San Francisco School Board Notes

School Board Notes 1.16.07

By Nicole Achs Freeling
GreatSchools.net Correspondent

• Committee Considers Prop. H Plan
• Task Force Presents Small Schools Policy
• District Launches Parcel Tax Initiative
• Meetings to Start an Hour Earlier

Committee Considers Prop. H Plan

School board members on Tuesday night considered a plan submitted by the Community Advisory Committee on how to spend the $20 million the district will receive this year in Prop. H funds. The board, meeting as the Committee of the Whole, also considered a plan outlined by the superintendent’s office on how the money could be spent.

The board will vote to adopt a Prop H spending plan at its next meeting, January 23. Copies of the CAC’s proposal can be obtained on the Web .

The CAC reviewed the superintendent’s proposal in developing its spending plan and included most of staff’s recommendations and requests. However, there were several areas where the two differed significantly. The CAC recommended some allocations not included in the superintendent's proposal, including:

• $1.65 million for violence prevention, with site allocations of $50,000 for each middle and high school. The site council would work in conjunction with the students to determine how to allocate the funds, and would solicit proposals from community-based organizations such as YouthSpeaks, a youth newspaper, and United Playaz, a performing arts program. The CAC also recommended expanding the peer resources programs at secondary schools to include six additional schools. The superintendent’s request did not include funds for violence prevention, and sought only to maintain the existing peer resources programs already established through Prop. H.
• $600,000 for translation services, which would allow for hiring more interpreters, translation of school and district notices, and expanding translation services to other languages, including Russian and Samoan, from only Spanish and Chinese. The superintendent’s proposal recommended $125,000 for the purpose of expanding translation.
• $770,000 to support adding wellness centers, which provide nursing care, counseling and peer resources, at four additional high schools so that every high school in the district would have one. The superintendent’s proposal sought three wellness centers for $577,500 and would leave one school, Washington High School, without one.

The CAC spending plan also left out some funds in the superintendent’s proposal, including:

• A computer replacement program requested by the superintendent that would have provided updated computers for teachers, classrooms and computer labs at the high school level.
• A request for a district-wide assessment system to gauge student progress.
• Half the $1.4 million the superintendent had requested to acquire 10 math and language arts coaches to support teachers in improving instructional practice.

Superintendent Gwen Chan expressed concern that the CAC had rejected significant allocations for academic support and placed them instead in violence prevention and peer resources programs. In particular, district staff emphasized the need for math and language coaches, computer replacement and a district-wide assessment program. The district has recently failed to make adequate yearly progress under the No Child Left Behind law because of the achievement gap between the minority students and the district as a whole. A staff representative said coaching has been effective in helping teachers better serve under-performing students.

The staff also said that the high school computers are outdated and can’t support programs the schools would like to offer students.

Committee members, for their part, said that in public meetings, that they had heard over and over again the need for violence prevention and peer resources.

“If there was anything we heard over and above anything else it was the value of peer resources to the youth,” said Prop. H CAC member Sandra Fewer, who works with Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth.

Community meetings also elicited strong testimony about the need for increased translation services for non English-speaking parents. A large contingent of immigrant parents appeared at the meeting to appeal — in languages including Chinese, Spanish and Samoan — for services that would enable them to better communicate with teachers and the district. Parents told of the many complications that arose from not being able to read letters sent from the school, as well as the frustration of not being able to actively participate in their children’s academic progress. One parent said she almost missed an opportunity to enroll her daughter in a gifted program because she couldn’t read the letter informing her that her daughter qualified. Another parent at Tenderloin Community School spoke of panic among parents at the largely ELL school after a student died suddenly as a result of a viral infection. Parents couldn’t read the letters sent home and didn’t know whether a critical risk had been posed their children.

Such testimony had prompted the CAC to support the recommendation of $600,000, a figure put forth by immigrant advocacy groups. District staff said its lower $125,000 figure came from consultation with its translation staff about how much it would cost to increase translation services. The district currently spends $375,000 on Spanish and Chinese translation services.

Task Force Presents Small Schools Policy

The Small Schools Task Force made a presentation pitching the value of small schools and presenting a draft policy for how the district could support and develop small schools by design. The small schools initiative seeks to boost student achievement through smaller student populations, more personalized instruction and, in some cases, unique curriculum approaches. It is largely aimed at closing the achievement gap between the district as a whole and English language learners and students of color. It also seeks to create high-quality schools that will help retain and attract students to the district, whose enrollment has been declining.

The task force was chartered by the district last June to develop a policy framework for supporting small schools; it comprises SFUSD staff working at existing small schools, as well as parents, students, district staff, union representatives and community-based organizations. The group’s draft policy lays out how the district would define small schools, how schools could become eligible to join the initiative, as well as how they would be funded, staffed, assessed and held accountable. It also outlines the district’s role in supporting the schools.

The policy was drafted by the task force in collaboration with district staff. Copies can be obtained by contacting district representative Mary Richards at (415) 355-7323. The policy will be presented to the full board for first reading at it next meeting, Jan. 23. It will then be forwarded to at least two committees. Board members would then revise the draft or give it back to the task force or district staff to revise before it comes before making a final vote.

District Launches Parcel Tax Initiative

The district is drawing up plans for a parcel tax that would raise money to increase pay for educators and other staff.

The tax would seek to raise funds to achieve the following:

• Raise the salary schedule to be a more competitive district.
• Provide financial incentives to attract teachers to hard-to-staff subjects and schools.
• Provide greater and more consistent professional development.
• Provide increased support through classroom aides and teaching materials.

No timeline has been developed yet for the tax. Board President Mark Sanchez said: “The need is so immediate, I would want this to go forward in November.” Timing, however, would also be based in part on the period needed to build public support, board members said. One next step will be polling to gauge public opinion on the measure.

Meetings to Start an Hour Earlier

The committee decided to move the start time for general meetings (held the second and fourth Tuesdays of the month) from 7 p.m. to 6 p.m. starting with the February 12 meeting. The change was made so that the meetings, which often stretch until close to midnight, could end earlier. The committee also agreed to hold its closed session meetings the Thursdays before the general meetings. Closed session meetings are currently held before the general meetings, and often delay the start of the meeting.

School Board Notes 1.9.2007

By Nicole Achs Freeling
GreatSchools.net Correspondent

• New Members Take Seats, Yee Joins By Phone
• Sanchez Lays Out Policy Goals
• Bayview Dream Schools Reconfigured
• Bus Drivers Slapped with Health Cost Hike

New Members Take Seats, Yee Joins By Phone

The first board meeting of 2007 began with three brand new members — Hydra Mendoza, Kim-Shree Maufus and Jane Kim — and one empty seat, that of 2006 Board President Norman Yee, who is in the hospital after being hit by a car on December 26.

Yee was hit while crossing the street at Fourth and Bryant streets. He in stable condition after two spinal surgeries and is "in good spirits," according to a statement from him read by Commissioner Jill Wynns. Yee participated briefly in the meeting, speaking by phone from his hospital bed, to nominate Commissioner Mark Sanchez as president. Yee was elected as vice president.

Sanchez Lays Out Policy Goals

After his nomination was unanimously approved, Sanchez laid out his list of priorities. They included:

• "Focus on the neediest... The ones that haven't been part of the success story." African-American students in particular, he said, had shown a marked lack of progress over the last few years, and the district needed to determine ways to address that.
• Implement more "small schools by design," facilities with small student bodies and a focus on personalized learning.
• Look at student assignment not only to desegregate the school system, but the schools themselves. "Some of these schools may look integrated by the numbers, but if you look in the classroom, it's totally divided by race," he said. "If we're going to integrate, we need real integration and not the apartheid that's existing right now."
• Look at getting board members compensated so they can "do the job (they) need to do." Currently, board members get paid $500 a month. Most hold full-time jobs in addition to board service, which, Sanchez admitted, doesn't always leave time to fully research the issues before them.
• Add committees, such as a personnel committee to work on the search for a new superintendent and a labor committee to work with bargaining units and attempt to avoid conflicts such as those that almost provoked teacher and employee strikes last year.
• Start meetings earlier and end them earlier. He proposed beginning the meetings at 6 p.m. and shifting closed session meetings to a different day so the regular meetings start on time.

Bayview Dream Schools Reconfigured

The board voted to

• Keep Charles Drew as a K-3 academy
• Change Willie Brown from a 4-6 to a 4-8 school
• Close Gloria R. Davis (currently a 7-9 school) or move it to an alternate location, where it would become a 9-12 school

The board heard public testimony from Davis supporters — as well as impassioned outbursts from the audience, which included over a dozen uniformed members of the Gloria R. Davis marching band. Community members spoke of the success and impact of the Dream Schools, special programs designed to serve under-performing communities with longer hours and Saturday sessions, uniforms and a rigorous academic curriculum to push students to succeed. Community members also spoke about the importance of continuing to have a high school within the Bayview community, and urged the district to establish Gloria R. Davis as a separate academy housed at nearby Thurgood Marshall High School.

Board members supported the idea, directing staff to explore how it might be achieved and find out how many students would chose that option over going to other high schools. In the meantime, so the students can participate in the Round 1 enrollment lottery January 19, the board voted to give Davis students their first choice of high schools for 2007-08. If students wish to apply to Lowell, they can still be considered (the deadline was in December), although they would have to meet the school's academic standards.

Bus Drivers Slapped With Health Cost Hike

A week before Christmas vacation, the district's school bus drivers were told they would be facing increases in health insurance costs of up to 500 percent when school started again in January. For a family with children, the cost deducted from employees' paychecks soared from about $60 to $450, said school bus driver Brock Estes. The bus drivers believe the last-minute notice about the increase violates their contract. Estes said Laidlaw, the company that employs the drivers, has refused to expedite arbitration, which means it could take eight to 10 months for the issue to be settled, and the money will continue to be deducted from employees' pay.

Although the district contracts with Laidlaw for transportation services and has limited ability to influence the issue, Estes urged the board to ask Laidlaw to expedite arbitration and settle the issue quickly. The San Francisco bus drivers have an outstanding safety record, Estes pointed out at a previous meeting: Each year, about 75 children are killed on, entering or exiting school buses. "The rate for San Francisco over the last 35 years we've been providing bus service is zero."

School Board Notes 12.12.06

• Board OKs Sweeping Language Initiative
• District Squeezed By Charter Schools Seeking Space
• Exiting Board Members Offer Parting Thoughts
• 2007-08 School Calendar Adopted
• Board Chooses Firm to Head Superintendent Search

Board OKs Sweeping Language Initiative

In an ambitious plan backed by the school board Tuesday night, SFUSD will aim to give very student in the district the opportunity to be a bilingual or multilingual graduate.

The board passed a unanimous resolution calling for the superintendent to draft a 21-member Blue Ribbon Task Force comprising parents, teachers, school planners, language experts, employee groups, business organizations and civic leaders to develop models for achieving this goal. The resolution also calls for the superintendent to use these findings to develop a plan for multilingual education, which will be presented to the board by Oct 1 of next year.

"This would not necessary be an all-immersion model," said Commissioner Dan Kelly, who authored the resolution along with Commissioners Norman Yee and Eric Mar. Immersion programs are expected to play a big part, however. The resolution builds on one passed earlier this year that called for expanding the district's popular two-way immersion programs and creating programs that could serve upper as well as lower grades.

The initiative approved Tuesday seeks not only to serve native English speakers, but also to help non-native speakers become English proficient while receiving a level of instruction equal to that of their English-speaking peers. The task force will work in concert with the district's Bilingual Community Council, which recently issued a report saying that English language learners are not being adequately served by the district's programs.

The move, board members said, could be an opportunity for the district to create a model for multilingual instruction with wide-ranging influence. "This is really cutting against the grain of an English-only wave that is going on in this country," Mar observed.

An obvious obstacle is funding such a large-scale effort at a time when the district faces dire budgetary constraints. "We're going to aggressively seek out external funding sources," Mar said. "We'll use every means at our disposal to find funds to pay for this program."

District Squeezed By Charter Schools Seeking Space

The district is scrambling to respond to an unusually large number of requests for facilities by new and existing charter schools, and may have to force many under-enrolled district schools to share their space, according to a board discussion Tuesday night.

Under Proposition 39, a voter initiative approved in 2000, the district is legally required to provide facilities to approved charters equivalent to those provided to students at traditional public schools. The charters in turn pay rent for the space.

This year, the district is facing requests from five existing schools representing about 1,700 students and four newly formed charters. The district has until April 1 to find a home for these schools.

They include:

Existing Schools

• City Arts and Tech High School (391 students)
• Metropolitan Arts and Tech High School (303 students)
• Kipp Bayview Academy, a fifth- to eighth-grade school (265 students)
• Edison Elementary School (401 students)
• Leadership High School (360 students)

New Schools

• Bayview Essential School of Music, Art and Social Justice
• Bay Area Technology Charter School
• Sputnik Math, Science and Language Academy
• Aim High Community School

"We're probably not going to be able to provide stand-alone facilities in response to all these requests," Yee said. "There is a strong possibility more schools are going to need to be merging. We should really start telling the community this is going to happen."

Sites mentioned as possible homes for the charters included DeAvila, which was closed a few years ago and is currently leased by City College; Treasure Island, which closed last year; and Newcomer's existing site if the city is unable to lease it, as hoped. Schools that could be adapted to co-house charters include Mission High School, Balboa High School, Denman Middle School and Everett Middle School, according to David Golden, facilities director. Board members also cited Malcolm X and Gloria R. Davis Academy as possible charter locations, if those schools are closed.

Exiting Board Members Offer Parting Thoughts

In their last meeting before new members are sworn in January, departing board members Dan Kelly, Sarah Lipson and Eddie Chin thanked their colleagues, the staff and the community, and offered thoughts about their respective tenures on the board.

"I'm very proud of our proud of the quality of our schools," said Lipson, who has served four years on the board. "I wish the media would focus more on that." Lipson said if she could give any advice to the new board members, "it would be ... agree to disagree respectfully. We had trouble with that a couple of years ago and it's taken us a long time to rebuild our credibility."

Eddie Chin, who has been on the board eight years, specifically thanked the interim superintendent, Gwen Chan, "for your exemplary leadership through the hardships and difficult times of the last year." He assured the public, "I'll still be around, doing public service if not holding public office."

The most senior member of the board, Dan Kelly, who has served for the last 15 years, praised San Francisco's role as a national leader in school policy, with such initiatives as small class size, restoring arts programs to elementary school, the weighted student formula, site-based budgeting, and even "our innovated consent decree, that highlighted student achievement as the real issue." Kelly said the credit lay not only with the board: "We're just the foam on the very big wave that is the progressive thought and positive influence of the people of San Francisco. We've been very fortunate to be the voice of this community to the nation and to push the rest of the nation to follow San Francisco values."

Lipson and Chin had not sought re-election; Kelly was unsuccessful in his bid for a fifth term. In January, newly elected commissioners Jane Kim, Hydra Mendoza and Kim Shree-Maufus will join the board.

2007-08 School Calendar Adopted

The calendar for the school year starting next fall is as follows:

• Aug. 27: First day of instruction
• Sept. 3: Labor Day (School closed)
• Oct. 8: Columbus/Indigenous People's Day/Dia de la Raza (School closed)
• Nov. 12: Veterans Day (School closed)
• Nov. 21 – 23: Thanksgiving recess
• Dec. 17 – Jan. 01: Winter break
• Jan. 21: Martin Luther King, Jr. Day (School closed)
• Jan. 24 Last day of fall semester
• Jan. 25: Semester break
• Feb. 7: Lunar New Year (School closed)
• Feb. 8: Professional development day (School closed)
• Feb. 18: Presidents Day (School closed)
• March 24 – 28: Spring break
• Mar. 31: Cesar Chavez Day (School closed)
• May 26: Memorial Day (School closed)
• June 13: Spring semester ends, last day of school

In a related matter, the board voted to close schools on the nearest Monday or Friday when Lunar New Year falls on a weekend. Currently, schools close only when the holiday falls during the week.

Board Chooses Firm to Head Superintendent Search

After receiving proposals from five executive search firms and interviewing three, the board chose to hire the firm Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates to lead its search for a new superintendent. The ad hoc committee charged with interviewing the firms had recommended two: California School Board Association which, according to Eric Mar, was seen as having a better sense of the board and of the district's diverse nature, and Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates, which is a national, more experienced firm and was seen as having a wider geographic reach.

School Board Notes 11.28.06

• Diversity Index Not Diversifying, Report Says
• Proposal Would Add Race/Ethnicity as a Factor
• Community Input Gathered for Long-Range Plan

Diversity Index Not Diversifying, Report Says

As the Board of Education considers changing the method of assigning students to schools, including adding race as a factor, it met as the Committee of the Whole last night and heard a presentation from the staff about segregation in the district.

The school choice process by which families list their seven most desired schools was meant to provide equal access to the best schools for diverse groups of students. However, data staff presented revealed troubling issues related to race.

The numbers of families who chose to participate in the choice process varies significantly by ethnic group. Five percent of Chinese-American students don't participate, compared to 15 percent of white students, 32 percent of Latino students, and 50 percent of African-American students.

In addition, the schools families chose varies by ethnic group. The most requested elementary school for African Americans is Drew; for Chinese Americans, Lawton; for Latino, Buena Vista; and for Caucasians, Lilienthal. Not one of the most requested elementary schools is common across all racial and ethnic groups.

The result, district data showed, is that the applicant pool for each school is not racially and ethnically diverse.

• 44 percent (43 schools out of 97) of the schools had applicant pools of more than 45 percent of any single ethnic group. The district considers any school that has more than 45 percent of any single ethnic group to be segregated.
• 22 percent (21 schools) had applicant pools of more than 60 percent of one racial or ethnic group.

"The diversity index is not designed to optimize racial/ethnic diversity and it doesn't, especially when the applicant pool already has high concentrations of single racial/ethnic groups requesting specific schools," the staff report stated.

The report also noted that 17 percent of the students who apply in the first round of the process do not go on to become SFUSD students, even though half of these students received their first-choice school. Attrition rates are highest among white families: 36 percent of white families participating in the first round did not go on to enroll in SFUSD.

Proposal Would Add Race/Ethnicity as a Factor

The meeting was called in part to discuss a board proposal to modify the student assignment method that would, among other changes, include race a factor. The proposal was withdrawn from the agenda at the last meeting because some board members felt further discussion was needed. At last night's meeting, Commissioners Eric Mar and Eddie Chin voiced their support for the proposal and urged that it be introduced at the next regular meeting, on December 12.

"This may not be perfect, but we have to move as quickly as we can and see if we can put ethnicity back in student assignment," Chin said.

The proposed resolution directs the district to take steps including:

• Add race and ethnicity as a factor in the student assignment lottery
• Create a working group to recommend changes to the admissions process for Lowell High School and SOTA High School that would ensure equitable opportunities for students with diverse backgrounds to attend the schools and increase the diversity of the enrollment
• Work with the Omega Group, a consulting firm, to examine current attendance area boundaries
• Review and revise the transportation system in a manner consistent with the goals of the student assignment method

Community Input Gathered for Long Range Plan

As part of its comprehensive plan to revise student assignment and stanch declining enrollment, the board initiated a community engagement effort headed by the Parent Advisory Council to gather input from stakeholders. The PAC reported last night on the results of its efforts thus far.

The PAC will continue to hold community meetings through December and January. It will analyze the findings and prepare a final report by early March. The staff will present a long-range plan to the board sometime later that month.

So far, the PAC has held 50 meetings, and spoken with 500 community members, including 100 youth. PAC members said it was premature to offer detail on the opinions they were hearing. They did report, however, that community members wanted a say in the process but that many people were skeptical their input was going to be used.

The meetings are small groups of about 10 people and involve concentrated, detailed discussions of what people want from schools and how people make decisions regarding which schools to attend. The groups have included parents of school-age children, including those who go to private or charter schools; parents of preschoolers and toddlers; teachers; youth; and San Francisco residents who are not parents.

The meetings will continue to be held for the next two months. Those interested in participating may contact any of the following people:

• Gentle Blythe, director of the Office of Public Outreach, at (415) 241-6565 or blytheg@sfusd.edu
• Ruth Grabowski of the Parent Advisory Council at pac@sfusd.edu
• Katie Albright of the San Francisco Education Fund at getinvolved@sfedfund.org

School Board Notes 10.24.06

By Nicole Achs Freeling
GreatSchools.net Correspondent

• District to Implement Family Diversity Curriculum
• District Financials Presented
• Recommendations for Improving Bilingual Education

District to Implement Family Diversity Curriculum
The board unanimously passed a resolution to incorporate discussion of family diversity and LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) tolerance into health education for K-8. While the district currently has a policy to include discussion of these issues, a lot of schools have not been consistently teaching them, according to reports from educators in the district.

The resolution adopted Tuesday seeks to:

• Ensure approved materials are available at every school, and for every student.
• Integrate the family diversity curriculum into the overall program, so that it is taught throughout the school year and reinforced, rather than just discussed once.
• Establish a task force to recommend teaching materials to support this curriculum. The task force will make a report to the board in May 2007.
• Establish a system for each school to document that it is teaching the lessons as intended.

SFUSD includes many children from alternative families; the resolution was designed to ensure these students feel safe and welcome, according to its authors, Commissioners Dan Kelly, Mark Sanchez and Sarah Lipson.

District Financials Presented
For the first time in many years, the district was able to submit its unaudited financial statements for 2005-06 to the state ahead of the statutory deadline. Getting the documents in on time lends credibility to the district’s finances, avoids a $10,000 fine and allows the district more time to begin addressing problem areas, said Chief Financial Officer Joseph Grazioli

Grazioli went over information he presented to the board’s Budget Committee last week. He outlined some areas for concern, specifically:

• Costs of the so-called “Fund Five,” which governs special education funds. It will be very important, he said, for the district to try to control costs in this area and keep down encroachments (money from the general fund that must be used to cover shortfalls).
• Child development's $3.7 million encroachment, rather than the $700,000 budgeted.
• Student nutrition's $800,000 encroachment, rather than the $0 estimated.
• The district's unfunded liability in workers compensation of $26 million (Commissioner Jill Wynns noted it would take long-term planning by the board to address this problem.).

Recommendations for Improving Bilingual Education
Reporting from the Committee as a Whole meeting in which the Bilingual Community Council addressed board members, Lipson outlined several areas of need in bilingual education and teaching English language learners.

These included:

• A need to meet regularly with the BCC (Before last month, it had been two years since the BCC addressed the board.).
• A need for an articulated process to measure whether programs were being implemented and if they are succeeding.
• A focus on credentialing and recruitment of qualified bilingual teachers.
• An overall master plan for bilingual education.

School Board Notes 10.10.06

By Nicole Achs Freeling
GreatSchools.net Correspondent

• Rash of School Violence Reported
• Burton Cuts Blamed on Poor Enrollment
• Programs for Deaf, Hearing-Impaired Detailed
• Board Supports Proposition 1D

Rash of School Violence Reported
School resource officers, the police officers assigned to schools, have been busy this year, responding to a rash of assaults and robberies, Lt. Colleen Fatooh, the resource officers' liaison with the district, told the S.F. school board last night.

There has been a wave of incidents in which students attack and beat another student while a classmate associated with the attackers records the incident on a cell phone camera, presumably for bragging rights. "We've had five or six this week alone," Fatooh said. But, she added, "At least these kids are getting caught so the victims aren't afraid to come to school." She also said there have been numerous iPod thefts and an increase in fights, especially among young women.

Providing the board with a breakdown of last year's arrests, Fatooh reported 219 arrests last year involving students on school grounds or traveling to and from school, mostly for robbery, battery, vandalism and aggravated assault. There have also been incidents of weapons possession. Forty-four percent of those arrested were African American, 8 percent were Latino, 6 percent were Asian, 9 percent were Caucasian and 13 percent were Pacific Islander.

The off-campus incidents largely occurred at bus stops and on Muni lines. Certain lines are particularly problematic, Fatooh said. These include the San Bruno Avenue corridor; the stop at 16th Street and Utah headed to Potrero Hill; the 47 line and Van Ness corridor; the 22 Fillmore bus; and the J Church line.

Commissioner Dan Kelly said he was concerned about the disconnect between the number of students arrested at school and the much lower number that came before the board for expulsion. He asked if the staff failing to take administrative action or the presence of officers raising the level of response to schoolyard fights.

Fatooh said officers had neither the time nor desire to arrest kids for schoolyard fights. "These are not little incidents. We've had a couple of kids go away in ambulances," she said. "When there's a clear aggressor and someone has to go to the hospital or is beaten up pretty bad, that's when an arrest is made."

Board member Mark Sanchez asked that the district look at how community-based organizations such as conflict resolution programs could work with the administrators and resource officers to address some of the less serious problems and reduce the reliance on police.

Burton Cuts Blamed on Poor Enrollment
Several teachers and programs were cut at Burton High School virtually overnight seven weeks into the school year, several Burton families reported. Students received notices yesterday that their schedules had been revised, some of their teachers moved to other schools and some of their programs eliminated, said Burton student Filmer Yu. Students arrived in class to find instructors they'd never seen before. Among the programs dropped was an orchestra that had grown to include some 150 kids, who would show up at 7 a.m., an hour before school began, to participate, Yu said. The instructor, who had shared time between Burton and Visitacion Valley Middle School, is now exclusively at Visitacion Valley.

Burton is one of 15 schools with enrollment well below what was projected in the spring. It is 254 students short of the number expected. District staff said making the projections was often difficult and was unclear on the reasons for the shortfall, other than that parents had chosen to go to different schools or to leave the district entirely.

Programs for Deaf, Hearing-Impaired Detailed
The district is implementing several programs for deaf and hearing-impaired students, according to a report presented by program administrator Pam Macy.

Among the goals are to developing a continuum of services for toddlers through 12th-graders who are deaf or hearing-impaired that will include magnet programs for these students. Magnet programs were launched this year at Cesar Chavez, Claire Lilienthal, and Lafayette elementary schools; Aptos and Lilienthal middle schools; and John O'Connell High School. 

The department is also implementing a new toddler program for 18- to 36-month-olds, which opens October 2007 at Tule Elk Child Development Center. It is also looking to implement pre-K programs by next August, but the locations have not been identified.

Other goals include streamlining enrollment so students can access the magnet programs and recruiting staff trained to serve this population. The special education department will continue to hold quarterly meetings to gather input from parents. The next meetings are December 12; March 6, 2007; and June 5, 2007.

Board Supports Proposition 1D
The board approved a resolution in support of Proposition 1D, a $10.4 billion bond issue on the November ballot to provide funding to repair older California public schools and ease overcrowding. The proposition could provide almost $20 million of support for projects in SFUSD's 2003 bond program, as well as $30 million for the proposed 2006 bond program. Proposition 1D bond funds can be used for earthquake retrofits, playground safety, asbestos removal and updating old structures.

School Board Notes 9.26.06

By Nicole Achs Freeling
GreatSchools.net Correspondent

• CAC Reports Ways to Improve Special Education
• A Family Shares a Personal Story
• Concern Raised Over Emergency

CAC Reports Ways to Improve Special Education
After months of brainstorming and gathering public input, the Community Advisory Committee for Special Education presented to the S.F. school board a list of 12 recommendations for ways the district could improve services for students with disabilities.
      
The recommendations concerned parent outreach and assistance, program availability and placement, and curriculum improvements. Board members praised the report and said they would work toward implementing them. The recommendations will now be forwarded to the Curriculum Committee.
      
The recommendations were as follows:

• Parent Outreach and Assistance:
  **Work with the CAC to distribute a newsletter three times a year in English, Spanish and Chinese.
  **Inform the CAC as early as possible in the budget cycle about proposed budget cuts to special education.
  **Create a special education transition guide to inform parents of the process for transitions between education levels such as elementary to middle and middle to high.
  **Post an up-to-date version of the Local Plan for Special Education on the district Web site.
• Program Availability and Placement:
  **Track children transitioning from elementary to middle school or middle to high school to ensure that there is program availability at the next school level. Assist families with these transitions.
  **Create additional full inclusion programs for all students in accordance with "least restrictive environment" (LRE) requirements. Students in elementary, middle and high school seeking inclusion placements are denied the same enrollment choices offered to students without disabilities, according to the report.
  **Create special day classrooms that provide the coursework for admission to the California public university systems for students who are capable of grade-level or higher work.  Currently, no special day classrooms provide coursework to fulfill the foreign language requirement, for example.
  **Create small classes for students who are capable of grade-level or higher work but whose disabilities require smaller classes.
  **Ensure that all special education classes and programs do not exceed their student capacity or staffing allocation ratios.
  **Ensure that teachers hold the appropriate credential for the students they are teaching
• Curriculum:
  **Bring innovative and effective teaching approaches into schools. Some examples cited in the report included Lindamood-Bell reading materials, Making Math Real and On Cloud Nine math materials, and Michelle Garcia-Winner's Social Thinking curriculum for students with autism and nonverbal learning disorders.
  **Increase the length of the school day for preschoolers in special education from four to five hours. Research has found longer school programs more effective for children with autism

The board voted in new members to the CAC to replace outgoing members. The new members are Robin Hansen, Amy Ottinger, Katy Franklin and Rachel Norton.
      
Family Shares a Personal Story 
At the start of the meeting, Amy Vaile, the mother of Jackson, a special education student at Harvey Milk Elementary in the Castro, told the board how her family had moved from Colorado after school board authorities there said her son was not equipped to attend a regular school. Recently, Jackson took the STAR test and reached proficiency in English and was 10 points away from advanced in math. "If we hadn't moved here, if we hadn't had an environment that accepted and welcomed him, I wouldn't have been able to see my son thrive as he has," Vaile said, presenting an audio essay her son had made of how he feels when people stare.

Concern Raised Over Emergency Hires
Later in the meeting, during consent calendar discussion, teacher's union president Dennis Kelly told the board that of the many individuals being sought for probationary appointments, temporary appointments and emergency credentialing - appointments made when hires have not completed the required training - 60 were special education hires. He called for more training for district staff so they could take on these positions without having to call in emergency staff and questioned whether people in the process of completing their credentials had an adequate level of expertise.

School Board Notes 9.12.06

By Nicole Achs Freeling
GreatSchools.net Correspondent

• District To Expand Immersion Programs
• Student Assignment Changes Include Poverty Factor
• Struggle Over Fate of JROTC

District to Expand Immersion Programs
The board unanimously passed a resolution to expand Mandarin and other language-immersion programs. The resolution called for developing a strategic plan to strengthen and expand Mandarin and other immersion programs and to investigate the possibility of new Russian, Samoan and other ones. The plan, which will be developed with the Bilingual Community Council and parent and community groups, is to be presented to the board in March. The resolution called for exploring demand for Japanese and Arabic programs as well.

The measure seeks ways to address a key weakness of the existing immersion programs - that there are far fewer programs in advanced grades than at the elementary level. Currently, many students are unable to pursue bilingual education beyond the fifth grade, according to parents and board members.

Mayor Gavin Newsom's office submitted a letter supporting the measure and pledging $105,000 in city funds to support development of immersion programs.

A key issue to be determined is where new immersion programs would be located. The district currently has one Mandarin program located at Starr King Elementary in Potrero Hill, a program a number of community members praised. There has been great demand on the west side of the city for a local Mandarin program. However, several board members expressed the view that immersion programs were a way to draw resources to underserved neighborhoods and should be used as magnets to draw people to schools they might not otherwise attend.

The district is now exploring locating a Mandarin program at Jose Ortega in the OMI neighborhood, according to Commissioner Jill Wynns. The resolution struck wording from an earlier version that called for placing the next Mandarin program at Diane Feinstein after members of the school community expressed frustration that they had not been consulted.

Student Assignment Changes Include Poverty Factor
The board adopted modifications to the current student-assignment system that includes extreme poverty as a factor in the diversity index and gives some enrollment priorities to teachers' children.

The district will eliminate mother's education level as a factor in its diversity index - the measure designed to assign a diverse socioeconomic and ethnic mix of students to schools - and instead use a factor meant to give weight to extreme poverty. The measure of extreme poverty will be whether or not the family lives in public housing.

"We were looking for a value we could easily capture and quantify," said Orla O'Keefe, chief administrative officer. Mother's education level is unverifiable and there have been suspicions of people lying on the application to gain an advantage in the assignment lottery.

Another modification gives "priority in the student appeals process to permanent site-based certificated staff who live in San Francisco and wish to have their child attend the school where they currently work and have worked full time for the last three years."

The change gives teachers' kids the same priority for Round 1, but higher priority in the next round if they fail to get any of their Round 1 choices. Of the three-year requirement, Wynns said:  "We did not want to provide incentive for people to transfer to popular, overenrolled schools."

Commissioner Dan Kelly introduced an amendment, which failed to pass, that would have added ethnicity as a factor in schools where any single ethnic group accounted for 50 percent or more of the population. "Ethnicity-blind enrollment has caused resegregation," Kelly said, citing reports that SFUSD schools have steadily resegregated since race was eliminated as a factor in 1999. Several board members expressed support for the concept, but not the timing of the amendment.

Supreme Court cases involving Louisville and Seattle school districts and their use of race in student assignment are set to be heard later this year, and board members have said it would be imprudent to reintroduce race until the results of those cases are known.

The measure also calls for outreach efforts to engage greater participation of underserved populations in the Round 1 enrollment process. According to O'Keefe, only 50 percent of African American students participated in the lottery, compared to more than 90 percent of Chinese students and 80 percent of white students. O'Keefe could not recall the numbers for Latino students but said they too were well below the participation levels for Chinese and white families. Board members noted that efforts to improve diversity at sought-after schools could only succeed if underserved students participated in the process.

Struggle Over Fate of JROTC
Dozens of students protested outside the district before the meeting to try to save the Junior ROTC program. A proposal is being discussed among board committees that would replace the program with one unaffiliated with the U.S. military. The move was launched out of objection to the military's policy of discriminating against gays, which goes directly against the district's own policy that prohibits organizations that are discriminatory. Many parents and community members who support the decision to eliminate JROTC oppose having a military program that targets youngsters.

The JROTC students and supporters who protested Tuesday, however, say that the program itself does not discriminate and, in fact, includes several openly gay students. The students say the program provides valuable esteem-building and life skills and is being unfairly targeted.

The proposal to replace JROTC was recently heard by the Curriculum and Program Committee, which voted two to one to forward it to the board with a positive recommendation. The full board will vote on the proposal at a future date.