Transcripts For SFGTV Board Of Education 20240712 : vimarsan

All right. Thank you so much. We are going to get started. I want to welcome everybody from the public. My colleagues, superintendent and staff and student delegates. Section a general Commission Notice regarding Virtual Meeting ada accommodation and translation services. First item is approval of board minutes. We need a motion and second. So moved. Again. These are for the regular meeting of august 25th, 2020. Are there any corrections . Seeing none. Roll call, please. Thank you. [roll call] thank you very much. Item 2 is superintendents report. Dr. Matthews. Thank you, president sanchez. Good afternoon, everyone. This month were joining the nation in celebrating la inx heritage month. Schools strive to be places where every student can see themselves and be themselves where learning reflects both the familiar and unknown. Board of education policies adopted over the years, honor and support various efforts in San Francisco unified. Students are seen and heard in their course work and each students heritage is celebrated. We celebrate la tin x heritage month by celebrating by honoring latin x leaders. Fairmont elementary was renamed dalores in honor of the civil rights leader now San Francisco unified is proud to have a cesar chavez elementary. Dalores has dedicated her life fighting for those who are oppressed or disenfranchised. She co founded the united farm workers and helped organize the delano grape strike in 1960. And she came up with the phrase happy heritage month to everyone. Starting september 1st, our districts grabandgo meal program is free for all students again. Previously students would be charged if they didnt qualify. Thanks tie recent policy change by the usda its free for all. Every wednesday from 10 30 and 12 00 a bag of five days worth of meals, including breakfast, lunch, supper, fresh fruits and vegetables and milk is available for each student. For locations and more information on what to bring to pick up meals, visit sfusd. Edu schoolfood. Students center in services has heard from many families the current meal pick up window is not convenient due to school schedules. We have a survey that gatherings your feedback on what meal pick up times work for you. Today is the last day of the survey and you can find it at the website, so please go to our website. To complete that survey. Im excite today announce that sf loves learning. The tv shows season 2 begins september 14th, this monday. We will be airing an hourlong episode at 2 00 on weekdays on ktv to aim towards pk through second grade students. This show will provide daily culturally affirming movement and Creative Content from our sfusd educators, students, families and Community Partners. The show will model sfusds core values, develop students graduate profile life skills and provide opportunities to showcase their work. On at t its 1,006 on comcast it is six or 106 on direct tv its channel 36 and on dish its 36 and on ray its. Thank you so much. I try to do it at least once a day. We have student delegate reports. Good afternoon, everyone. Hi. So, on our first item for our sac board update, we have the sac retreat. The topic is the Student Advisory Council is the city wide youth Led Organization committed to providing a voice for students of the sfusd. By representing and presenting the interest of the students to the administration and policymaking bodies of sfusd. Our goal, as student leaders s. To strengthen our connection between student leaders and our peers. The orientation was over labor day weekend. We go on a threeday retreat due to covid19 we will postponing our actual threeday retreat to the spring. Fingers crossed. Thank you to our presenters. We would like to thank our sbc and asb leaders and representatives for going on the retreat and especially shout out to weekend sal for hosting and making this cameo appearance. We have goals and achievements and the sac hosted a roundrobin conversation on Student Leadership goals and how they promote and foster anti racist work so that our peers are better served with Student Support services. Our goal is for the representatives to have an actual collaboration with the sausd so Student Voice at the forefront of the implementation of our new anti racist value. We discussed this during our asa retreat this weekend. To our cabinet, thank you to those who facilitated those collaborative conversations this saturday. Item 3, Sac Committee development. The sac is currently in the state us of brainstorming 2020 and 2021 committee and electing chairs and the chair position will create a unique leadership for student leaders where theyll manage our sac products and engagement. Our goal is to create committees that align with the projects that sac representatives have brought to the table with a passion. They will lead goals and projects that will be announced at our next sac meeting an meet. The sac would like to support the amendment of the resolution. The sac would like to support the amendment of this resolution since the aca was in support of the original resolution. The hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities are an as set to our community. We welcome commissioner moliga to attend and speak more about the amendment to this resolution and how sac can support. Thank you to the commissioner for such amazing advocacy and all the other authors who brought this resolution to our district. Our next meeting will be september 21st at 3 00 pm. The sac is a Public Council and anyone is welcome to attend our meetings. If you would like to attend, make a presentation or would like a copy, contact mr. Sal da dore lopez bar. Next we have recognitions and resolutions and accommodations if theres done day. Recognizing all valuable employees and rave rewards and we have coming special on this section. Superintendent matthews. Thank you, president s sanchez. Peer resources is empowering students to change the world by inspiring them as the next generation of thought leaders and public servants. The video were about to see will highlight peer resources for building the power of their students to create just change in San Francisco Public Schools and communities through educating our young people to support train and advocate for one another. Id like to introduce ow ofilia williams. Hello, everyone. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. Just to be clear. Are we going to go ahead and show the video now. I submitted it but yes, well show that now and i want to introduce you and well show the video. Perfect. When the video concludes. Im going to chime back in and explain a little bit more about the organization and i will have the honor and privilege of introducing gary crews, the teacher who helped to bring the students together and put this video together that well be showing you so thank you again for your time and we are ready for the video. Being part of peer resources means you learn how to help people and advocate for the community. Peer resources has impacted me in my life by showing me how to treat others better. What you like most about peer resources is working with other people on fun challenges. Its impacted me in my mind from this and working with other people. Its really fun. You have projects to work on and you help the schools maintain itself. You keep everybody in the group so it wouldnt be all falling apart. What i like most about resources is they teach you life skills on what you need to help other people. They give you confidence that you can speak out. [ ] love it and change it and empowering youth to change the world. Thats your cameo in there . So again, thank you everyone for your time today. We know we have a brief time to share with you a little bit about peer resources. We wanted to open this presentation with the video because it never gets old looking at our young people standing in their power. I am the new executive director of peer resources. Our organization has had a weve had a 41year partnership with the San Francisco unified School District. We have been providing antioppression, pro liberation, curriculum that both introduces and nur tures the critical consciousness of our young people. Our practice has been to center their voices and the voices of those who do not ordinarily get the opportunity to leave and our mission is to empower them. They are most marginalized. We empower them as agents of change. Through the classroom, we trained students as leaders. Our students engage, mediate, mentor inspire, support and advocate for each other in order to transform their schools into Youth Empowerment institutions. Through activities like were highlighted in the video such as peer education, restorative support groups, tutor, Youth Action Research and project development. They are able to transform the Public School community into safe spaces for all students to thrive. Peer resources is on organization that is interesting black leadership. We are working together interrally, from the coreful organization, and from the board to the staff to the youth to dismantle antiblack racism, using a peertowere training and professional development modemodelthis illustrates the pe build with our students. After gary and the young people are finished, if theres time, i will share briefly, about another schoolled transformative change project that resulted in having a Larger Community impact and was born out of a peers classroom at lowell and i would love to share that with you if we have time. Gary, please feel agre free to o ahead and begin. Thank you to the board for giving us this opportunity to share our work and giving the opportunity to our young people, especially to speak about their experiences and pure resources. If peer resources our students can create change and offer peertopeer programs and they lead anti oppression and anti racist movements. One of my questions at the start of the year is how can we, as mindful active listeners save lives. And that they may sound like a good lofty goal but its very possible through the opportunities that these students have, the work that they do and be powerful, impact they have on their peers. As you know, some video. Many of my students Led Community circles. We have Community Circles on topics like Sexual Harassment and lgbtq plus pride week. They facilitated restorative mediation and they were conflict mediation but now they have a restorative approach. Theyve also worked on transformative institutional change projects and one year, my students, after a work of action resource, decided to create a male latino new come up support group that was led by a peer resources intern and that is something that has continued at everett and has been very impactful. The students who have experienced it have said that it has been one of the safest spaces on campus and they feel like they belong. With that, id like to give them an opportunity to talk about their experience. Sady will speak about teacher observations, collaboration of the essential schools and wisdom will speak about peer education workshops. Sady. Hi. My name is sady. So, we did teacher observations in our class where we had pre interviews and then we would go into a we would go in talking to the teachers and ask what they wanted us to look for and we would go into their class and objectively observe them, which was super interesting because we got to feel like we had a voice because we got to be in the classroom where we got to watch teachers objectively and we were in a safe space where afterwards, when we had compiled our notes and we got our post interview where we got to talk to the teachers and tell them what worked and what didnt in our classrooms and it was like, a space where it wasnt rude or anything. We got to be equals with our teachers and like give them notes and stuff and tell them what works. It was just super interesting. We got to be professional about it. It was so interesting to have a voice. Normally, you dont really get that. As a student, the teacher is the teacher. It was just super like being responsible for compiling notes and being objective and always staying objective was interested and impactful because i can take notes and be objective about things around me not just my teachers. Well talk about the workshops. Coming to middle school from Elementary School i had no clue about what was going on around me and about a lot of latino immigrants were being held up at the border and come to peer resources really opened my eyes to see what is really happening around the world that the news and people around you tha that t talk about. Its so uncomfortable that people chose to not say it. I liked how peer resources make sure you can talk about the uncomfortable things to make sure that you get to know and impact people around you better. So i would say i would like the workshops because we had real lifetime and we got it put ourselves in the shoes of our people who they have to go through if they are coming into america and how scary it would be to be in those situations. And show people what to do in those situations and thats the main point of the workshop. Telling people and giving them information of how they can be safe in those situations and thats about it about the workshops. Thank you, wisdom and sady. They were both in that class that participated in the video. That video was produced by an alum from owe con he will high s also in peer resources. Thank you so much gary and sady and wisdom. We really appreciate you presenting. I would just close us out saying that as gary shared, were in middle schools and were in high schools. So, from middle school, theres a soft hand off to high schools so that our young people go into a community of support and at lowell, our beer resources wanted to focus on the lack of diversity in that school and they want today know the barriers so they participated in a youth par tory Action Research project to identify what was keeping the diversity down at lowell and why werent other communities represented at the school and one of the largest barriers they found was transportation it was geography and not being able to get there so what they did and to introduce the 29r, the rapid bus. That would help to support our young people getting from the Bayview Community to the west side region of our city to make it more reliability, frequent and get them to class on time. I want today share it was one of the transformative change projects that came out of Lowell High School just as recently as last year and they were embraced by sfmta but due to covid the project was put on hold and remains on hold but our transformative projects and so if this Student Group graduates before theres any traction on the project, it will be passed on to the new student body because we do understand that transformative change takes time and requires consistency. Thank you very much. We are open to any questions that any of you may have if theres time. Which formally just have a presentation. Commissioner cook. Commission cook. Thank you for the presentation and its nice to meet you ms. Williams and i appreciate our district and your participation in the program. Thank you. Id like to thank you ophilia and gary and sady and wisdom and i would like to celebrate the things that are going well in our district. Often times we hear zoo many negative hinges and there are great things happening throughout the district and our schools. Its an amazing district. As underfunded as it is, we have great things going on and this is a great representation of that work so thank you for being with us. Next is section c which is Public Comment. Do you want to make a call for speakers . Thank you, president sanchez. This is Public Comment for items that are not on the evenings agenda. So if you care 20 speak on an item not on todays agenda, raise your hand at this time. Public comment san opportunity for the board to hear from the community on matters within the boards jurisdiction and we have that you refrain from using employee and student names and board rules and California Law we cannot answer questions during Public Comment time and they will ask a staff to followup with speakers solve with that, lets get a gage on what were looking at here. Six. Thank you, public. You will each have two minutes and. If you havent been called, mute your microphone. Thank you. Natalie, are you there . David. Yes, hi. Go ahead. Great. My name is David Thompson and my husband, louis and i have lived in San Francisco almost 40 years and we are parents to a fourth greater and weve been active and animated discussions with many families at the school growing number of them i would say and i was asked to make a comment today on their behalf and we extremely concerned at the pace and track around the issue of reopening the school and the Elementary Schools and as a long time resident of San Francisco, i thought i would never say i envy detroit and its very interesting to see that districts such as those in detroit and new york are so much further ahead and than we are here in San Francisco. We as families are introduction liemly concerned by the virus of course but were also equally concerned about this social divide to have publish a plan with transparent specifics about when we will see our children back in school. Theres a feeling that a lack of responsiveness and transparency about this and i would like to urge the district and the board to when we have have the mou and we as parents are here to help and we very much want to be a part of the process and a part of the deliberation about this and for example, we stand ready and willing to raise money and to fill in gaps as it p