Transcripts For SFGTV Government Access Programming 20240714

[roll call] thank you. Spee. Hard to regular agenda, if theres anything you need to wish to address the board of education, an individual can submit a speaker card prior to the item being called. And present it to the executive assistant, to my right, to your left. Members of the public have two minutes to address the board or a time set by the president. According to the board rules, you may submit a speaker card. I dont two, is the superintendents report. Thank you, Vice President sanchez. Good evening, everyone. Congratulations to the get graduates of the class of 2019. [applause]. [cheering] nearly 3,500 San Francisco Unified School District graduating seniors put on their caps and gowns and accepted their diplomas, ready to pursue their dreams and their goals. I like to congratulate each and every one of them on this accomplishment. Id also like to congratulate all of our elementary and middle School Students who were promoted to the next grade level as well. [applause] the school year has come to a close, but there many ways learning can continue. It is essential that children keep learning through the summer months. Most children will lose some of the skills they developed through the years if they dont continue to practice them. This is referred to as term Summer Learning loss. Our district summer schools are offering a variety of ages and it is really critical for High Schoolers who may need credits to graduate and prepare for college. Council high School Councilors have worked with students and families to register students for High School Credit recovery courses and four additional studies for College Credit with the city college of San Francisco. If students are not enrolled in summer school, and if youd like to supplement their time at summer school, i also recommend taking your student out to a public library, museum or park. These can be learning tools. The department of children youth and families have created a list of fields related to the arts, recreation, stem and local history. The list can be found online. There are many great ones to choose from from this list. Finally, this summer, june 1st through september 2nd, the mayor has announced that more than 15 museums and cultural institutions will be free to residents to receive Public Benefit including medical. Please take advantage of this exciting opportunity. Thank you, the ends my announcement. Thank you, dr. Matthews. Item three is student delegate report, there are none tonight. Four is recognitions and resolutions of commendations. There are none tonight. Five, recognizing employees, there are none tonight. We will move onto Public Comment on nonagenda items. Please note that Public Comment is an opportunity for the board to hear from the community on matters within the boards jurisdiction. We ask you refrain from using employees and student names. If you have a complaint about a district employee, you may submit it to the employer supervisor in accordance with district policy. As a reminder, board rules and California Law do not allow us to respond to comments or attempt to answer questions during Public Comment time. The superintendent will ask the staff follow up with the speakers. Forgive me in advance if i mispronounce your name. When i call your name, please approach the pro the podium. You will have two minutes each. [calling names] there is more coming up. [indiscernible] thank you. Hold on one second. Go for it. Good evening to the board of education. My name is mark. Next will follow my 23rd year of service for sfusd. The past 16 years, i have been in mission and it has been my professional home. Is where i matured as a person and an educator and i care deeply about the community, my students, my colleagues and even my administrators. Tonight, i just he is a member of the union but as the co union rep for the 201718 academic year. One constant in my time has been the stagnant nature of our u. B. C. It has been the same small minority of colleagues who hold that position. As was the case this year, often elections do not have two competing candidates. The participation is an issue, and tonight we deal with the ramifications. What we have been dealing with as a staff is that we currently do not represent the majority view of the staff. The flurry of the most from colleagues protesting their approach to our hiring process stands as my evidence. Im here to counter the narrative that the union is excluded from the hiring process for our principal next year. Once the initial list is listed, the district conceded the two request from the u. B. C. A total of seven Union Members sat on the committee and that included two parents, a student and an administrator. The School Community was well represented. I appreciate the opportunity to see my say my peace this evening thank you. My name is andrew. I am the current co building rep from Mission High School and i am, like mark, i have been at mission for 20 years, and im very proud to work there, and im very proud of the work that all of a sudden done here, and i am going to speak to what was some exclusion of the building wraps or the certificated building representatives that have been requested to be on the board. When is first approached by this , when i first heard that our principal was going to be changing, i didnt expect to be on the Principal Selection committee, nor did i ask to be. I thought that the process was just going to happen and in august was when we would really have to talk about a new principal and let them know that we are unionized place, and here is how it runs. As time went on, more and more members came up to me. I agree that i am not speaking for all the members at our sight , but there were definitely a segment of people, a vocal segment who came up to me and said, who is on the committee . And i didnt have answers to those questions. They more attractive find answers, the harder, the more i got concerned, initially it wasnt really clear who was on the committee, it wasnt clear how they got appointed or selected, and when making a simple request of a representative, of a building representative, a u. B. C. Member, they were okay with everyone except for our building wraps, and we went back and reported that and at a meeting of 15 people at our sight on the second day before the end of school, and an emergency meeting not even called by us, that group basically said, the building wraps need to get off that thing. We are really concerned about this process. That is the process we saw through, i agree with mark that there are, in fact, there are differences of opinion within our sight but it is our job to bring that forward, and i feel like by excluding us this time, those people will feel excluded, and i think that was a mistake. It is something the new principal does not need to be hamper with or exist under that kind of cloud. Thank you. Hello, my name is allison white, i am an english teacher and coach at Mission High School i have been a teacher at mission high for five years, and i pursued a teaching position and career at mission high from the beginning of my teaching career because of missions explicit antiracist teaching focus that i eagerly wanted to be part of. In my time i have found that working with teachers who have antiracism as their central focus has been a nurturing and growth promoting experience for both my teaching and experience in the world as a white woman and educator. It has been and will be the real work of my teaching career. I was glad that the u. B. C. Was critical of the panel to ensure that it was fair, and i was also happy when the committee honored our request for a more extensive panel. I agree that our u. B. C. Wraps could not be unbiased and should not have been on the panel. It is unfortunate that our reps could not a neutral, so i believe that the right response was to not welcome them onto the panel. Thank you for letting me speak today. Hello, everyone. My name is nadia, i am a newer teacher that chose to work at mission because of its commitment to antiracist teaching. My three years, i have been supportive of ever other colleagues that are similarly dedicated to this work. I felt completely represented by the panel who indicated interviewed the new candidates. I did not feel that the u. B. C. Wraps were unnecessary were necessary on the panel so i completely understand the choice that was made to keep them off the panel. I trust and feel represented that if parents and students that did choose a new principal, and i trust in whoever they choose. Thank you. Good evening, my name is cat. I am a teacher at Mission High School as well. Im here tonight because i wanted to add my voice on the hiring process for the new principal at mission high. While our reps believe the process is not fair and that it did not represent the majority of our school, i want to say that i believe it did. There were teachers that are Union Members, parents, deans, students, and parent liaisons present for these interviews. I can say i felt confident that these individuals would be fair and shes candidates that would best fit the needs of mission high. As a union member myself, im proud to be part of the union and i see nothing wrong with union reps being part of the hiring process for new administration, however, i feel the union rep that wanted to partake in the interviews did not represent me. Thank you for allowing me to speak. Good evening, school board. I have been a Proud Union Member and have been teaching at Mission High School for the past 12 years where i started my career as a student teacher. I strongly believe that we should support the administration and the teaching focus, but yet another teacher was fished out by the demands of teaching. Thankfully, that was not the case and im still here today. Recently we created a panel in search of a new principal. The fully i believe the panel represented me at Mission High School. I support the choice to not include the building wraps. I did not believe they can make an unbiased decision during the selection process. Thank you. Hello, my name is robert and i have been a teacher in the San Francisco Unified School District for the past 31 years and i have been at mission high for the past ten. During that time, i have been a u. B. C. Wrap at two schools, and of course, like the others here, i am a Proud Union Member. While i was not part of the hiring committee for the new principal, i do feel represented by it, like many members of our staff admission, i did not want to be represented by a current u. B. C. Wrap who has burned bridges with many of us through a pattern of divisive attacks, not only on administrators, but also on other colleagues, and most importantly, on the antiracist work i was school has been committed to for well over a decade. This work has led to a vibrant ethnic studies program, a reflective faculty determined to meet the needs of africanamerican and latino students. It also has led to the first arabic language classes in the San Francisco Unified School District School District. We want that to grow, to get better, and to continue. I hope you respect the input of the teachers, paraprofessionals, parents, Community Members who put in long hours to try and find us a new principal who will sustain the work that has made us so proud to be mission teachers. Thank you. Hi, my name is jordan, i am a student at Mission High School. Today i am here because, im sorry, today i am here because they just recently told us that we are not going to be having our africanamerican heritage course at Mission High School anymore. And i just came here to say that this class has helped me through a lot of things. I like that it is taught by black women and made by black women to teach me about myself and that is going to be taken away. Not only just me as a female, but there is a male teacher that has been taken away from us. It has allowed me to be myself and be classy and just appreciate who i am. It is not like we dont do anything and class because we do a lot more than other classes. And the only reason i am here is because i really care and i dont mean to be emotional, but this class means a lot to me. You brought girls together that were never going to be friends, it is making a difference. And the fact that it is being taken away is overbearing for me thank you. Can you please remind us your name . My name is jordan nicholson. I dont think we have a speaker card for you. Okay. I had two other names would apparently theyre not coming up , so the next is from malcolm x. [calling names] i cant really read the last name. [calling names] hello. I want to say thank you to the board for all the support that you have given us and malcolm x in the past. I hope that you got a packet of letters because even though theres this many people here, there are many more people who wanted to come tonight and who wrote letters. You were supposed to get them. We have a long time school secretary, april harrison, who, she can tell you more about the story, but as a result of protocols that she didnt follow , because she didnt follow because she wasnt getting the emails, she is now losing her job. She has been at our school for nine years. She knows the ends and outs of the business and the administrative tasks of them are schools like nobody else, and we have, currently, we are in our third year and getting a new administrator in three years, and so we need her. We have been through so much. We have huge turnover this year. And we really, really need her. We all know that there is an agreement between sciu and the School District, i dont fully understand it all, but i understand that we have to follow the protocols, and yet theres got to be some way we can work around this to keep. Im asking for all of us to put our Heads Together and figure this out. It would just be really devastating for us to lose her. Thank you. I am deirdre, i am the librarian at Malcolm X Academy. Good evening. My name is sandra smith francis. Im a proud grandmother of three daughters, one just completed fifth grade at Malcolm X Academy i have one that is going into prek and one who will go be will be going to malcolm x eventually, but i am here in support of april smith harrison. I am here because this harrison is the glue that holds Malcolm X Academy together. She has skills more skills than anyone can learn through college , their courses through other people, but her soft skills, her skills dealing with people, dealing with the job, dealing with the community, dealing with the families, the children, and her friends and staff and coworkers, is irreplaceable. You will never find another staff like mist april smith harrison. I have known her for two years now, since my granddaughter, asia, enrolled into the schools. Asia had a very difficult transitioning transition period and Malcolm X Academy, but fortunately, mist april volunteered miss april volunteered to be her mentor and she has made asia feel comfortable with trusting an adult that she can go to and talk to when she is having issues at the school, or even issues at home, whatever, she know she can go to miss april. She can trust her, she can talk to her. So i am asking that this board overturn whoever made the dreadful mistake of discharging miss april, because miss april his there for the students, and it would be just a great injustice to the students at Malcolm X Academy, to her coworkers, and workers, families , and everyone else if she is not there to support that school and do her job. Thank you very much for your time. Hello, my name is, and i my School District nurse. I presently work at Malcolm X Academy. I have been, it is my 12 year now with the district. I have always embraced the motto that San Francisco unified told me, which was even one caring relationship can change a child s life. Miss harrison is a senior clerk at michael Malcolm X Academy and she embodies this motto daily with her kind, professional interactions with families. Do you have a speaker card . I am barbara. Okay. Yes. Sorry. For 2018 and 2019, i have been at Malcolm X Academy. I direct and daily communication with her and i must say that she is vital in her role as Senior Administrative clerk, not only to the principal teachers and staff and my wellness team, but more importantly, shes a professional, safe and calm and reassuring presence and an efficient and capable frontline contact for families of the bayview Hunters Point where families primarily lift. She is a direct impact upon enrolment and intent attendance for students and shes integral to our staff in meeting the Racial Equity goals that San Francisco unified has so rightly demanded. For the school year of 2019, 2020, we will have our third principle in three years. Along with this, were losing half of our teachers, children and families need to have some kind of consistency of staff in their Community Schools during t