvements in is none of the phone numbers or link were live and it was copied on the app so it limited how useful that was. i also appreciate the work by commissioner collins and the department of technology has been doing. i've noticed school information is updated now. we're still not seeing social worker information and assignments are still showing up
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as gobbly gook and it may not be the most useful tool for ry -- elementary school but i'm hearing it's tricky to follow different schedules and assignments. and lastly and we're finding immigrant families are struggling and need support one-on-one. i want to ask the districts to help us being creative in figuring out families get the one-on-one and small group reading resources. thank you. >> >> caller: are you there? 415424. okay. president sanchez, that concludes public comment. >> thank you. thank you for the public comment
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from those folks. section d advisory reports and appointmented and we have the advisory council. >> members of the public, my name is michelle and i'm the coordinator and to present today's report i'm joined by -- >> sime -- i'm sorry, would you go a little slower. >> my apologies. >> joining me today in representing the report is our current chair. >> hi, i have a seventh grader and an eleave leave en
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eleventh grader and i'm excited to work on the pack. one thing we do at the end of every meeting and michelle does at all the meeting they love is we do appreciation. and michelle has been an amachg leader to the pack and an amazing educator to me and i think we'll keep the education going through the board. the role is to represent the parent voice and perspective in order to inform the board of ed policy discussion and this report will provide an update on what we've been doing over the last month and we and how to
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approach the next school year. first we want to take a step back with new members on our team. we want educate everybody and sfusd is full of acronyms and we want to do a lot of educating and i want to open up by saying that. we want one of our goals to provide a strong foundation of knowledge by educating our members on how the various aspects of our staff functions and interacts. it's more complicated than i realized. we want to include and make sure
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members understand our role and what the pack does and the role of what you guys do, board of ed and the difference between governing versus advisory and the relationship between the superintendent and board of ed. we also want to deepen our members understanding of how education funding works including the role of the you will cap and the local accountability plan and how it's used to support the goal and mission of s.f. u is s -- usd and we want members to come away from their time feeling like they experienced growth and impacted policy and advocate for positive change and be patient leaders in their -- parent leaders in their own communities. we realize to be effective and successful in our role we need to be clear in what we're trying to accomplish and strategize and plan and implement our goals so
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we don't lose ourselves in the profession or spread ourselves too thin. we acknowledge the multiple roles our parent leaders play and the conflicts and the demands on time and we have a concentrated list we hope is more meaningful an exciting to work on during the fiscal year. as a council we also recognize the need for a look inward and to reflect and understand our own biases where we experience privilege and oppression and improve our own practices and move towards being anti-racist in our internal workings and work with communities as we collaborate across different peers serving the other advisory
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committees michelle has been key in mixing us all together and getting us to know each other. going forward we'll use the skills and practices to monitor and inform the support is making and all aspects of distance learn and the equitable resource of learning and skills and schools and engaging families across the district and their experiences. in september the pact delivered its final report. we have general support and perspective to policies and resolutions undertaken by the board of ed. the priorities are shifting
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however. during a time when we're supporting organizations on the front lines during the public comment is closed. pandemic. and we have lead and supported many government initiatives. some included in our report and not limited to the advisory alignment work and helping support the african american parent advisory council and the equity studies task force and the accountability task force and student assessment committee and school portfolio planning committee and parent input on the educational placement processes and student nutrition offerings and transportation planning and policies and much more.
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we appreciate the opportunity to do this work. >> the pact has been engaged in supporting the following effort. the advisory alignment. the pact convened the first meeting of the advisory alignment group october 5. we have our mention from 12 to support students and family we discussed the joint advisory feedback on the continuity plan and assessment committee and we
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and we can more effectively create positive for positive change. >> the pact and provided it to the district september 30th deadline. i also shared the district's response to thefi feedback. the key takeaway is the accountability. how do we know the plans are being implemented, to what extent and what to what results we took up the issue with commissioners and we'd like to thank the executive director and those engaged participants for
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thinking through how the tools may be used. the assessment committee reconvened october 1 and we're in the process of planning this year's assessment committee meeting and gang -- gathering and advisory groups. up regards to transportation the pact met with staff to look at input and perspective in the creation of requests for the selection process. >> in regard to the student system redesign the pact has been closely monitoring the new assignment policy and engaged in collaboration with other advisory groups and district departments in planning upcoming community in gaugement. -- engagement. we want to be very clear that the upcoming town hall elements
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will primarily be informational in nearby to ensure fam -- in nature to ensure families understand what the board will be voting on in december because there's inefficient time for meaningful stakeholder engagement. there'll be opportunities going forward for families to provide input on the implementation of the policy and hows and whwhats, etcetera. the pact would like to express deep appreciation for the project manager and the new etc director. they have been demonstrating that they heard the parent feedback and have been responsive and supportive of the combined advisory's input. the upcoming planned events are,
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a town hall on tuesday, october 27 presented in english with translation and interpretation services. a town hall on wednesday october 28 at 6:30 p.m. as well presented in cantonese. a town hall on thursday october 29 at 6:30 p.m. presented in spanish. and finally a town hall on saturday, november 7, at 3:00 p.m. in english also with translation and interpretation. for more information including how to attend these town halls, it can be done on the district's website at sfusd.edu. >> thank you, naomi. the pact is recruiting new members for the 20-21 school
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year and we are including those from different neighborhoods, types of schools and culture, experience or background and as part of the work this year we're looking to recruit and include the voices and experiences of all families even if we don't have the capacity to serve on the advisory council. applications to join the pact can be found on our website and currently available in chinese, spanish and english. if another application in another language is required or requested we're happy to facilitate that just e-mail pact and applications are accepted on an ongoing basis. >> and if you're interested i or have a friend interested our next pact meeting is coming up attending an upcoming pact
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meeting is a great way to see first hand what we do for the 2021 school year the pact meetings will be held on the first wednesday of each month. our next pact meeting is tomorrow, wednesday october 7th from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. via zoom. we miss our in person meetings but that will be back i'm sure. we'll begin with work on understanding the basics of the board and on the lcat and begin work on the internal committees. the pact meeting open to the public and you're welcome to attend and encourage anyone interested to join us to join in. any commissioners or student delegates or anyone, we'd love to have you at our meeting and translation and interpretation are available with advanced notice.
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we have two spanish-speaking members so we always have spanish. if you're interested in attend virtual meeting or have additional comments on the report or past work contact our lovely coordinator. this con cloud our report and -- concludes our report and if there's questions or comments, i'm sure michelle will be happy to answer them. >> you said translation and interpretation how much notification do you need? >> we have spanish already. i would need ideally 72 hours. one of the reasons we moved our meeting to the first wednesday of the month is to give a report like a month before our next
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pact meeting but then the dates changed for october. we're back on the heels of the board meetings again. >> i'd like to open it up to public comment. >> if you care to speak on the parent advisory council raise your hand at this time? marissa? >> caller: i'm miss ra is a robinson and lead on a leadership for the african american parent advisory council. thank you for the report and thank you for working with us in
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partnership and collaboration and i look forward to partnering with you guys. thank you. >> thank you. >> elita. >> caller: this is elita fisher and she took my comment. i was also going to say thank you to the pact. we're grateful for working in partnership with you i have to second the appreciation of chair moiga for michelle. she's been a great leader in not just the pact meetings but the joint advisory committee meetings.
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the pact is an anchor advisory committee to help make the work the rest of us do possible. there's limited volunteer capacity to go around as named in the report. having staff understanding the parent perspective is super critical. thank you for all you're doing. >> mr. sanchez, that concludes public comment. >> are there any comments on this item? commissioner moiga. >> thank you, president sanchez. i wanted to thank michelle they were excite and happy. i'm hearing from 20 plus folks showing up to meetings and
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they're happy about the election. i wanted to thank you for that. the piece i wanted to talk about more is the transportation process which for me sound great. this what we want. we want it to be more transparent and have input and thoughts and ideas from groups like our parents how it will be rolled out. part their resolution passed is how the committee set up that would be able to go through these processes i had a couple questions for legal and chive o'keefe if she's around. danielle, in terms of the ask around vetting vendors and how's that work out in terms of what
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the pact is asking for? >> we can look at including participants from the pact on the review team. we can follow-up with the board and pact. >> and i have chatted with pac adviser michelle and we're contemplating having training and all that. we wanted to we've extended the invitation. >> thank you, chief o'keefe. >> we have a represent from the special education department.
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we put together a broad team of panelists to review and score all the responses. we did that last time too. >> cool, sounds good. thank you. >> any other comments or questions? >> i redshirt the work that the pac does and all the joint advisory committees. thank you for your service. this is a volunteer role and folks are working for hours and hours and hours meetings and when they could be cooking dinner or relaxing with their families and their helping us to be a better district. i will continue to say that we should be respecting parents because it's unpaid labor and our schools are better for it. i want to acknowledge what i
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heard in reading the advisory feedback and list it out. i think people are being very polite and clear. from the feedback from the joint advisory committees it states that parents and caregivers are struggling to comprehend how they can provide input when they're primarily focussed on getting kidson online -- kids online and balancing their own personal responsibilities and parents expressed anger and frustration at once again providing something to the direct when it seems their previous input on a variety of items is either not taken into account or not acknowledged. nor is it responded to from the appropriate body.
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this is upsetting to me this in a document. i'm glad they're being honest about their experience but it's also upsetting in that the sate requires to us go through the process of documenting parent input and questions and with what we hear repeatedly is they don't feel they're authentically at the table and we have to be accountable to that. and when i ask how we're accountable to the communities we serve and we recognize we have a lot of priorities, how can we be accountable to families and the communities we
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serve if we aren't willing to tell them what we're working on and give them updates on status. and so i don't understand why this is a consistent problem because i think if we're tracking things and i think we are because we are tracking things and making advances, i don't understand how we can't share that in a transparent way. i've requested from staff they share with us and the public they're tracking documents specifically in relationship to resolutions that are community focussed. so i've written an e-mail yesterday requesting what are the tracking documents we currently have in the district and i want that shared with both
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parent leaders and community leaders and district latinex communities and i haven't seen it and i feel it's my job as a board member to make sure we're implementing things. i don't know what we're tracking. and i'm making this request for any and all tracking document exist and if we don't have that, i think we deserve to know about that. we deserve to know that because i want to be clear with the public. i'm requesting a latinex resolution and pacificer islander resolution, our healing in our hands resolution focussed on mental health in support of black lives resolution and art
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equity resolution. all those resolutions were unanimous unanimously voted for and if we have a basic and we should all be able to look at where we're at and then use those documents to have conversations about what is align and we're now in a unique situation with covid-19. i haven't received an answer and i'll let the public know by the curriculum committee meeting. i'll let everybody know if we have the documents and if we don't have them i'll let everybody know about that too but that's what i'm committing to do for you as parent leaders if you are consistently making
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requests to know the status of things you deserve to know where we're at and if we can't do it and it's unrealistic you deserve to know that too. thank you again. i want to continue working with to you get follow-up on requests and recommendations you gave us. >> there was a report present this past spring and it was a compilation of parent feedback from all the advisories and what we were hearing from families. and since then there's been a lot of effort especially at the
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upper levels of the district to make sure families republic heard and specifically one thing that was stressing to us at the time was that was a report of recommendations to the board and we had an ask the in that report we get a response from the board on a couple issues in the document we didn't get. there's a need for transparency across the scheme of things. and there's a so much bandwidth
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and we're struggling to recruit more parents this year. everybody's stretched really thin. and thank you for the direction we'll go this year and for the collaborative work with my colleagues. i tell people every day i don't despair in my day to day work because i am doing work i feel is meaningful and with people engaged and supportive. thank you very much. >> thank you. any other comments or questions from student board or delegates? all right. we're move on but before we do i want to echo the sentiments from commissioner collins in the appreciation for the work you do. this is voluntary and a long time ago i recommended the district create stipends for our
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parents and we should be able to join in an work now more than of. it may be an issue we talk to legal about and i don't know if there's an avenue to proceed in that but i'm willing to check it out and see if there's a way to provide stipends. thank you again. the next item the consent calendar. we motion and second.
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>> so moved. >> thank you. any public comment on the consent item? >> raise your hand if you care to speak to the consent calendar this afternoon. >> i call on jessy to read the correction. >> thank you, superintendent mathews we have one on number 11-2010- b1 in office of public information the amount is corrected from 56,5 $60 to read $58,560 and therefore it's 1,16
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>> we have our official nomination for representation and i'll have start off by naming the new representatives. >> we have nancy garcia a senior at laurell high school.
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next we have edwin jang. >> and we have a junior and another senior at washington. we also have three members to serve as alternatives and have a senior from lowell. >> any other appointments from board members? regarding t regarding t regarding t regarding the consent calendar? >> i want to pull item 9 for discussion.
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any other? outside of that item, roll call. [roll call] . >> thank you. that's seven ayes. >> vice president lopez. >> i'm looking at item 9
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approval of fiscal year 2021 personal contracts over $95,000. looking at the three posted here, i'm wondering about the northern california basketball officials there's no wording under the agreement under item 1 where it says services how they're providing services like the others do provide. they'll be hosting basketball games. i'm wondering how that's happening and why we're approving this? >> this. the contract is being submitted and should we be providing basketball services we'll have a contract in place but if there's a desire to hold off until we
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understand what type of athletics we'll be providing as we move through the year we can do that as well. thank you for notice being that. i want to ensure that we're adding information around the covid-19 health and safety protocols. thank you for your watchful eye. it's an example of checks and balances working. >> it's okay and we can start over as working through other contracts around athletics around the same area. >> is there a timing issue surrounding this? >> no. >> okay.
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if there's no objection we'll hold off on voting on that item. >> thank you, commissioner lopez, for raising that. it's really important. thank you. >> eagle eye. proposals for action there's none today. i thought we just corrected them. >> there's three on item 9. the other is shared covid response in the agreement. >> [roll call]
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>> thank you. >> special h is special order of business. 2010 and i'll call the public hearing on the resolution regarding the insufficiency of textbooks as required by the education code. can i hear a motion and second on the resolution regarding the insufficiency of textbooks and educational materials. >> so moved.
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president mathews. >> thank you so much. this evening as you just heard we will have a public hearing on the approval of the textbooks. the staff presenting will be our chief academic officer dr. nicole preesly will be presented. >> thank you, and good afternoon president sanchez and commissioners. i'm the chief academic officer of curriculum and instruction. i'm presenting on sufficiency of textbooks and materials as required by education code 60119. in summary in approved textbook survey was sent to all leaders august 10, 2020 in s.f. usd
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requesting information on textbooks and instructional materials of each school and the survey is due by september 9, 2020 and all orders have been placed and all materials have been delivered to school sites. as noted in the resolution, all requested materials on the district adopted instructional materials list were to be received by today, october 6. at this time, there are no schools that have made a request via the williams compliance survey that have not been received and addressed. are there any questions i cans answer?
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>> commissioner: is there any public comment. >> raise your hand if you're wanting to comment on the item. i see one hand up, president sanchez? >> caller: hello. i'm elita and thank you for the report. i have to apologize for not having read the whole text of the code so maybe my answer was answered in the ed code but my question is around when we say things like appropriately the department of -- does this
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include scaffolded for students with disabilities and enough licenses for kids who need multi-sensory literacy and for text to speech for kids with visual impairment? i'm wondering how much of this law or section of the law covers scaffolds and supports for those who learn differently and ensure they're covered as well. thank you.
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>> ashley? i guess not. >> i wonder if we have comments specifically around consent in terms of textbooks. >> to answer your question, and thank you elita fisher for the question. in terms of what is addressed there's specific tests and actually none of the materials that ms. fisher mentioned are
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not part of the williams survey. i will zephdefer to where there need that needs to be met for special populations and the process for that. and also president sanchez, we distribute materials to students, schools have continued to deliver and distribute materials over the school year and some have set up opportunities going forward that have comments for students can continue to pick up materials. >> think we'll probably talk about what we're tracking what individual schools are doing and
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the success of success of getting vulnerable families materials. textbooks are one end but there's also reading books and we can provide the board with the tracking we're utilizing to ensure all schools are doing that because it's a decentralized process. not something they're making sure is distributes. >> if not the next board meeting we'll get that to you as soon as possible. >> thank you. commissioner collins. >> in terms of process tonight
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or this afternoon, the goal is to approve or not approve our public hearing of meeting our requirements to make sure all kids have books. >> it's not good school library books or anything like that it's textbooks that have been approved many of our schools don't use but approved by the state. >> i'm looking at the lawsuit and the whole purpose of the lawsuit was was filed in san francisco which i really think you should be teaching in schools because this is an amazing case involving the naacp
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and sued san francisco superior court because some kids didn't have textbooks and they also and they didn't have heating or ventilation or qualified teachers. for the public the williams case you should look it up and we should be proud because our city as it now a requirement statewide every school has to do a reporting process on the williams act. it specifically relates to instructional material. i'm confused because i started hearing from parents that they said we sept out a communication to families of families of k through 12 were receiving
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reading skills and take home books so in my understanding and we had made some of those available to schools. is that correct? >> it does not have level textbooks. >> commissioner collins, i was on the board when the settlement came down and for the williams lawsuit was amazing. it was three of our schools elementary and middle high school level and students results in a statewide settlement that was very lackluster. so it's just the approved textbook essentially from the
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curriculum and very weak so the settlement does not result in providing more resources for kids. the textbook we have monitored every year and to me a compliance issue that doesn't actually result in more resources for your kids. for example, every classroom is a robust leveled library and it specifically doesn't do that. when we have the williams reports it's frustrating to me because it doesn't result in anything valuable to the system. though the lawsuit was well meaning and intentioned and going in the right distribution
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the settlement was a big loss. >> i appreciate your knowledge of that. and if year just looking at a compliance opportunity we have an opportunity to have a conversation about do kids have books. if we don't have tracking measures in place how to track that it kind of doesn't matter whether we're meeting the obligations of the williams case. what really matters to me is we are not meeting the obligation in our role as a board to ensure
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our district is doing what it should be doing and there is a law inplace at the state level which says parents should not have to purchase instructional materials. and i agree with you 100%, what is disturbing to me because i don't want more bad textbooks to check off a list. i don't know we're serving paint -- parents or students and that's the key, is it getting to kids and what's the tracking mechanism and even on a basic level when it comes williams we have spanish textbooks my kid has and a world textbook my daughter's teacher is using and
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i know i can pick it up. how do we know there's enough because there's so much to check as a parent level. >> can i jump in? the textbooks williams doesn't envision having to send textbooks home because there wouldn't be enough at the middle school and high school level. and so there's the tuition. the issue around what we're voting on which is a compliance issue pro forma almost and i
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understand there are a lot of families who are communicating they're not getting the materials. that's why dr. priestley is committed to doing that. >> one last thing. when she's reporting i want it at the parent our student level i think that would be helpful not the principal level and additionally i'm hearing some schools and this may be hearsay the policy for picking up textbooks needs to be clearly communicated and consistent because i heard parents that if you didn't come at the time given that was it. that may not be true but i want to make sure that isn't happening if it is and it's
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really clear i would love to be tracking how we're communicating to students and parents and now they realized and we make sure they always have access. and a want to make sure that's the case. >> that's why i asked. >> we're all saying the same thing as far as how do we track who's getting what and what are they getting. i understand it's almost a budget and finance committee of what we need to check off our list. is there a way in our own resolution to include all the other pieces we're talking about and we're meeting the requirements of course.
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>> i would be happy to add that resolution. >> this say resolution can we make an amendment to our own. >> this is not our resolution it's our compliance hearing to approve we've met the basic williams requirements and we can't add to it we have a state law that says children should get required instructional materials and why we're distributing computers we don't normally distribute like textbooks we do now because of distance learning.
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and if they're not getting books and they need them in kindergarten to learn how to read we're violating state law. >> we don't know that the board that's why we asked dr. priestley to get us the report on exactly that. >> so i'm going to vote no in principle because we shouldn't approve things for compliance i think we should how old ourselves to our own standards and an appreciate your comments, president sanchez. >> it was directed to you driven all your knowledge. >> commissioner norris can chime in.
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unless there's more comments, roll call. [roll call] . >> that's five ayes. >> i'll continue to the regular session continues. there's the instructional calendar 2020-2021.
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. second motion. we need a motion and second for the item. >> so moved. haven't -- >> superintendent mathews. >> we'll present while we're bringing this this evening and asking for approval. >> good evening, commissioner. i'm bringing the recommended action to you the recommendation is to adopt the 2020-2021 instructional calendar for all of 2018 the districts and organizations negotiate the
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2020-2021 instructional calendar and the board approved it january 15, 2015 and staff found an error with the instructional days in january and there were 18 as the calendar depicted and in june staff presented what was believed to be a corrected calendar for board approval. first amending the calendar was incorrect. this item was seconded amended calendar for board approval and second amended by the 2021 school year to correct the errors specifically the second amended calendar january 4 as a school holiday as 18 days of instruction in january describes the fall recess as the thanksgiving holiday and depict the last day of school june 22, 2021. with this amended calendar
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corrected. >> are you sure? all right, any public comment. >> raise your hand to you care to speak on the instructional calendar for the 2020-2021 school year? seeing no one, president sanchez. >> all right. two minutes. >> thank you. >> thank you so much. >> good evening, i want to say how pleased and relieved i am in presenting the san francisco pta tonight the calendar is amended to what was originally intended. that's it. thank you. >> any board or student delegate?
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>> commissioner collins. >> i know it's an a work calendar but parents need to know online when the end of grading period is so i'm making the formal request that be visible in our academic calendar on the web and it's not on the academic calendar and it has been in the past. >> that would be important for us to correct. any other comments or questions? seeing none, roll call. [roll call]
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>> you have five. >> thank you, so much. section j discussion and vote on consent calendar items removed at previous meetings. m, board members reports, we haven't -- have three. the first is the select committee. commissioners moiga, collins and cook. i don't know if any are prepared to report but if so, please do.
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>> i can do a general and commissioner moiga can add in if he wants to. the main focus we need to work together, city and county and community partners to support students and families. and what we're basically saying loud and clear is that they need us to tell them what we'll need in support of students. and they're learning. >> they being the supervisors? >> yes, the city. there was updates on the community health and we got data on that and they're seeing that as a way to support student learning when schools are not in session. whether it's that or any other measures in terms of health mental health those are things we would want to support that
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and there are mental health services and they need us to be clear about where we have gap and we're grateful for the money they've giving us in supporting us in fulfilling budget gaps. we all need to work together. it's an open question to the board. where we see a need and also to staff, where do we see a need that better coordination with city agencies could fill and/or more resources and i'll personally plug what i've always said is community schools in our district have been really great. it seems like the community schools have been doing a great job at supporting families but the reason they're good is because they're able to help coordinate with city agencies and community-based agencies and the department of youth and families or when they invest in
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more resources like violence prevention and health and wellness, it serves our families. one of the things there was a real strong call for was an investment in mental health services. commissioner can fill in because he's an expert but there's a huge need for it and it sounded like they're not meeting the need and if you want to say a few words because it's important and you're an expert in the field. >> president yee called for focus around mental health. we had a presentation from dph. the numbers are really concerning in terms of the disengaging. in terms of the engaging and the population of youth in the city
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and accessing mental health is below 10% like 4% to 5% and we're talking about large populations of kids. there's an issue there and the question for everyone is how do you put eyes on kids or how are we engaging and reaching out to families and students and he conversation has to be around what do wellness checks look like because they're doing wellness checks and what do the partnerships look like around that because if we condition at the rate we're going right now in terms of providing mental health we'll have a huge crisis on our hands. the second thing around mental
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health is staffing is really low. many have been assigned to different programs and covid-19 has shortened the staff of folks that can provide the work. and folks are having struggles with hiring and management and roll out programs. that was loud and clear and i'm glad the supervisors were able to hear that and school leadership and the trustee. there's a huge problem when it comes to mental health. one thing we started to talk about as a collective as a city and county is this thing around accountability. we've been having conversations about that the last couple months myself and we've been talking with the superintendent and there's opportunities out there.
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despite the crisis and the funding gaps we have to really tap into the resources that could benefit us. so i personal would like to continue working with our partners and mental health didn't have a student component. we need to push that and make sure that we're able to get a youth component and going back to medical we need a collective effort to include city and county partners and cbos to take advantage of drawing down. i think that was it. >> that was an extensive report and very necessary. thank you. ad hoc committee tuesday september 29, commissioner
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norton. >> yes, so as you heard, we're getting closer i think to a staff recommendation. we provided input on the 29th on specifically the idea we'd have separate zones for elementary schools and general ed and language pathways and special ed. depending on where you live you'd be in a special program or one language program and specifically on pathways which is i think in my opinion a good way of organizing because otherwise there would be chaos and our need to move if we go forward with the design concept
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it would necessitate proving programs all over the district. there's been a reasonable recommendation here. it looks like we're talking a lot about the interaction between tie breaks as we use them today like siblings and guardrails which are aspects of the policy that don't apply to individual students necessarily or the characteristics of individual students but the idea's molded on -- modelled on how berkeley -- modelled on how berkeley intergrats their schools and i don't want to over simplify it with a short report but there seems to be a robust discussion in what are the interactions between our three goals of
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proximity, diversity and accountability. i remember two but not three. anyway, so i think we are going to have one last opportunity as a military -- opportunity as a board to offer a recommendation that will come to the board. we'll meet on the 14th of october. i want to again encourage everybody to come out and check into the policy. in addition you heard tonight there's four dates identified really as informational presentations for the public so that they can get more detail on the eventual staff proposal ahead of the board discussing and voting on it. that would be another opportunity for them to learn
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about what the actual recommendation is and have time to continue to provide feedback to the board before we vote. hope to see everybody on the 14th. >> i highly encourage that not just the public and all commissioners to join in. it's a really important meeting. >> we had a great meeting of president cook and vice president lopez. we had an update around the preparations of the schools. and facilities. she gave us an in depth look of what was going on and where we are in the process at the moment. she has worked with a team on rolling out a process so we'll able to give an opportunity for
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folks to be able to chime in on how they should look. and they'll be posting that up in addition to ppe. so ppe has been a thing folks wanted to see happening in schools. it looks like all schools now have hand sanitizers attached within the schools in addition we'll post all the ppe kids should be expecting back at schools and had a lengthy talk about ventilation. we talked about the two types of ventilation that exist and asked for a cost of what it will be for ventilation and we had a discussion on mission bay the school being built in that area. things are coming along. they gave us a look at what the
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school could look like. there was a hiccup apparently around the title controversy we're trying to work with the board of supervisors and city and county to be able to figure out how to bring that to a close. there was also a presentation around new partnership with a real estate and the school consists of a development center. but that was it. >> thaso you weren't able to he
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information on the project? so will be at the next one? >> we didn't but i'll follow-up with that and make sure that is on the next agenda. sorry about that. >> that's okay. thank you so much. report from delegate organizations like the nsba or council for schools? speak up if you have any? all other reports by board members? calendar of committee meetings and there's one monday october 18th at 3:00 and ad hoc on
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student committee meeting is coming up. >> thank you. >> section n other informational items in the agenda? acceptance of monetary donations to the district for the month of october 2020. section o is memorial adjournment. there is none tonight. at this time we'll take public comment for those who wish to speak to closed session items. there'll be a total of five minutes for public comment. >> if you'd care to speak to any of these items this afternoon? seeing none, president sanchez. >> so closed session the board will now go in to closed session and i call recess of the regular
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meeting of the board of education. >> we convene from open session and have two matters of public employee release and the board by a vote of five ayes approved it. the matter of ywh case number 20208705 by the vote of five ayes approved the element agreement and authored the general counsel to pay. in six matters of anticipated litigation the board voted five ayes to provide direction to the general counsel.
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with that, i think i win the bet on when we end our meeting. [indiscernible] >> thank you sorch. >> thank you so much.
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that. >> today, we're highlighting the curriculum that was developed with san francisco teachers and science experts on stanford university. what's exciting about this curriculum is that across the city, the sierra 7th grate students are learning about earthquakes and how to be prepared for them and they're doing this in a way that allows them to learn in a venue that will allow them to be safe. >> what the students are doing today is something called a card sort. there were 18 items that were later revealed in the pamphlets that each of them got that are going to be needed in order to survive 72 hours in a major
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disaster, usually an earthquake, so i had them try to divide up the 18 items into things that are necessary or useful or things that were nice to have. i think a lot of students were surprised at how their answers matched or didn't match what the city recommends for riding out this period of time after an earthquake. >> i learned that a manual can opener is more essential than other items, like, personal documents. the purpose in the lesson was to open cans of food, which you might store for emergencies and use in earthquakes. some of the items that i placed in essential weren't actually essential, so i was kind of confused at first, and then, i realized why they weren't essential. >> the kids are required to take the planning materials home and talk with their parents about what they can do and what they should do to prepare themselves
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to be resilient and safe an after an earthquake. this is just an amazing way that we're able to get 234509 community in san francisco to educate our kids at a fairly early age and share that with their parents. >> this is exciting we're rolling out this curriculum and it was developed in partnership with teachers and it's really taking advantage of our city as a classroom and opening the doors so that students are taking on real world challenges. they're not just learning facts, democracy, and our ence so they
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leaders would not be where we are today without the career leader of ruth bader ginsburg. the league of women voters is a san francisco nonpartisan
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political nonprofit. the league never endorses candidates, however, we do take stands on issues. we are committed to providing the resources that voters need to exercise this most fund amountal right of our democracy and be assured that our votes will be counted. please remember that you must be registered to vote by october 19. all registered voters will receive a mail ballot in early october, and options for in-person voting will be available, as well, both early and also on election day, november 3. please visit our website at lwvsf.org/vote where you will find all of the resources that we offer. the league of women voters is a nonprofit organization. if you would like to get
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involved, please contact us or go to our website. i would like to introduce our moderator tonight, [inaudible] she was appointed by governor newsom as the chief of staff to the california public utilities commission in 2019. well come, luong. >> thank you, and welcome, candidat candidates, to the forum for district 11 board of supervisors candidates forum.
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first, i'd like to remind you of our ground rules. responses should be on the issues and policy-related. candidates are expected to be respectful of other candidates and asked to not make personal attacks on other individuals. here are the procedures for this evening's forum. the candidates will have the opportunity to make 90-second opening and closing statements. opening statements will be in alphabetical order by first name. closing statements will be in reverse alphabetical order by first name. each candidate will have 90 seconds to answer questions. each candidate will have the opportunity to answer the same number of questions. any rebuttals may be included in the candidate's closing
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statement, which will be 90 seconds. a count downtimer will be displayed with a visual indication. the aspect of the forum will be equally fair to all candidates. thank you to our attendees tonight. you are in listen-only mode. the q&a and chat features are not active. this forum will be ordered and made -- recorded and made available on our website, lwvsf.org, our youtube channel, and sfgovtv channel. tonight's forum will give you an opportunity to learn before you vote on november 3. now, let's begin. you will start off with 90-second statements in
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alphabetical order. [inaudible], and thank you for participating in this forum. please introduce yourself, tell us which neighborhood you live in, and why you are running for district 11 supervisor. we'll start with ahsha safai. you're on mute. >> okay. sorry. my name is supervisor ahsha safai. thank you to the san francisco league of women voters for having me tonight. i've proudly represented this district for the last four years. when i first ran for office, i had just been working with organized labor for almost a decade and cared deeply about being a strong voice for working families. distri district 11 has one of the
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highest concentration of children and people under 19. we are the backbone of this city, the people that get up and make san francisco work fore every single day, and for the last four years, i've been a strong voice for those families every day. whether it was our green jobs legislation, whether it was ensuring we chad accessible affordable child care or a woman chief of staff when i was elected board of supervisors. this week honoring justice ginsburg, i'm very proud to say that the san francisco political women's committee, along with planned parenthood of northern california has given me their sole endorsements. i've been a fighter and working hard for my district. i'm very proud, and i look forward to another four years. >> thank you. john avalos. >> good evening. it's really great to be here. i'm john avalos, and i'm a
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22-year resident of district 11. i live in the excelsior neighborhood of district 11. i'm a father of two, fiance to raquel redondiez, and living with her. have a senior at balboa high, and a balboa graduate living with us in this neighborhood. i'm very honored to have this opportunity to experience representing people in district 11, minorities, people of color, working class, people who are teachers restaurant workers, a lot of people who are dealing with unemployment at this time. we are in a real difficult situation with the pandemic and the economic crisis that we're in, and looking to bring back all of my work i did at the board of supervisors, working citywide to make sure we could
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have the resources for the entire city, but also working with residents here in district 11 so make sure we can build our parks and commercial corridors, making sure we have child care for our families, that we have families, support for our schoolworkers. thank you. >> marcella -- marcello colusi. >> thank you. my name is marcello colusi, and i am running for district 11 supervisor. i am running because i was a worker in people's homes at one time, and they were shocked
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about what's going on in our city. i think we need to not do politics in between and do what is the most efficient for our residents. that's actually why i'm running for supervisor district 11 san francisco. >> thank you. now we'll move onto our questions for tonight. we'll start with ahsha. how do you define affordable housing, and what specific steps will you take to increase affordable housing in district 11? >> thank you. when i first got on the board of supervisors, we were able to engage on the inclusionary
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housing program on the city. it's where we asked project sponsors to set aside a certain amount of housing as affordable. but the question was affordable for who? affordable for so long has been defined as extremely low-income. and what that meant was teachers, janitor's, nonprofit workers could afford to live in district 11, working class neighborhood, could no longer afford to live in san francisco. so i'm very proud to say we were able to expand the definition slightly, and prior to me coming into office, probably about 17 upts nits of affordable housing. we have built 600 units, with 2,000 in the pipeline. we have worked with the mayor
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to purchase the city's largest acquisition in history, making 25 units affordable in perpetuity. >> thank you. marcello, same question. you're on mute. >> thank you. affordable housing for me is the people that work in our neighborhoods for minimum wage can afford here. i don't think that's going to end until the city of san francisco does what [inaudible] when you think about it, they have 40,000 employees, they have $12 billion budget. the only reason that the housing is so expensive, the only reason the housing is so
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expensive is the builders are trying to make a profit. the moment you cut profits in between, it will be stop. the city needs to -- it will not stop. the city needs to open their own nonprofit. they have the opportunity, and they have everything to do it. >> john? >> thank you. affordable housing, to me, is where our housing costs no more than what a household of 120% area median income can afford, where they're paying no more than 30% of their income for housing. i also believe that we need to be building housing no more than that, that rate, but also a large -- the largest amount of housing that is deeply affordable. here in district 11, we have a lot of households that are
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bundled up into single homes and need relief. a lot of them are very low-income and would benefit from having deeply affordable housing. for me, i've been working for years to expand finances for housing, affordable housing in san francisco, looking at various sources from our general fund to housing bond. i actually wrote the housing bond on 2015, and i wrote with the mayor of san francisco the housing trust fund in 2012. i'm excited about propositions i and propositions k that are on the ballot that are going to tax real estate transfers to bring in money for creation of municipal housing. pr prop k would allow the city to create public housing, and i want to create a public bank that would shape how we create
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public housing to benefit all of san francisco. >> thank you. for the next question, we'll start with marcello. how about you ensure that the current residents of district 11 will be able to remain in their homes given the increased cost of living in san francisco and the economic downturn due to the covid-19 pandemic? >> it's going to have to involve everyone: the landlords, the tenants, the city. you have landlords that are making money on the properties, you have landlords that are barely making it or going on the rent, and because of that, you have to go case by case to figure out who can do it and who is in deep trouble so that the moment that those landlords are going to lose their homes to [inaudible] and the same
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issue. the banking industry, as soon as they get a foreclosure they're going to start kicking people out. we're going to have a huge crisis, and we cannot have that. we have to work [inaudible] political issues trying to work for our residents and actually give our people, keep our residents at home. >> thank you. john? >> it's really tough to see what's happening right now for a lot of people living in the city and, of course, in district 11 households who are unemployed or getting less unemployment money are now making difficult choices, whether to pay rent or mortgage or the food on the table. these are real-life issues and have a lot to do with what
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we've been experiencing for years but are now heightened during the pandemic and this economic crisis. as supervisor, i created and worked on various methods to allow people to stay in their homes. advancing tenant protections, we need to expand in that. as supervisor, i made it illegal to destroy rental housing, and that has protected thousands of units here in san francisco and district 11. i've also made it easier to set up a.d.u.s and accessory dwelling units are able to stay up and running. we have funding available through the city and d.b.i. for people who want to modify those. i've worked to create principle reduction programs in san francisco so that we can actually ensure that a wide variety of people, homeowners
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and renters can stay in san francisco and not be threatened by the crisis that we're in and actually have faith that we can keep our residents here in the city. thank you. ahsha? >> thank you. i think there's a -- this is a very good question. it's about the immediate. it's about what we are going to do right now, today, because people are being he ievicted. they're getting sick and losing their jobs? one of the things we were able to do as supervisors were creating an eviction moratorium, so no one will be evicted during this health crisis. myself and dean preston and others put that forward. but we also need to have rental assistance. if people have rental assistance, they will be able to pay their rent and the help
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they need to pay their mortgages. district 11, 94112, has the highest number of requests for rental assistance, and we've helped to facilitate that working with the q foundation. on a daily basis, people are calling us for assistance paying their rent. the other thing we need to do is open up our economy back in a safe manner. we've moved to orange. myself and supervisor peskin worked on legislation that's called our healthy and hotel ordinance. that will allow people to go back to work. when people go back to work, they have to go that they will be safe in their job, so we created 80 hours of sick leave to help them. >> thank you. so the next question will start with john. what are your plans to bring equity and jobs, education, and economic development to the black communities in district
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11, especially in the lakeview and sunnydale neighborhoods? >> thank you. i'm proud to have worked on the local hiring ordinance. back in 2010, i was the sponsor of it and worked closely with the african american community, with mike brown, who is the director of inner city youth at that time, to make sure that we were creating jobs with our public funds when we actuality built -- actually built municipal buildings. that's resulted in people being able to find jobs in the building trades here in san francisco. and as supervisor are, i've actually worked over the years to develop the lakeview community collaborative, the lakeview community collaborative that is a number of organizations working
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together for a budget that serves them, that keeps programs running and going. it's been great to see that the work is ongoing, and based on that organization that we initiated back in 2010, that it's a workforce center now on broad street. and as supervisor, i want to do much more to actually look at the private sector and how we can do local hiring in the private sector, and anyone that wants to be doing -- setting up shop here at the office of economic and workforce development, to be able to provide small business support to hire local residents. >> thank you. ahsha? >> thank you. it's a great question. if the folks in district 11 have felt ignored and not given the help they need, the blake families in lakeview felt even
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more like that. we looked at where the incarceration rate, drop out rate, homeless rate was, and based on those statistics from day one, we asked for and advocated for resources to go into black lakeview. we opened up the first jobs center in the district in that regard, right there on broad and capital. the mayor and i cut the ribbon on that last year. we are building a brand-new library in that area of town. we have invested in black-led organizations. i.t. book man, inner city youth, and i.t. first, all of which are invested in, promoting, and assisting the black community and youth. i think that's what equity looks like. we didn't wait until the recent movement of black lives matter, we've been doing that from day one. another thing is empowering and
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uplifting folks from the black community to lead and advocate for themselves. that's what happened in a movement we called invest black. many folks in the community led that. they put their stamp on broad street, and we're very, very proud of that work. >> thank you. marcelo? >> i personally think that [inaudible] and what we have to do is train people to actually [inaudible] and to train them to work with their own businesses, even if it [inaudible] when somebody can have a small business in their house, they will not have to commute. they will be producing money on a daily basis, and part of my
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idea is yujust to have small businesses over the place who can support each other. when you have small businesses working for corporations, and those corporations close down shop, and they leave, and those peoples are out of work. when you have a small business that's owned by the residents of the neighborhood, those small businesses survive, and they -- they thrive, and that's when the economy comes back. the idea is to push it, as much as we can, to train and to actually work with the residents to be able to open their own businesses. >> thank you. for the next question, we'll start with marcelo. what do you consider to be the most important infrastructure improvements and projects needed for district 11?
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how did ywill you advocate fore projects? >> i think safe streets, to be able to walk to the store. [inaudible] i think that part is huge for our community basically because, like, the other candidates say, we have the most children -- most children will be able to say in their houses. they will be able to go to public schools, and the public schools [inaudible] we'll actually give that allocation to our kids, and those kids will be able to [inaudible] coming from all over the place
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in two or three years. we owe it to those families. we have to be able to work on those projects to be able to uplift our communities. >> thank you. john? >> thank you. actually, i loved the question about community development. i think it's one of my greatest focuses when i was supervisor was working with the community from the grassroots up to define what we need for our districts so we can thrive and live and remain in the districts. so now, we're in real tough times, and we need to figure out how we can make real tough action, and the best thing we can do is have a whole new economy centered around our whole future. and for me, that's a green new deal, and that includes all of the infrastructure that we're going to need for sustainable.
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number one is the housing investment. i mentioned some of the resources that we have on the ballot this year, prop i, and prop k. we also have other resources that have recently been approved with the prop c that has now been -- the funds have been released so we can use housing needs for a lot of people that are homeless in our district. we also need to put money into transit and build jobs around the creation of transit based on renewable energy. our parks are really a vital resource, and especially during the pandemic, we need to find a place to access nature and release ourselves. i want to be part of creating an urban ag system that will be mutual aid in our investment efforts. we need slow streets, and that's why i'm petitioning to change d.b.i. with prop w.
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>> thank you. ahsha? >> one of the biggest things that we're working on right now is prop a, our mental health and recovery bond also for your parks. i advocated to ensure that crocker-amazon were included in that. the san francisco giants are going to supplement that. that would be more than a $30 million investment by the giants. another one is excelsior playground, definitely needs to be revitalized and redone, and then, another park. and then, continuing the housing. we're in the process of building more housing than has ever been built in district 11. we have to see those projects through, and we have to find more funding to build more workplace housing and more
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affordable housing. the final one that i'm very proud of is the library. we're going to create the largest neighborhood library in the city. it's on the corner of orizaba and brotherhood. we're going to go from the smallest neighborhood library to the largest neighbor library. and then finally, we have a $20 million improvement to our neighborhood corridors. we have some of the highest fatality corridors, and that will begin in the spring. >> thank you. for this question, i'll start with ahsha. what funding for the police would you support going to other specific services. what specific changes would you require to be in place before the change is implemented? >> it's a great question. some of the largest number of calls we get are people that
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are unhoused, people with mental health issues, and the police are often the first one to respond. in this ballot, as i said, prop a will have dollars for mental health. very pleased to see we were going to have additional dollars for mental health sf. was pleased to work with my colleagues supervisor hillary ronen and matt haney, along with the mayor. with the prop c being unlocked, winning that in the courts, that will mean additional dollars for mental health services. the police, one of the highest volume calls they get, have to do with our mental health individuals, and it will allow the freeing up of police to go
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on other calls. and then, when we were able to have the resources, which we do now, and will come more, we need to have mental health professionals responding to those that are unhoused and have mental health crisis, and we have the ability to do that and transition nicely. >> thank you. john? >> thank you. we have, across the country, calls for defending the police. i've been looking at that issue, and what we need to implement. for me, what we need to be doing is transforming completely how we do public safety work in san francisco and across the country. our policing has been based on racist institutions going back,
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you know, 150, 200 years, and we need to remake actually entirely how we do it. we need to narrow the intervention scope to what the police department does, but also putting a lot of resources into presvention, making sure that people have access to mental health care and addiction care and life sources that are out there. we need to make sure that we're putting in the resources like case managers and mental health clinicians and have those in place before we start making cuts to the police department. i was really alarmed that we didn't do that now when the budget was wide open before us. we have a lot of people in
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district 11 who could benefit from mental health services, addiction services, a navigation center, and there's no place to do that. >> thank you. marcelo? >> thank you. what is -- this is the main question. we definitely need more resources, personally, i think, on mental health which has become an epidemic in san francisco on drug issues, which is also an issue. i was an e.m.t., and i consider it bad at that time. the question is now do we have enough police on the streets to
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take care of the issues of the people who are out on the streets going to work? we have to look at this on a much different way than just cutting the funding of the police department. i do believe we need a lot more help on mental health and addiction. this is the main issue because the city is having a tough time, and this is not [inaudible] people are dying. i mean, people tell us every day, and [inaudible] and people are dying. it's unbelievable. san francisco has [inaudible] and at this time, you know, like i said before -- >> thank you. >> thank you. >> for the next question, we'll start with john. how will you advocate for the current and future educational needs of children living in
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district 11? >> thank you. i'm really proud to have come out of coleman advocates for children and youth, an organization that's based in district 11 that is on the forefront of looking at education for children, youth, in san francisco. i was a community organizer with coleman advocates, and as supervisor in 2014, i had the first draft of the children's fund that expanded money for children, youth, and family services, early childhood education services, as well as transitional age youth as well as expand the ed fund for our schools. we also have a ballot measure that's vitally important that we pass for our teachers. it's a tax -- i can't remember
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the number or the letter of it now, and we need to pass our schools and community first initiative, prop 15, on the california ballot, that will bring greater resources for education programs. it was night and day, the difference between 1978 and 1979, when prop 13 passed. now we can fix that. i look forward to working with community and labor to make sure that we are supporting households who are in our public schools. i also want to set up our hubs in our neighborhood schools so that our hubs can be places where families can access social workers, nutrition, and other services they need to continue to stay in their homes and continue to have good education experiences. >> thank you. marcelo? >> thank you. so [inaudible] how much i fought the school district of
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school for [inaudible] for my kids and also equal needs for every student. we have a crisis in [inaudible] and san francisco does not have the resources that they deserve. and before the pandemic, and [inaudible] my idea was to get permission to dump funding into the school district -- the san francisco school district, to pool the resources on our kids because they're going to stay local, they're going to retire local after they come back from college. just dump as much as we can on our kids in districtthe school district. thank you. >> thank you. ahsha? >> thank you. one of the things that's often left out of the conversation when we're talking about
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children and educational needs, are children from 0 to 5. it's one of the things that i've learned from president norman yee. he's been a lifelong advocate of children in preschools. actually, my headquarters for my campaign is in the largest nonprofit child care provider in the entire he city. very proud to have worked to ensure that they could buy their building and stabilize that. almost every project that we've worked on in this district, we've made sure there will be accessible, affordable child care. we don't have direct involvement in the schools. it's usually through the afterschool and summer programs. we were very fortunate the first two years i was in office, we were able to use the educational enrichment fund, eraf, first year, $45 million, and after that, additional dollars into supporting our
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teachers and paras and educators in the school system. right now, i'm one of the sponsors of and supporters of prop j, which will open up, in year 1, 50 $50 to $60 million our school system. i'm a parent of two public school kids and have the most public school kids on the board of supervisors, so we have to continue to support that. >> thank you. for the next question, we'll start with john. how will you ensure that residents of district 11 have access to services and resources that will help them meet their basic needs as they struggle with the challenges of the covid-19 pandemic? >> thank you. well, for ensuring that our residents have access to the services that we need, it's really about the budget, the city budget and making sure
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that the city budget works for working people. one of the biggest issues that i've spent most of my time working on was the city budget when i was in office, and before that, i was an advocate on the city budget, making sure we were providing more resources for seniors and children, youth, and families in particular. in 2009 and 2010, i got to chair the budget committee, overcoming two $500 million budget deficits each year. so i know a little bit how to move money around and to protect services, and we need to have this type of experience, especially now that chair fewer is leaving the board of supervisors to actually craft our budget, so we are preserving the best of san francisco, our working people, to make sure that we can provide these fs iseservic.
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i've moved movie into -- money into different programs. thank you. >> thank you. marcelo. >> so this is a case where we have to start auditing where the money is going because in a 12 billion budget, there's a lot of money that's being wasted, and we need to figure out where that money is going and put it in our communities that need it the most. this is the part, also [inaudible] have asked, the main issue, the lack of resources for decades into the
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poor communities. and we have to start noticing these communities and dumping it into those communities that really need, it desperately need it with the main issue of covid trying to come back from this [inaudible] thank you. >> thank you. ahsha? >> so during this crisis, this was -- this was not about theory anymore, this was about action. and we had to go with basically over the last eight months, my entire job has been about leading do you remember this crisis and ensuring that district 11 and the entire city had the resources, support, and safety net that we need. we've opened up and help to support three meal distribution sites in district 11. we've distributed over 10,000 masks to individuals and 25,000 gloves and gallons of
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disinfectants supporting our small businesses. we worked with the board and the mayor to ensure that there was at least $10 million for undocumented families who have been completely left out of the recovery funds that have been created. we've fought for, advocated, and ensured that all workers in the city, all city workers would have access to 80 hours of sick leave, 80 hours of potential inquiry sick leave, and ensuring sick leave for businesses with 100 employees or more. we're working aggressively to open up the economy safely to make sure that people can go back to work. we also worked with our child care providers to create a $100 million fund so they would have
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access grants to continue providing early childhood care. >> thank you. we'll start with marcelo. what is your plan to revitalize district 11. >> it comes down to [inaudible] somebody who's coming down to city hall to open a small business [inaudible] but if you don't help them open, those small businesses [inaudible] we have to help them stay open for as long as they want.
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>> thank you. ahsha? >> thank you. when i first was elected, we initiated the excelsior outer mission district, and one of the goals was to create a business corridor. i was presented with a plan by individuals that talked about trying to rezone the entire randolph corridor. i was against that plan. it was not community driven, and it was really about creating investment opportunities that would have essentially led to gentrification and displacement. so we need to ensure that whatever plans we put in order will be community driven and ensure that we're protecting
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existing businesses but also attracting new businesses that will complement. i'm very proud to say over the last four years that i've been in office, we've gotten dozens of businesses to open up along the corridor. there's still a very high number of vacancies along broad-randolph, as well as mission and geneva. but we're continuing -- every day, one of the first things i did in the planning process was change the law to allow arrested programming, and -- art programming, and that allowed a few businesses to get in there, and we're going to continue to do that. >> thank you. john? >> one of the biggest questions we're facing is how do we revitalize our business corridor? we have the huge issue of amazon creating a zombie of our
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commercial corridors and our businesses around the world. one of the things that i want to do is looking at passing prop b. the votership process prop b so we can have a process of making sure our corridors are clean, and we're picking up garbage. i want to look at our empty spaces and use them effectively, doing mutual aid work, but also shared space that a lot of our immigrant businesses can operate in. our city nickels and dimes our small businesses, and i want to waive that when we are in this economic crisis. i also want to make sure that we create a grant program that supports businesses not just on mission and geneva, but also on broad and randolph streets. we want to make sure that we're building from the grassroots up
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and making sure that our metrics are being defined by the residents and not by the city. the city has a one-size-fits-all to support our businesses, and what works on divisadero doesn't work for us. >> thank you. and now we'll be going to the final question, and we'll start with ahsha. proposition 15 is the california state ballot measure that would change the method for assessing property taxes on commercial properties with the goal of creating additional funding for schools and local communities. if this proposition passes, and additional community funding becomes available, how would you propose that san francisco use the increased revenue? >> thank you.
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well, as a proud supporter of the san francisco labor council, i fully support prop 15 to change the split role tax. this will infuse millions of dollars into our schools and community. i think the first priority has to be the educational system, public education system. we would go to a process of working hand in hand with our school boards and community organizations. i also think there would have to be a conversation from our human rights commission, director sheryl davis, and looking at things through an equity lens. i think that's one of the things that i've been proud of during my time on the board of supervisors, as well, is ensuring that the office of racial equity is looking at things through that lens. one of the saddest things of covid right now has been
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expanding and enhancing the learning experiences for brala and brown communities. those schools that are underperforming, those schools that need the additional resources, and our educators would have the financial support that they need. >> thank you. john? >> yes, really important question. we're hoping that prop 15 passes, so vote for prop 15 all across the state of california. i'm proud to say that i'm endorsed by the united educators of san francisco who are teaching our students, they
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are our teachers and paras in san francisco. i agree, we need to be putting our greatest investments in our public education system and city college. city college will be a lynch pin for making sure that people are prepared for the recovery and we're building toward a sustainable future. how we're building industries with qualified trained workers who can help rebuild san francisco, our housing, our transit, to make sure that everything is working well. this is the housing of the future, and prop 15 can provide vital funding for that, as well. we also need to make sure that our department of public health has resources to protect people during the pandemic, and making sure that p.p.e. can be distributed well throughout our neighborhoods so that we can be protected against the spread, as well. those are areas that i would
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want to make sure that are funded with revenue from prop 15. >> thank you. marcelo? >> first of all, i think it needs to be used to support education during the pandemic, but people who love their jobs, they are about to go off unemployment and if we don't support those people [inaudible] in particular, they will be homeless. they will create a much wider [inaudible] we need to dump funding into people that need it the most. [inaudible] for the workers
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that are behind the desks, checking out who needs the help. it's a monumental task. we need to work together, we need to work with common sense, and we need to work hard to be able to approach this main issue. the money [inaudible] the money isn't there, so we need to use it wisely. thank you. >> thank you. now we come to the candidates' closing statements. we will do the closing statements in reverse alphabetical order, and remember that you have 90 seconds. the order will be marce marcelo colusi, john avalos, and ahsha safai.
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marcelo? >> thank you. [inaudible] almovote your hear vote who you believe in. [inaudible] but i am trying to change things for the better. [inaudible] if we don't do that, we're going to see the situation worse than what we have created today [inaudible] thank you very much for the opportunity. >> thank you. >> thank you for -- >> john? >> -- for this evening. it's been really great to share my experience and aspirations for elected office. you know, when i ran for reelection in 2012, i didn't have an opponent, and i really
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missed the opportunity to reconnect with people in my district, and i'm doing that now, and it's the most incredible experience in my life, most humbling experience i've ever had. i want to be a supervisor who can work with everyone, regardless of people's political point of view. i want to be a supervisor who can actually share the city's resources and the pulpit that we have together so that city hall can look after us and take care of our needs. i want to say i have the number one endorsement of the democratic party. i also have the sole endorsement of the district 11 democratic club. i'm supported by the nurses union number 1, health care
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workers number 1 and educators in our city college, and s.f. unified school district. these are voices that i want to -- organizations that i want to bring together to make sure that we have voices speaking that can represent us. i've served this district before, and i can do it again with your support. >> thank you. ahsha? >> thank you. as the current supervisor of district 11, this has been a wonderful four years. i'm very proud to say that we have made progress. when i ran office, i heard over and over again that people were tired of being treated like the forgeten peop forgotten people of san francisco. we've build homes, built a brand-new pool. we're building a brand-new housing.
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we're peop we've planted over 2,000 trees. no other part of san francisco comes close to that, and we're doing it on a daily basis. we've worked in collaboration with first mayor lee, and now mayor breed, and they have made district 11 a priority, and i feel it, and i hear it on a daily basis. when i first ran for office, i knocked on 7,000 doors. i'm not able to do that because of the pandemic, but i've spoken to many people over the past few months. i'm the sole endorsed candidate of san francisco labor council. i have speaker pelosi's sole support. i have congress woman dianne feinstein, along with the san francisco building trades, and i'm going to continue to fight for working people in the next four years if i' have i am -- f
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i'm reelected. thank you. >> thank you. on behalf of the league of women voters of san francisco, our thanks to our candidates for participating. and thanks for taking the time to inform yourself of the choices you need to make by november 3. please remember to register to vote if you aren't already registered and urge others to registered. if you've changed your name or you've moved, you need to register again at your new address. and if you'll be voting by mail this year, please be sure that your ballot will be counted by ensuring that your ballot is dropped off at your polling place before november 3. good evening.
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skbl. >> hello. i'm shawnna loghorn with the league of women voters. along with the league and sfgovtv, i'm here to discuss proposition b, a proposition
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that will be on the ballot and before the voters on november 3. the city has three departments tasked with cleaning tasks. the city administrator oversees the department of public works and appoints the director with the mayor's director. proposition b is a charter amendment that would create a department of sanitation and streets which would take over some of the duties of the department of public works. this new department of sanitation and streets would be responsible for sweeping streets and cleaning sidewalks, providing and maintaining sidewalk trash cans, removing graffiti and illegally dumped waste and maintaining city buildings, public rest rooms, and street trees. the department of public works would continue to provide all other services required by law. proposition b would create a five-member sanitation and streets commission to oversee
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the department of sanitation and streets as well as a five-member public works commission to oversee the department of public works. the mayor would select the directors of both departments. if you vote yes, you want to create a department of sanitation and streets with oversight from a sanitation and streets commission, and you want to establish a public works commission to oversee the department of public works. if you vote no, you do not want to make these changes. . >> i'm here with honey mahogany, a legislative aide with supervisor haney's office. we're also joined by lari m -- larry marso, an opponent of the measure. we're going to start with some opening statements, and we'll begin with honey. >> thank you so much for having
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us today. i think that as a native san franciscan, someone who grew up here, and a small business owner, it's become very clear to me that san francisco has really failed at keep our city clean the clean. there is trash all over the streets, some streets are covered with feces, and sometimes you can't find a bathroom when you need one. we've been working on how the city can better address this issu issue. what we found is the system that we have in place is broken. no matter how hard the workers at d.p.w. work, they're unable to get the streets clean
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because the system is ineffective. d.p.w. is too big, there isn't enough focus on the streets, and especially during the time of covid-19, sanitation's now more important than ever, so we are putting forward a new department of sanitation to effectively keep our streets clean, wash our sidewalks in our most busy corridors and also to establish commissions overboth d.p.w. and the department to ensure that both departments are accountable to the public. the commission will also set baseline standards for cleaning, something that really doesn't exist now under the current system. >> thank you, honey. now, larry? >> hi. please vote no on proposition b, which takes a $400 million san francisco agency and needlessly cuts it in half and politicizes what remains.
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it's the case chaos and paralysis that will worsen the squalor on our streets. san francisco has the political will to clean the streets. the board of supervisors does not. proposition b creates two new bureaucracies and injects politics into the department of public works. this is a failed model of oversight. we have over 100 boards and commissions in san francisco already. proposition b sets no clean streets standards. there's nothing in here that says we are going to deal with the needles, the syringes, the feces on the streets. it's not there. matt haney writes in his argument that they're in proposition b.
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there's nothing in proposition b that sets baseline standards. we need -- we need -- we need to address the fraud and waste in the department of public works. >> thank you, larry. that's 1.5 minutes, so we're going to go into questions now, and the first question will go to you, larry, and then honey, you'll have a chance to answer it. the question is the amendment would create a new department of sanitation and streets to perform duties that's currently performed by the department of public works. if that's the proposition, what's the argument for creating a new department? >> the city controller says it's going to cost upwards of $6 million a year.
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that's over 50 million in ten years. that's a lot of money. but if you look at the paid arguments for proposition b, you see a long list of public sector labor unions. the seiu and the san francisco labor locals representing the trades that engage in cleaning our streets and maintaining some of our parks. they're talking about we need more resources, we need more resources. they believe that this new structure, which is going to put the board of supervisors in the position of straiting political appointee -- placing political appointees into governing these agencies, they believe it will mean significantly higher spending. and nowhere do the proponents of proposition b stay straight to the san francisco people
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that this is a major spending increase. will it address any of the core issues of cleaning san francisco streets? not if it atdss drug addiction, homeless, and mental illness on our streets, the root of so much of our problem. >> thank you. the same question to you, honey. why create a new department? >> well, i would like to first address some factual inaccuracies in some of those statements. one, the measure does require the department to set public standards for cleaning. we want to hold community outreach to set those standards. there is a metric to address that. also, i do want to correct that the controller report says -- the updated controller report
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says this will be closer to $2.6 milli 2.6 million in costs to create this new department. the reason we have to create this new department is the current department is broken. there is not enough oversight over cleaning and sanitation in the current system. it is less than a quarter of what d.p.w. does. d.p.w. is a department with 1600 employees, and like you said, a $400 million budget. less than a quarter is dedicated to cleaning. we feel like a metro city in san francisco where tourism is its number one industry, we need to have a focus on cleaning with metrics that are created in a very transparent manner, a method for us to have feedback, and for the public to have feedback, and again, really providing some very close oversight and accountability for a department that, up until now, really
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hasn't had any. >> thank you, honey. our second question, and it'll start with you, honey, is again, about the cost. the office of the controller states that this amendment, in the report that i read, ranged from 2$2.5 to $6 million annually. honey corrected that it will be just over $2 million. do we think this is the right way to spend the extra money on sanitation or is there another way that is perhaps more beneficial? >> you know, $2.6 million is a very small -- it's less than a percent -- or a fraction of a percent of the city's current budget. it's a small amount of revenue that the city would generate through improvement to its business districts. it has been very public how
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we've been criticized by -- all over the world, really, for our filthy streets. the travel industry has been impacted, our hotel industry has been impacted, so those are our biggest industries for our city. so for the city to spend $2 million on an issue that we haven't been able to fix in decades is nothing. i will note that the legislation actually also reduces duplication in terms of staffing by putting some of the staffing as shared with d.p.w. for the back end, which larry referred to earlier, and it also required city administrator to also provide that support. so the additional hiring is really minimal. there is some costs for the commissions, but again, the controller actually -- the f.b.i. and the scandal
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recommended that supervision be placed over d.p.w., so it is good governance. it'll put a commission over d.p.w., and it'll also put a commission over the department of sanitation and streets to oversee them. >> okay. larry, same question to you. >> since 2014, the portion of department of public works spending on cleaning our streets has doubled. if you look around you, do you see that our streets are cleaner? spending money is not the solution to cleaning our streets when we have significant significant endemic root causes of drug abuse and mental illness on our streets. the department of public works, if it's split in half, it's
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going to generate more costs than simply what the controller has documented. there are duplications of band-end services -- back-end services. okay. but why are the biggest unions in san francisco pouring money into this measure? they're doing so because they're looking for higher pay and more hiring. >> sorry. i have to cut you off there as time is up for questions, but we're going to move into closing statements, and we will start with honey. >> thank you so much. it's funny because i think larry and i agree that we've been pumping money into d.p.w., and things haven't gotten any better. in fact, things have gotten worse, and that is why we're establishing the department of sanitation and streets because the current system is broken.
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we're going to be providing accountability, setting baseline standards. i have to say the reason why so many labor unions are behind this is we figured out a solution that would work for everybody. it's not about raising salaries for anything like that. these are hard working san franciscans, people who really care about their city and want to be proud of their city and the work they do, and they know best how to address this problem because they're dealing with it every day. so we're proud to have worked with them, to provide this measure of accountability to provide safer, cleaner streets, trash cans that will work, access to more rest rooms. more green infrastructure which has been sorely lacking. and, again, public accountability and a real focus on street cleaning. so i'm very proud of the measure, and i implore san franciscans, if you want to see
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our travel industry be reinvigorated, our children and familied supported by the picking up of needles and keeping our streets clean, then please vote yes on proposition b. >> thank you, honey. closing statements from larry, please. >> proposition b will politicize the department of public works. that's why i and a number of centrist politicians and organizations are opposed to proposition b, on the board of supervisors, supervisor sandra fewer voted no, raff vel mandelman voted now, more man yee, voted no, catherine steph he knee voted no. the ed lee democratic club says no. the sfgop says no. you have people across the
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political spectrum who recognize that this is going to increase costs significantly while at the same time inducing chaos in public services, paralysis in the cleaning of our streets. uncertainty at a time that san francisco needs to be smart and focused in how it spends its money, how it raises its money, and to address the real causes of what we see going on in our streets. matt haney does not represent a common sense approach on homelessness, drug abuse, or mental illness. i have tried to bring these solutions myself to a citizen ballot measure on the regulation of navigation centers. the entire ballot you're seeing was put together by the board of supervisors. no one could even collect
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signatures under shelter in place to propose alternative measures, as i tried to do. >> thank you, larry. thank you very much both for your comments and for your time. we hope that this discussion has been informative. for more information, please visit the san francisco elections website at sfelections.org. this year, every person in california will be mailed a ballot starting on october 5. you may drop off your vote by mail ballot in person starting on october 5 in the city hall voting center located outside of bill graham city auditorium 8:00 a.m. through 5:00 p.m. you may drop off your ballot at your voting center for the two
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weekends before voting day, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. thank you.
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>> san francisco voters may vote for local and state candidates and ballot measures, as well as federal candidates. proposition g is a charter amendment that would allow san francisco residents to vote for locate the candidates and local ballot measures if those residents are u.s. citizens at least 16 years old and registered to vote. local candidates include candidates for city offices, the board of education, and the community college board of trustees. if you vote yes, you want to amend the charter to allow san francisco residents to vote for local candidates and ballot measures if they are at least 16 years old and registered to vote. if you vote no, you do not want
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to make this change. i'm here with chair achung, a proponent of the measure. we'll also joined by ricky green burg. a political commentator who is an opponent of the measure. thank you for being here. >> -- when you are a16, this is a much better age to start the lifelong habit of voting, and you can make the informed decision with the support of teachers, peers, and families.
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allowing 16 and 17-year-olds to vote will make it more likely that they will continue voting as older adults. additionally, 16 and 17 year olds care and will use their vote. 16 and 17 year olds are the ones organizing major protests throughout the city such as the mission high school and golden gate bridge protests, and they continue to carry this momentum, organizing and holding elected officials accountable. in cities, such as tacoma park in maryland, the voter turn out rate of 16 and 17-year-olds is double the rate of the general
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electorate. >> thank you, sarah. we're going to move to ritchie for our opening statements. >> thank you so much for having me. prop g is asking the questions, should 16 and 17 year olds be allowed to vote in city elections? voters should reject this as being a nonserious question this election day. there are three real factors in what we need to consider: legality, the maturity, and the effects of social indoctrinatetion in school and social media. 16 and 17 year olds are still children in the eyes of the law and incapable of performing many tasks that we can do as adults. children cannot sign contracts. they cannot purchase a rent a car, own a house, own a
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business. how can we let teens vote on such important issues such as property taxes, changes to city government operations? the concept of teen voting is absurd. the second idea of maturity, that often, we see through research and reports from psychologists, that cognitive functions, functions rational decision making are not developed until the mid20's, and the third is social justice indoctrination in schools are being pushed by the curriculum, so for those issues, we should vote no. >> thank you, ritchie. i think both of you touched on this, but we'll start with you, ritchie. 16 and 18 are just two years apart, so why do you believe that these two years do or don't make a difference? >> well, there's two ways to
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look at it. in a maturity way, there's some 16 year olds -- i know someone or my next-door neighbor or my brother or my sister is so much more mature, but i already touched on this in my introduction is legality. 18 years old is the age of the majority. it's the age that society and the laws have been written to say that this is the point that now, you can function as an adult. we trust you at this point. there has to be some time, some age that we start. you can't keep getting lower and lower and lower, and 18 has been what has been the established for all the legality for signing contracts, joining the army, and more. >> same question to you, sarah.
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why 16? >> like i mentioned in my opening statement, when you're 18, you're in a time transition, you're going off to college, you're moving away, and this becomes very difficult to figure out how to register to vote or registration to vote or going to vote can become on the back burner. when you're 16, you're learning about civics and u.s. history, and this makes an ideal time to learn about voting for the first time, and you're supported by peers and family and teachers to make that decision. actually, 16 year olds have the same political knowledge as 21 year olds. when you're 16, you have something called cold could cognition, and this is the thinking process necessary for
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voting. hot cognition is the more spur of the moment thinking, which is not fully developed when you're 16. voting is more on the cold cognition. >> thank you. >> yeah, of course. >> and we're going to do the second question, and it's going to go to you, sarah, first. >> so a second message was put before the voters in 2016 and did not pass. four years later, however, san francisco faces new challenges, and we are revisiting the idea of youth voting, why do you believe now is the time for this measure to pass? >> well, i think that especially what's been going on politically in the past four years has made it so that young people feel very spurred to take action. like i mentioned, youth are at the action of so many social justice movements that have
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arisen the last few years, such as the black lives matter movement or climate justice. young people are continuing to fight and hold elected officials account. but we see that young people are continuing to demand action from elected officials for years on and for years on because as cliche as it sounds, it is most definitely our future, so 16 and 17 year olds are taking action in a way that we haven't seen them taking action in the past. we can see that 16 and 17-year-olds care about issues and how they affect us. >> same question to you, ritchie. this was voted down fairly recently, so why do you think that it's not the time to take
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this up? >> it's time to put this to rest and never bring it up again. holding officials accountable has nothing to do with teen voting, has nothing to do with climate action, has nothing to do with black lives matter. what we really need to look at is the indoctrination of children in school. social justice is not the way to run elections. we have students in school, including that teachers that bring their kids out of class to participate in protests and marches is not a way to teach civics. it's not a way to rationally show both sides or more than one side to an argument. we see over and over again that there's the indoctrination. the children don't know what their protesting, and we don't
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need this. >> currently, the 16 and 17-year-old population in san francisco is did he dominantly people of color. allowing 16 and 17 years old to vote will help ensure that young people of color are represented in our democracy. additionally, 16 and 17 years old should get a say about issues that affect us. under covid-19, 16 and 17 years old are the most impacted as they have many responsibilities. on top of education, they also take care of household duties and can get a job and pay taxes, some even taking on jobs of essential workers. 13% of grocery store workers
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are groce 16 and 17 years old. also, this is not a new idea. there are 14 cities in the u.s. that allow 16 and 17 years o-y to vote. [please stand by]
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>> we can't have that. right now the children should be working on doing good in school, their studies, and preparing for college. we should not be allowing them to vote. please vote no on proposition g. >> thank you for your comments and for your time. we have -- we hope this discussion has been informative. for more information on this and other measures in this year's election, please visit the san francisco elections website. this year, all registered voters in california will be mailed a vote by mail ballot starting on october 5th. if you plan to return your ballot by mail, your ballot return envelope must be postmarked by-election day, tuesday, november 3rd." alternatively, you may drop off your ballot in person starting october 5th at the city hall voting center located outside of the auditorium monday through friday, 8:00 a.m. through 5:00 p.m. you can also drop off your
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ballot at the voting center on the two weekends before election day from 10:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m. make sure to vote in person at one of the 588 locations across the city or at city hall on tuesday, november 3rd. thank you. [♪] >> clerk: at the controls is the board legal clerk, and legal assistant. i'm julie rosenberg, the board's executive director. we will also be joined by representatives from the city departments that will be