Transcripts For SFGTV SF Board Of Education 20240712

Team. Can i comment . Yes, please. I did leave it high level to work identifying who would sit on that task force. So, i did not specify it but depending on the discussion here with my colleagues, they feel it would be best serving. Its the super inten department is creating the task force, not lowell in and of itself. So, just president sanchez, i would be supportive of examining and evaluating the letter that i had read into the record including evaluating the culture. Sorry if im dragging this on. Since its made by the superintendent, would it ensure student representation is on this task force . Yes. Yes, is this dated in the amendment. It has including but not limited to students, families, educators, administrators and communitybased organizations. Students are first mentioned. So, to clarify, like, im just, theres a letter but im not clear on how specifically the staff is supposed to implement the task force based on a letter that was not written for this purpose. So im confused. We have had other initiatives to do task forces that we didnt have. We have resolution thats we still dont implement and so you know, im hearing that theres an intent and im not seeing it in writing anywhere. So part of that is the task force shalling guided to create learning environments that are racially and socioeconomically integrated and we can put an and clause there. To creating a non toxic atmosphere and. They had a task force and its being canceled right now. It was a lowelldriven task force. This is a districtdriven task force. Which say difference. So i would like for there to be we need to be specific. Even when we are specific, we dont implement when it comes to black people. Im just going to name it. The language you like to add, i offered some right there. Go ahead. Can i suggest, i mean, again, im very supportive of what i think the gift o gist of this discussion but i do wonder if maybe this is i mean, maybe a way forward would be to put place holder language in the resolution saying the board will develop a process that involves multiple take holder shake holdg students to evaluate and improve the cultural, to create a positive and anti racist culture at the school as well as an enrollment system that more accurately represents the districts goals and objectives or whatever. I mean, maybe we just have some place holder language that says, were going to work with the superintendent to create a process and my suggestion would be that that should be the first thing that the new board takes on come january. I certainly, i have my opinions about what the process should look like but its irrelevant. Im not going to be here after january 8th. No offense, commissioner cook isnt going to be here either. You might not be here president chan says, who knows. I hope you are. I just think that that might be a better way that will give us time to think through it and maybe you know, commissioners collins and lamb can team up and write something together for the board to consider, that would be my suggestion. I have no issue with that suggestion. I also think that its possible to write a entire new resolution outside this discussion because this was a staff proposal in response to the pandemic and clearly theres interest and you know, i know this is a moment that this broader discussion that needs to happen with the intent of the discussion which was to do something in response to our decision to do passfail. I really appreciate commissioner collins leadership around that discussion and how its walked by educators that it wasnt a good idea. Commissioner lamb and collins are more than capable of writing and whoever wants to participate a new resolution to address the process specifically. Thats why i wasnt planning not to support resolution or the amendment because i wanted to keep the discussion focused on the pandemic so with all due respect id like to vote on the amendment but its not how to run the meeting. I would like to vote on the amendment and my recommendation would be another resolution be created. I propose to commissioner cook and nortons recommendation commissioner lamb, do you want to go forward with the amendment or do you want to hold off and have a process with commissioner collins or others for your proposal . So again, right now the recommendation is to either vote on the current amendment or withdrawal and then create a separate resolution to address the more broader process. Yeah. Ok. Commissioner norton, can i ask you if that captures your initial thoughts . Sorry, i hit the wrong button. Yes. I mean, thats one way to go. It would probably be simpler and move the meeting along if we just if you were willing to withdraw the amendment and then we have then, you know, you as a board have a conversation about how you have time, in other words, for determining whether or not you want to take this up again past the Upcoming School year. And any recommendation is you should but you can spend some time thinking about it. At the time, what ill do is, i will withdraw the amendment so that we can give them more time to work towards what it sounds like. I think theres interest in having a more broad discussion and ill work with commissioner collins on that. Thank you, all. Thank you for that. So, to the resolution at hand, the proposal from the superintendent if theres no further comments or questions, well have a roll call vote and well start with the student delegates. Thank you. All right. Well start with the we usually allow student delegates to vote first if theyve made comments on the item. Well start with the also, its also because they advise us. You, student delegates, your vote is advisory to the board on what we should do. Thats why you go first. I will leave it to the chair to decide. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thats right. Commissioner, thats right in the bylaws for the student delegates for their sac. So, it seems like theres no appetite for that right now. Commissioners. Thank you. Ms. Collins. Were voting on the current proposal on 201020sp1. Thank you. [roll call vote] that was seven ayes. Thank you for everyone that came out for this item. Theres a lot more on our we have the Advisory Committee reports and apac and superintendent matthews, do you have a representative . Good evening. Yes. I believe were starting with, im sorry, your last name is skipping my mind. Irving. I apologize. Ok. [laughter] its a long night. One day you will get old too. You are not there yet. [laughter] all right. Here we go. Groatings, my name is Leticia Irving on the Program Manager for the Parent Advisory Council and member of the African American achievement and Leadership Initiative also known as ollie. Its my honor to be with you this afternoon or this evening now, into introduce some of the hardest working and most committed group of people that i know. I want to up lift that the previous Public Comments, because of that, were presenting with heavy hearts but id like to share what i shared with the apac leaders a few minutes ago. I wanted them to breathe and we have to push through, push forward and push past. This is why affinity face is like a pac and our collective efforts are so important. We see you student hines foster we see and appreciate you and we are with you. This and you are why we are here and why we do what we do. Annually we are given the opportunity to present before you and give you an update or an overview of our efforts supporting black students and families in the past year. This year we decided to tile the presentation the gift of black family partnerships. Hopefully bit end of our time with you this evening, you will see that gift personified. And sfusds vision 2025 states the vast majority of parents will be engage throughout their Childrens School career and it will have a transformation at effect on the district im the interpreter. Would you go a little slower. I would appreciate it. I will, thank you. Thank you. Vision 2025 states that the vast majority of parents will be engage throughout their childrens entire School Career and that engagement will have a transformational effect on the district. The vision aims to strengthen parents roles as vital stakeholders in True Partners in the districts efforts to lead community transformation. Much like the goal of apac vision 2025 calls for parents to feel empowered within our schools and their voices are respected reflected in the districts program, services and structures. Many of which are the direct result of recommendations. Apac goes beyond providing a feeling of empowerment and were working towards providing a space to engage affirm and cultivate the power that is within all of our African American students and families. We are offering skill building for families so they are able to lead in partnership with each of you. It has been my pleasure to manage the apac for almost five years now and im in awe of the leaders who are now turning the presentation over to. Please introduce yourselves. Kevin robinson. Parent, educators and apac lead. Im marie robinson, mom of five, i have two babies currently in the district right now, one at Mission High School and one at Alice Fung Yu i have a freshman at howard and i have a college sophomore. My name is la toy a and i have three students in sfusc. My name is mary and im an educator and parent of two girls at ulloa Elementary School. Good afternoon, my name is tony hines, the mother of 12th grader Abraham Lincoln school and five sfusd graduates. Im also a member of the Abraham Lincoln apac. Tonight were going to go over apcs mission, goals, and 2019 20192020 inaudible . Regarding the fight base Affinity Group well share the work for school year 20202021 and offer board of education recommendations and we will close with our usual appreciations. Over the last couple of years, were presented this traditional groatings to the tribe the kenya. It means, and how are the children . Within the tribe, theres a high value place on the well being of their children. When greeted, their response is the children are well. That means they are doing everything within their power to ensure that their children are safe, protected, and thriving. As author peter oneil wrote, it means the daily struggles do not preclude proper caring for their young. We offered this greetings to you hoping that it continuously asked and passed along. It might offer a reminder of who we serve, why we serve them, and propel us to push even harder until we truly say that all the children are well. What has been going on in this meeting so i just wanted to add, these past two Board Meetings, reminds us why this is important for black students. Student delegates hines foster is not safe. Shes not being protected. And were not ok with that. Well fight until they are so with all my heart im there for you and stand can shavon, we stand with shavon. Kevin, its on you. Thank you. That said, yeah, folks, lets not get it twisted. There is only one race, that is the human race. And if you are black, asian, latinx, you are not a minority. You are a person of color. And to be real, you are actually the majority. With that said, being black in sfusd in this city and in this nation is no easy feat. Never has been. Over the past few months weve been hit by a doublewhammy. Covid19 and disproportionate impact on black communities and the on going pandemic of racism. We see black families do what we do best, make miracles out of misery just like the ceiling breaking through the concrete. To that end, we want to take a moment and up lift black families, really all underserved families. We as an apac see you and we appreciate you. The goal of apac and ali is to engage, affirm and cultivate the power within African American students and their families. Its not our job to see black families or to be the newer of all things black. We see our job as being the water that is needed to help that innate greatness grow. That is all of our jobs. As you may know, apac is a parentled organization founded in 2013. Apac is supported by the African American achievement and Leadership Initiative by leticia and works with district departments, communitybased organizations and a host of other district advisory groups. Our mission, as seen on the screen, can be captured as three verbs. Listen, educate and advocate. Owe we listen to black families and educate ourselves and policies and practices better help with navigating sf unified and lastly, we advocate with and for African American families to assure a highquality education for our children. The activity include what were doing today. Advising the board of education, we also host monthly meetings, direct advocacy when needed, support site base spaces at our school sites, and we send out monthly updates to get families and partners uptodate of opportunities, resources and information that may be relevant to them. As kevin mentioned we hold monthly meetings where we live out our mission to listen, advocate. Listed in front of you are a range of topics covered by the titles of our meetings. Each year, we survey apac members and ask them what issues and ideas theyd libeling to lis on. Last year it was sense of belonging and school sites however, just like most years, we had to change tasks. In the previous years we changed paths to find a policy that disrupted map tracking and we changed paths to bring a space to a lawsuit that changes special education. [please stand by] this year we decided to keep our recommendations to a minimum. Not because we dont want any more, but because what we really want is to seek full implementation of all the efforts already in play, especially around Distance Learning. We are hoping for ongoing and monitored Staff Development in the areas of antiracist teaching, implicit bias, cultural humility, and restorative practices. We also want to ensure that when students, not just our black students return to the classroom, that their teachers are equipped to support them, like we saw earlier today at loyal, that we need more support for our black students. The loss of routine, the devastating effects of the pandemic, and really just the social, racial, Political Climate of our world has many of us turned upside down. How are staff prepared to handle what may come when we come back to brick and mortar . One of the things that will prepare our children to come back to school is to have their instruction reflect their identity, culture, and history. Apac has consistently pushed for black history, identity and culture to be taught, acknowledged, celebrated, and we need it to be with an assetbased lens. We are grateful that the board passed the resolution for pk tonight and has a seat on the Advisory Team as we roll out the black stage resolution. We are asking that sfu create and publicly articulate concrete actions with the Student Assignment policy to address quality schools and equitable access to resources. This is something that has been echoed by families across the district and throughout all of the Advisory Councils. We know that in order for students, especially those who have been traditionally underserved, we must look beyond what can be done in our classrooms. There is some systemic conditions and barriers that are beyond the districts reach. In partnership with the city and county of San Francisco, we are asking that a wellness study be conducted for the African American community, similar to the beyond the school house report in l. A. County addressed accordingly. We have made the same requests within [indiscernible]. As a boe, as a board, we know that you have so many priorities, demands, and resolutions to fulfil. With all of the advisories and groups, the recommendations just continue to come in, just like we saw tonight. What were asking that you consider ours, where it is possible, incorporate them. Where it is not or if it is not possible at this time, just respond to us and let us know why. We want to go back to our members and let them know that their voices were heard. The only way we can do that is with communication. As mentioned earlier, each year we poll apac participants to see what they would like apac to focus on at our meetings and advocacy for the upcoming year. This year it is centering our black experience via black history, black studies, and showing black pride. We will continue to provide opportunities to listen, educate, and advocate, and we also see a need to respond to realtime needs for access, information, and opportunities that are culturally responsive and at varying mastery levels. Before we close out, i want to add to what the chair sorry, i want to add to what latoya shared by saying, as you heard me say before, what better way to uplift opportunities for all the black families are asking for than to share it on public broadcasting using both of the platforms made available to us. The districtowned Radio Station klw and now the use of ktvu plus. For schools and families interested in learning more about apac or for resources that offer black families in terms of selfcare, which is an absolute necessity during these times, please check out the links in the slide deck. I want to remind everyone that selfcare is an act of resistance. Thank you again for the opportunity to share our annual presentation and report. You will likely hear more about our efforts and our goals during the presentation later this year. I want to give a huge shoutout to the apac Leadership Team members, those represented on this panel tonight and the four others who are not speaking. On a recent call, our leaders tallied up the number of hours that they have put into serving black students and families versus meetings, committees, and their sitebased efforts. They got a combined total of 352 hours per month minimally. Parent leadership is a voluntary act, but definitely deserves to be compensated, something that im going to continuously advocate for. With the numbers of hours put in, their fulltime jobs, the job of being a parent, what has been accomplished over the course of this year is nothing short of heroic. These are my sheroes and heroes and i thank you. Thank you to all our leaders who are are championing this work at their sites, the commissioners who consistently meet with us, invite us to decisionmaking tables, and present at district apac meetings. Thank you to the other councils and Community Based organizations for their partnership, to the educators who hold us down, and most importantly thank you to our families and our students. Thank you to our student delegates who continue to make us proud. And lastly, before we close, we want to publicly welcome our new director of the African American achievement and Leadership Initiative, dr. Mcgray. The apac is looking forward to your leadership and your partnership. Thank you. All right. Thank you so much, ms. Irving, and the entire apac Leadership Team and all the folks that you work with in our district to help move this all forward in a positive direction. Im really appreciative of your work. And thank you for the presentation. Do we have any Public Comment on this item . If you do, put your hand up. It looks like about nine or ten right now, president sanchez. President sanchez all right. Lets give it a total of 20 minutes. Two minutes each . Okay. Hello, melia . Hello, melia . Yes. Good evening, everyone. My daughter is melia. She is a fifth grader. And im part of the apac organization at her school, rosa parks. And i wanted to go ahead and call in and acknowledge our support as well as my support as well as our support in our community for the student shavon. Wed like to congratulate her on the fact that we believe because she is going through so much persecution, its guaranteed that shes going to be a global leader, and this is part of her training and its unfortunate that she has to be trained that way, to represent a diversity of students in the district. So rosa parks apac, wed like to go ahead and have our support for her. And we would also like to have our support for miss collins, because to be a mother in these times and have people threaten your children based on work that youre doing for the community is its beyond disgusting. And we would like to support her as well. And so thats what id like to call and thank you, everyone, for the volunteerism that were all doing fighting for our children in these times in this community. It is not easy, and its a [indiscernible] for us all and i wanted to acknowledge that. So thank you all so much. Thank you. Hello, baird . Its baird. Baird. Hello, baird, are you there . Hello, albert . distortion . Good evening. I am a black student at rosa parks. I am calling to support the apacs recommendations because it takes us to help us. It takes us to help us. And apac always helps us. Adorable. Very nice. Hello, michelle . Yes, hi, juddson. Thank you. Good evening again, commissioners, delegates, district staff, members of the community. I am the coordinator for the Parent Advisory Council. I want to appreciate lateisha and the parent teachers of the apac. Thank you for your hard work, your service to families and your collaboration with the joint Advisory Committees. The apac stands in support and are honored to work closely with them and their families. We would like to encourage the board to fully implement the recommendations presented by the apac this evening in the areas of professional development, black history, culture, and identity, and implementation shifts in regards to the Student Assignment policy, especially in ensuring that all of our schools are high quality and that there is equitable access to resources. As you have heard from all the advisories recently. And as well for the African American Community Wellness study. Again, the pac supports the apac, we are honored to work closely with them, and we are grateful for their service. Thank you. Thank you. Hello, lida . Hello. I was going to get through this until the baby started talking. That was awesome. It was a great reminder of why were all here, right . Im the advocacy chair for the community Advisory Committee for special education, who is proud to stand in solidarity with the apac. Were grateful for all the work. Were grateful for all we have learned from the apac. If you havent had the pleasure or opportunity of attending an apac meeting, i would highly encourage it. They are the most well facilitated teamled meetings i have attended throughout the entire pandemic. I must say, the fact that our parent leaders are talking about having to push through push forward and push past in the year 2020 is frankly disappointing. We have much work to do. Much work to do. And some of that should be the wellness study that is being requested by our African American Parent Advisory Council. We stand in solidarity and is honored and proud to work alongside our fellow parent advocates and we see you, we hear you. Were here for you. Thank you. Thank you. Hello, miss marshall . Thank you. Good evening. Im representing the San Francisco alliance of black School Educators. We of course support the apac. We were there when you began in 2013. Weve walked with you step by step. We thank you for the phenomenal, amazing meetings you have each month. We thank you for having a quiet, peaceful, safe enriching space for our parents every month to come from across the district. Thank you for the phenomenal staff for your dedication to our families. And the [indiscernible] partnership is quite appropriate. We welcome the new director. We look forward to meeting with her and of course our naacp meeting this sunday. Reverend brown represents the opportunity to work with her as well. Again, job well done. Thank you. Thank you. Hello, julie . Hi. My name is julie. I want to echo all of the support and love thrown in the direction of student delicate foster heins. The way she has been treated on social media as well as in person this week is really against the values that aapac does such a beautiful job of lifting up and i appreciate the aapacs work and all the work, the free work of all the black families who are involved at various school sites. That work has definitely improved my Childrens School and ive learned so much from your resources. Relevant to the Board Meeting tonight, i hope that people are still on and open up the africanamerican Family Engagement minimums which looks like, again, free Public Resources provided by the aapac that will help us create more affirming and less toxic environments in all of our school sites. I also want to lift up the lesson that the aapac just reminded us and some of the babies who called in reminded us, nothing can be done without us nothing for us can be done without us. My take away from the conversation about the amendment and the previous resolution is the importance of not moving forward quickly but centering the needs of black and latinx and other students of color and thoughtfully creating resolutions that will move forward in support of those students. So i want to thank the aapac for all of your work, both at individual schools and across the district. Its without a doubt some of the most important work the aapac is leading our district in terms of bright spots and pointing out cracks in our system that so many of our students are pushed through. I appreciate all of you and hope that our district will more deeply resource your work. Thank you. Thank you. Hello, carla . Hello. This is the membership chair for the acac for special education. I am being asked to read the quote aapac is amazing and we greatly, greatly appreciate their partnership, their leadership, and their advocacy. Everyone said such eloquent things before, and so my words may fall flat, but please know that we greatly appreciate you, we stand by you, we learn from you as an Advisory Committee on how to be better, and we hope to continue our partnership as we go forward into this virtual world, and again, we stand beside you and behind you sorry. Im a little emotional. You guys take care. Thank you. Thank you. Hello . Anija . Hi. You have a strong echo going on, but go ahead. Can you hear me now . Go ahead. Thats good. I recently graduated from Abraham Lincoln. Aapac has helped support me through my four years there and i am very grateful to them and i stand with them to the tenth power. Thats all. Thank you. Thank you. Hello, yvette . Yes, hello. Hi. Thank you. Im an aapac member. Im listening to a lot of whats going on tonight. I appreciate everything. Lateisha has been a wonderful mentor to us as an aapac advisor. Im confused that no one has talked about whats happening to black families and their children during a reopening process. This seems like a very, very interesting conversation. However, it seems like it should have happened a long time ago. What we need to talk about is whats going to happen to black families now as we are Going Forward in trying to reopen. Any of these conversations that were having right now, or having right now, could have happened any other time. What we need to talk about is whats going to happen to black families right now and children as we focus on reopening our schools. The time we have spent, the amount of time ive been on this call, this 7 47, youre talking about manual cal things that will take place in the future magical things that will take place in the future. If children should be allowed to go back in the classroom, they should be able to. I have a fourth grader here who would also like to say some words. Okay. So its probably a bad idea to go to school if youre still not sure if covid19 is going to have another outbreak. Would you rather be gone [indiscernible] or just staying home and do something with them . Like, obviously, just say is that just reopen the schools when covid19 is not even over yet. Like, its probably not going to be over for like another one or two months. I dont want to go back to school. What we want to focus on is this conversation, while i appreciate aapac, i wish we would have focused more on what is actually happening right now and not magical conversations in the future regarding what could happen. So id like that to be the last statement that i make, and i hope that we can focus on that and in these conversations right now. Thank you. Hello, mr. Jeffries . Mr. Jeffreys . Can you hear me . Yes, we can. Go ahead. Hello again. My name is jeremiah jeffreys, im a first grade teacher and one of the coordinators for teachers for social justice. I want to give big props to the aapac and the incredible work that theyve been doing, the commissioner, we have your back, we support you a thousand percent. You are an inspiring young person as all the board have been, doing such an incredible job. Board of education, superintendent, i encourage you that you include in the dashboard that youve been talking about creating tracking board resolution that you also track the aapac resolutions over the years, you go back and look at what the progress has been on things that the black community has been asking for, and to make sure that we can see the progress on getting those things implemented. Again, miss irving came out personally to launch our aapac before covid hit, its work that were excited to continue to do, we have a fantastic principal who has been showing real leadership there. So we are excited to continue this work and see the aapacs grow across the district. Thank you, thank you. In the words of one of my mentors, miss marshall, ashay ashay. Thank you. Hello, susan . Thank you, mr. Steeles. Susan solomon again, president of uasf. To echo the previous speakers and on behalf of the members of our organization, im extending many thanks to the parents, educators, and Community Members of the aapac. This meeting tonight make it quite evident that the work of the aapac is so critical to what were all trying to accomplish here. We are with you in solidarity, and so glad to see us continue with this great work. Thank you. Thank you. Hello, andrew . Hello. I think one concern i have is that this socalled antiracist curriculum sounds very racist itself. It sounds like theyre trying to teach people to have a bias towards a Certain Group excuse me, andrew. This is not this is Public Comment for the African American Parent Advisory Council presentation. Okay. So the other discussion is closed, is that correct . Yes, it is. Thank you. All right. See you. Bye. Hello, terry . Hi. Can you hear me . We can. Go ahead. So i would like to say my support for the work that theyre doing for sfusd and id like to state my support for shavon. She is doing great work and we stand with her. Thank you. Hello, tina . Hi. Good evening. This is tina. I work at [indiscernible] high school as a parent. Im a parent of an alumni of mol. I know were not on this topic. I was wholly against the lottery. But shavon, dear, i want to tell you right now i think youre doing great work and you just convinced me that there are some things that need to be addressed and that i need to be looking a little more deeply into the work that aapac does and not remain so wilfully blind to what is happening at sfusd. So i thought it was important to just put that out there, that i was definitely against everything until i got on here and, you know, growth is power. And i just want to say thank you, young lady. You are doing some incredible work, and i will be following you from now on and aapac, i just sent that in an email. I will be looking forward to working with you in the future. Thank you, guys, so much. Im really glad i came here tonight. Thank you. And mary, would you like to go ahead and make a statement . Yeah, actually, its my daughter, mya. Okay. Hi. My name is mya. I am a fifth grader. I have been in ufc for two years. I think we should have more students. There are at least six other students that are part of the group. It gave me confidence and ideas like to run for president , which i did. We hosted an event with two other Elementary Schools, Francis Scott key and stevenson with other black students. We played games and had lunch together. Thank you to the principal, the advisors for supporting this event and working with the other schools. Thank you, aapac. I also want more leadership opportunities. Thank you. That concludes Public Comments. Thats a perfect conclusion to the Public Comments. It was. I want to thank everybody for coming out for that or sticking around so long. Commissioners, any comments or questions . Vice president lopez . Vice president lopez yes, thank you. Thank you, everyone, for your work, for your presentation, for your work. I have always been appreciative of that. You have just shown us clearly what we need as a School District, and i really am in awe with your leadership and what you are instilling in our students. So i just want to continue to uplift that. This has been so nice to hear after the discussion we had previously. My one question is around aapacs at our schools and how we are expanding that. Is that something that youve noticed is a need and where in the city are the majority of the aapacs . Can i respond . So, yes. Theres absolutely a need. This year in sfusd, were focusing on authentic partnerships and really centering authentic partnerships with our families and our most underserved families. So schools have been reaching out like crazy saying how do i start an aapac. And whether youre ready to start an aapac or not, how do i convene and partner with black families. At this moment, there are plenty of partners who are supporting it, mission graduates supports some of our school sites, sfs have been supporting, black families Affinity Group. A lot of our beacon partners are supporting. So its happening. But just to be quite honest, in the Central Office in terms of direct support, its me. So im reaching out schools are reaching out to me and im giving them what i can. At this moment what im able to offer is consultation, resources, some materials, and then just being there to walk them through the process. And so, yes, there is a need. We have to expand it. We have to think about how were working with our district partners and our Community Partners to take on this work, and quite honestly id love a little help. I would like some help to make sure our groups are taking care of while im supporting the district aapac and district leaders just thinking about black family partnerships. Ill note our office of empowerment has been incredible and going out and trying to support some of this work. Theres definitely a need. You ask where they are. Theyre spread out. One of the things ive heard in the past is why arent they in cohort 3. Well, cohort 3 is densely populated are African American students and families. So their ptas are most likely their aapac. Its Affinity Groups. You do not have to be called an African American Parent Advisory Council. You can do whatever you library but its affinity like but its Affinity Groups for families. Were kicking butt trying to get this up and going and thanks to kevin. Kevin is really trying to lead the work on the north side as a parent and making sure that our schools are getting the resources and staying up to date. So it is spread out. I will send you a list, ill send you a list of where all the aapacs are. Like la toya said, this is covid world, virtual world, so schools are trying to figure out how to get up and running but its not because of a lack of effort. They are really trying and im really grateful for their partnership. Vice president lopez thank you for that. President sanchez go ahead, delegate . Id like to thank everyone for your support today. A lot of you have played a big role in my life. Miss leticias, we got to work over the summer. Miss la toya, miss mary, we got to meet each other over the summer and do a lot of great stuff. I got to meet you two summers ago sitting on a panel. Id like to thank all of your support. I told people, you know, dont mess with me. Youre going to wake up black San Francisco, and thats exactly what happened. Exactly what happened. Any other comments . Commissioner collins . Commissioner collins thank you. Just to say thank you again for your service, and we need to compensate i mean, the labor that these families are doing for our district and for other families, and im telling you this is a personal thing. Like, when i need somebody, i reach out to the aapac as a commissioner, right . And i have been. And i also want to, you know, reiterate that, you know, letecia irving is incredible and amazing and the Leadership Team and all the members on the board, the collaborative leadership that they show. They model, like, i feel like they are my role models, you know . And i learn from them. And i just really deeply want to appreciate your work and for consistently showing up despite, you know, weve got a lot of stuff going on, we have a lot of family stuff. You guys are a family. And i feel like, you know, you have created a family for us for black families. So i really, really appreciate all of you. Additionally, i wanted to ask, superintendent matthews, i think we made a request a while back that when we got these recommendations, there would be some tracking of them, and i wasnt sure if that is something that you know, because that was i think the last time that they im pretty sure. Im just wondering when were going to start tracking the recommendations because i see 2021 recommendations and i thought the last time we saw them, at least wed be able to look at previous years and see whether, you know, like the dashboard or whatever. Yes, so we started tracking the recommendations and we actually as a staff have reached out to current aapacs and just about where theyre seeing the recommendations implemented or where theyre not seeing them implemented so we can show whether, yes, youre correct, it wasnt implemented or, no, in fact, we have. So, yes, we have started. Vice president lopez i appreciate that. So when will we as commissioners be able to follow up and see the results of that tracking . So we have were scheduling that meeting on and its after that meeting with aapac because then the board can either schedule it or i can send a report to the board, either way. But we can get that information to you. I want to sit down with the aapac first and were scheduling that now. Vice president lopez that would be great. And in that process i want to be flexible and supportive. I also want to make that really transparent to the public as well and find ways to the community to also see that work. So thank you. Any other comments . Commissioner moliga and commissioner cook . Commissioner moliga i wanted to ask a question around the wellness study that was recommended, and i wanted to know if you have any wellness study being rolled out or implemented currently, specifically to gauge what is going on in terms of our black students. Are you referring to the wellness checkins that we do four times a year, commissioner . Commissioner moliga i think on the recommendation they were very specific about a study. They mentioned the beyond the schoolhouse model out is that it . L. A. Commissioner moliga l. A. , right. So im wondering if that beyond the schoolhouse model is a yeararound thing that they picked up and adopted and have been using throughout the years, or is it something that they just implemented . Im curious to know if we have Something Like that in place in the School District. I think miss irving is going to respond. I want to clarify before we talk about what the School District has. So when the aapac Leadership Team went to the California Alliance of black School Educators conference, we were able to view this report and this report talks about more than whats happening in the School District, so beyond the schoolhouse. It talks about the air quality. It took about neighborhoods where there is high poverty. It talks about looking at students who have incarcerated parents. Like, all these other things that impact our students that kind of put up a barrier before they even enter into our school and they partner with the School District to really look at the data of those African American children and then put out some recommendations. So its doing this, would,ing with the city, really looking at our students holistically and then adjusting within our School District how we support them. So that is something that we picked up from the California Alliance of black School Educators that aapac brought back to the board this year and brought again this year. Commissioner moliga are we sending a team out there this year . I know there conference is coming up next month. Thats all virtual. Commissioner moliga i think they have some limited inperson spots as well. But folks will check up on that. Did you want to comment . Thank you, commissioner moliga. To be honest, as weve been sort of focusing on the coordinated care teams and the wellness in partnership plans, weve been building the systems and structures and this is an area where we are, as of this moment, at the place of beginning to reach out to our different parent groups to talk about it. So we just need to engage with the Parent Advisory Council to think about moving forward. I think i am focusing a lot on, which dr. Matthews will be presented in a moment about the reopening of schools. So maybe we can somehow coordinate some of that. But i will be totally honest with you that our work on that has been slower than we would like it to be because of [indiscernible] other areas. Commissioner moliga cool. I appreciate the honesty. I do think that is a critical piece in the work in terms of supporting our black students, and im glad you guys are going to be reaching out to the aapac to get that going. My last kind of comment and just kind of question, i know its not easy to try to manage all these parents supporting these programs like leteisha mentioned before. I would be curious to know the supports we can put in place to make that a more robust system. It seems to be growing. There needs to be more support in terms of being able to carry out the work, especially during these covid times. Id suggest maybe we can implement interns, do youth work to offer more support. Id like a job. Commissioner moliga thats all i had. Thank you to aapac group. Appreciate it. President sanchez commissioner cook . Commissioner cook i was going to make a comment about a job but its not going to be funny. Thats all im saying. Thank you all for presenting. I got to get to know a lot of you individually and i do appreciate your inaudible in this grass roots and strengthening effort that youve done to really influence the aapac policy districtwide. Its been great being in collaboration with you. Im going to extend another apology for not adding to the black cities resolution earlier. Thank you for those reminders. You should be there at the outset and i hope to continue to work with you in a supportive capacity [indiscernible] district. President sanchez commissioner norton . Commission norton thank you. I just wanted to thank you to all the members of the aapac for all the volunteer labor that youre doing and to ms. Irving, you just have been doing a tremendous job. It has been extremely visible to me over the years as aapac has ramped up and, you know, gotten more and more organized and been at more schools, just the voices and the parent representation that im seeing from you is really exceptional. So just thank you. Its noted. And theres been i can see that its growing and i am excited to continue to watch it grow. And i appreciate all of the work. I know it is not easy to be a parent volunteer and be juggling all the things that all of us parents are juggling these days, so i just want to really appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you. I just want to say my thanks and appreciation as well to all of you again for your free work, volunteer work, and i have a question for staff around that. You mentioned several times i know commissioners have mentioned it and you brought it up as well, but what i call stipending, what that might look like if we were able to do it, if we were being supported through philanthropy, for example, if we can start with the aapac i know we have a lot of advisory groups and all of them im sure would want some sort of stipend as well, but i think aapac is probably where we would start. If we can get some kind of rundown at some point, i know you guys are super busy, but around what that might look like and where we might get the funding to do that. I dont necessarily need a response, just an acknowledgment that that will be something you can look into. Commissioner sanchez, i do want to appreciate all that they do. We have a grant through them. Its what weve applied for and through that we have been able to offer various small stipend. Its not enough. 350 hours a month, it is not nearly enough. In case theyre listening, were grateful for the grant and what weve been able to do with it and how the Parent Advisory Council for the district has supported us in making sure those stipends get out. President sanchez thats good to know. I think i knew that before, but we forget. Well work on that. I think its an important thing to move forward on, to make it more robust. So thank you again. We are going to move on, if i can figure out where were at because everything has been really organized. So commissioners, bear with me. Were making one more agenda at least one more agenda change. Were going to move discussion of other educational issues up, which is School Reopening dashboard. Superintendent matthews . Thank you, president sanchez. Mr. Steele, if you could get the deck up. While youre loading that deck, i know that some families and Community Members are eager for our Public Schools to reopen to inperson learning and i understand that others want to keep their children at home to limit the spread of covid19. Since schools closing in march, staff have been working around the clock to deliver services to students while planning a safe return to inperson learning. This is exactly what we said we would do back in july, once we announced that we were going to Distance Learning, we said that we would immediately begin the process to build towards inperson learning. Weve been sharing regular updates with the community at Board Meetings and on our website and through our weekly staff and family digests. We regularly meet with community groups, parent committees, the department of Public Health and other city officials as well as employee representatives to share proposals and to gather feedback. Our greatest priority is ensuring the continued education of our students and the wellbeing of everyone in the community, including students, staff, and their families. We are taking this very seriously and well continue to share updates with our communities. Distance learning is not suitable im sorry, is not a substitute for the inschool experience. The intent of Distance Learning is and continues to be to mitigate the risk of covid19 transmission. The district and the board want to safely return to inperson instruction. Our District Team is working diligently to deliver remote instruction while also putting everything in place to offer inperson learning options to students most in need. We are working to offer inperson learning options for our Public School students to take into account the state and city and county Public Health contact as well as our district contact. At the last Board Meeting, we shared a set of criteria that were using to determine and that we will use as we continue to move towards offering inperson instruction to select student populations. Were planning to start with offering inperson instruction for our youngest learners in prek and also students with individual Education Programs who receive special Education Service for moderate and severe disabilities in our special day classes. In an effort to make our preparations more visible to the community, tonight i will be sharing a dashboard that will be on our website, and this will allow people to monitor the progress on key indicators, and we will post our reopening progress, updated on our website weekly. So with that, i wanted to share that dashboard with you. And then talk about some of those decisions. If you go to the next slide next slide. So this has been our frame. Always health and safety has been most important and we know that once we went to distanced learning, because of health and safety, we knew that students from institutionally marginalized communities have and continue to face compounded threats. So we went to Distance Learning because of covid, but, as we said, immediately we will start working toward bringing our most marginalized students back. Next slide. And this is, as ive just said, Distance Learning first, then [indiscernible] to return, and then eventually moving to full return. Graduated return and then moving to full return. Next slide. This gives you a sense of how we see it. Right now were in full Distance Learning. As you see phase 2 is hybrid and our goal is that intersection you see in the venn diagram, our goal is to make that intersection larger and larger when more and more students are able to return to inperson learning. Next slide. These are just, as i said at our last Board Meeting, we shared with you the decision tree. This is our plan. And so we have to all of the boxes that are on the second column, we have to have yeses to all of those, and thats what the dashboard will indicate. We showed this at our last Board Meeting. This has been up on our website. The first column that you see, this is from two weeks ago, the presentation, but we already know the first column now, the city has gone to yellow, so we know that in the first box, all we needed there was purple, so were well past purple. Were already yellow. So we know there that its all yeses, and now the goal is to take the second column and make them all yeses so that we can return. When we said we have prioritized safety, thats exactly what we meant. In order for our facilities, our schools to be safe, then we have to have yeses in all those boxes. And for us, as im about to show you on the dashboard, that would mean that theyre all going to go to green. Next slide. And so this is to be, and we know the same thing, that those are all yeses on that first column. Next slide. So this just tells you how to read the dashboard, the colors, and we want to move from pink, that means work has not started, to green. And our goal is, as i just explained, is if we are going to return to inperson learning, then all has to be green, so everything has to be completed so that our Community Knows its safe and our staff knows its safe. So pink is not started. Orange, as you can see, is the work has started and its anywhere from 0 to 25 in progress. Its 25 to 75. Work is almost done in this area, is 75 to 99 , and once its completely done, its 100 , and thats green. As you can see here, the dashboard has three major sections. The first section gives a summary of progress. The next section links to the interactive dashboard. And the third section links to additional information. Next slide. So this gives you a sense of all of the areas. These are the same exact areas that were on the the same exact areas that you saw on the previous chart, and you can see you have small cohorts, groups of students, that have been identified for reopening, our general Safety Measures in place. So you can see all of that, and as you look, you can see where the progress is now. So you see the color and then you see the progress. So have small groups of students to identify is 60 , are general measure safety in place, including staff plans. As you go through, and im going to come back and go through all of them, you can see exactly where the progress that we have made in these areas. If you go to the next slide. And so lets start with that first one. Small groups of students that identify for reopening. Next slide. So what you see is here is that so this is the top level and you see that small groups have been identified and the next level in progress is 50 , identify students across early education, 60 , identifying [indiscernible] groups almost done at 80 . Next slide. And so what you just saw was that first task and what this does is it takes it a level down. What i just showed you was the one step down. So the first one is has small groups identified and then that shows you that its in progress. And then if you click on that, it tells you exactly what needs to be done in order for this one to turn green. All of these three have to be green. So the pk 13 students have to be identified. Students across early ed have to be identified. You can see that 60, 60, and 80 percent. Lets go to the next one. General Safety Measures in place, including a staff testing plan. Go to the next slide. Next slide. So as you can see, this is that area, and if you click on it, so you can see that that one is 30 . Were going to come back and talk about that one at the very end. That one is 30 and then you can see the five areas. Now go back to the previous slide. Sorry, justin. And these are those five areas. So we have to ensure that every facility has a covid19 prevention plan. So thats at 30 . Building protocols is at 50 . Building protocols to support youth with access and functional needs. Thats at 30 . Develop a plan for ongoing surveillance testing of all staff at 30 . And then data collection, how are we going to data collect, how are we going to monitor, this is at 10 . As i said, were going to come back and talk about this one. So now we can go through to the next slide. So that was im sorry. We just did this one. Go forward. And now this is work streams 3 through 9. So for each of these on the dashboard, youre able to click on the high level. For example, have all staff been trained . You see its at 40 . Then if you click on that on the dashboard, it will take you one level down to see all that needs to be done to get that to green. Our work is to get each of these to green, as we said, safety is our number one priority and weve said that over and over again. And we know that once we do whats here, all thats here, that we will be safe. At the last Board Meeting, there were some comments about us, the district, putting up a we were putting barriers in place. But if you i would ask those who made those comments to tell me then whether you think we dont need to do what do we not need to do . Do we not need to have staff trained . Do we not need to make sure that all families have been informed . So things are here because our covid19 policy team has determined, working with staff, working with the community, what it is going to take to get us to a place of safety. As you can see, have all staff been trained, and if you double click down, you can see all the things that need to be done to get our staff trained. Thats at 40 . Have families been informed of health and safety protocols. Thats at 5 . Are covid19 preventative measures in place. Thats at between 40 and 45 percent. Are School Facilities prepared for social distancing and hygiene . Thats at 10 . Is a threemonth supply of ppe in stock . Thats at 85 . You can see are instructional plans in place . Thats in progress. Then are labor agreements in place . Thats at 25 . So this is to give the Community One of the concerns weve heard is that we havent been transparent with the amount of progress were making. This is to make sure that the community can clearly see the progress thats being made, how close we are to the point of a return, and this is for 2 a . We expect to have the next the 2 b dashboard up in a week or two, but we didnt want to put them both up at the same time. So this is 2 a . If you can go to the next slide. I wanted to come back to this one, as i said, because, as we have worked through one of the things that the area that we know that has been the stickiest or the most difficult for us is around testing. One of the things that we would have to do is we have to make sure that testing is in place, and what that looks like is we have to have return to work testing. So before people can come back to work, they have to be tested. We have to have surveillance testing. And testing if symptoms occur. We have to have exposure testing. If people have been exposed, they have to be tested. Through this, if somebody tests positive, then we have to be able to identify the close contacts. So we have to trace. And we have to have a Management System in place that does all of this. We are an Educational Institution who is now being asked to become a testing agency, and we realize that if we are going to bring students back, this is what we have to do. This is not what this system was built for. You know, my hope would have been that the federal government would have come through, but we can clearly see thats not going to happen, and if thats not going to happen, then we would hope that the State Government would come through to assist us in this, and neither of those have happened. We actually started working on this ok, how are we going to do the protocols for testing, and changing as we speak. Protocols in place now are not a month, so as soon as when the protocols change, it causes us to have to change. So, we know that this is, and seems to be as we are making progress in other areas, this is the most difficult area for us and we know that, we have been as i said at this for the last 14 weeks. And the reason i say all this to say that with that in mind, we know that over the next eight weeks we are not going to have this area at 100 . So, this this message is to let parents know that we do not anticipate bringing students back before the end of the calendar year. So we dont anticipate students will be able to return before even the 2a groups before december. Our hope is over the next eight weeks, to continue to build a bond, to get as many areas green as possible, we can focus our attention, focus our, focus everything on the areas that arent green, in order to get them green so that we know its safe and bring students back. Next slide. So the next steps for us are Community Work groups have a schedule has been made, so this progress will be discussed at those Community Work groups. Our job as i just said, continue making progress in all areas to get the areas to green. The progress to be dashboard will be put on the website in the next two weeks. Biggest areas i just said is testing, and thats the area we need to continue to focus and guidance, working with d. P. H. To make it happen. We will make progress on Family Communication and staff training and we will continue to engage with the labor progress for the agreement because as you know, one of the last ones is, or the bottom one on the whole chain is we have to have labor agreements with our partners, and thats, our goal is move forward and make all of these areas green so we can begin, once they are green, we know its safe, our top priority. We have not strayed from that, we made it clear from the very beginning that health and safety will guide our work and continue down that past. So, president sanchez, thats the end of my presenttation. Can you or someone on staff just go a little bit more into the actual Community Work group process . So the we had three Community Work groups, those Community Work groups from the summer were logistics work group, personnel and construction work group. Work groups were community, parents on there, there were teachers, there were classified Staff Members, there were members from every single of our labor partners, as well as parents, as well as students. So a wide swath of administrators, a swath of the community all the work groups. Those groups that either meeting is scheduled or shortly being scheduled, i heard it was scheduled, bringing the work groups back and to bring forward one of the things i just suggested or just said was we know the testing arena is going to be our biggest hurdle. So definitely gives us the opportunity to hear from the Community Around this hurdle that we have to climb. We know also that you know, communications from the public, there are a lot of folks out there that feel ready to assist and would want to be part of the process. And so i dont know what your thoughts are in terms of trying to include more voices in the process and what that might look like. I know we have had town hall meetings, dont mean to be a way for voices to be heard. Im wondering if we can think about more avenues for, i dont want to get bogged down in conversation right now, but in your head, more avenues for folks at various levels of expertise and areas to be involved. Appreciate that. Okay. I know, i have a feeling we are going to hear from some people that want to be part of this. And lastly, before we go, just to elaborate a little more about the labor aspect of this, because it is intrinsically tied to the testing protocols and the availability of testing. We are continuing to work with our labor partners for when we bring students back, we have to have m. O. U. S in place, we just started at least i think must be a month and a half or two months ago we started having conversations about bringing students back. We have to have labor agreements and so testing is a part of it. But everything on here is a part of it. So, we are actually having those conversations with our labor partners about what it looks like when we return students, just like we had the same kind of conversations around what Distance Learning needs to look like. Okay. Great. All right. With that, mr. Steele, we are going to look and see how many folks would like to comment during this Public Comment. There are 23 and climbing at this time. Lets give it a second. Ok. I just posted the video. Esther, your mic is on. Thank you. Justin, if you would not mind putting me into the hat, i appreciate that. Got it. Thank you. I think its 28 people. I see 31. 31. 32. 33. Including the panelists who would like to speak. Ok. Lets give it, everybody a minute. Yep. Actually, why dont we give everybody a minute and a half. Ok. 90 seconds. Hello, yvette. Hello, yvette . Yes, sorry. Go ahead. Im sorry, im in the middle of another meeting as well. Im still just wondering how we are going to talk about all of these issues. We keep talking about repeated closures, regarding the slides that you have shown, protocols, im curious what we are doing to talk about the scientists, sorry, hold on a second. And whats happened in other School Districts and whether or not we are going to bring forward that information, given the fact we are in the yellow at this point, and also i just wanted to again express, you know, we are talking so much about what it means for apec and our children but not considering what it means for the children that are truly suffering during this time, whether or not getting them back in, given all the things that we are facing is more important than whatever these other issues that everyone is talking about on the board. You know, yall keep talking about, have we done this yet, cleaned this, sanitizing, are we figuring out how to get things handled. At the end of the day, what really matters, whether or not we have the funding and whether or not we actually should be able to do this. I think those are the things i want to focus on. I got a little distracted, apologize if im not being very clear. Focus on the science, and what the department of health has hold us, given what San Francisco is involved in, and when we talk about black children, children of color, what they need right now is something brought up at the forefront of this particular community. Meredith. Im here with my daughter emily, with a message for the board. I really want to go back to school because i dont like Distance Learning and its kind of hard for me to learn zoom. Im the mother of two children in Public School, and im just baffled that the School District is so far behind in terms of reopening. When you look at School Districts like new york city with 1. 1 Million Students, 1600 Public Schools, double the rate, transmission rates that we have in San Francisco and they have reopened schools and our School District is telling us that its too complicated, its too hard and we wont even go back for the most vulnerable learners, pk students, not even talking about first and kindergarten any more, i have a 1st grader, not learning under Distance Learning. We are stressed, struggling and failure of the district to help parents. Me and my husband are both essential workers and we cannot afford to home school our children for the next year and a half. And thats what this looks like, superintendent matthews, what it looks like, that you wont even reopen for my students, for my kids until january of 2022. Thank you. That is unacceptable. Thank you. Hello, erica. I have a fifth and seventh grader and i work in School Facilities business, so i want to say i appreciate dr. Matthews, one of the few voices that says this, i know how complicated it is. I sit in webinars, i know what san diego unified is doing, what San Bernardino is doing, i know what other districts are doing across the state, so i appreciate your efforts. I would like to say you stated you have been communicating with families along, you know, this whole way. I will tell you that i am active on our p. T. O. And s. S. E. And i read every single email that you put out. I dont even have preschoolers and i watch sf loves learning because i think its such a cute program, i forward through it but do catch it. I think you are missing something. It certainly does not feel like you are communicating to our parents about whats going on, and what the steps are, and one of the most involved parents i know. So, i challenge you on that sense but i do know and believe that you guys are doing the best you can and its very complicated and its very tricky but we need to just keep trying and be able to communicate that, and start really picking away at what upon layingses we can start bringing back. Obviously our most impacted first, but thank you. Thank you. Hello, susan. United educators of San Francisco. We value the updates about safe School Reopening as have heard tonight, instrumental in assessing whether its safe to reopen schools. As much as we educators long to see our students in person, we must also have evidence that its safe to be in our schools so that serious illness and death among adults and children can be presented. The district is assessing supplies, we are looking at the m. L. U. And making improvements to that m. O. U. As we go along. Even when we moved to hybrid or partial School Reopening, difficult reality is that we will still have students engaged in Distance Learning, we must refine and improving everything about it. In the meantime, the Bargaining Team and other members have been talking about the possibilities of inperson Student Engagement on a limited basis with our focus on students who are the most disenfranchised during Distance Learning, due to a great extent, the most disenfranchised prepandemic as well. So much comes back to resources. As dr. Matthews said, the district has to find a vendor and funding to surveillance testing, crucial criteria. Why is this . The time of a national crisis, where is the leadership at the National Level . Sfusd was underfunded before the pandemic, now its worse. This is a time for all of us, educators, students, families, elected officials, to be communicating with each other frequently and at length. We are all talking about, caring about, and worrying about the same kids. Our kids, in every zip code and neighborhood in the city. Lets be clear where to cast blame. Blame lies not with educators, unions, parents or the School System, but with president trump, secretary of education betsy devos, and a federal government that has no plan for fighting this horrible pandemic. Thats why its so extremely important to vote yes on proposition 15 for schools and communities first, and for proposition j, school funding. We are fully committed to supporting our students and working with the district, parents, Community Members and students in any and every way we can. Thank you. Thank you. Hello, jonathan. Yes. Can you hear me . Go ahead. Unconscionable we are five hours into a meeting seven months into Distance Learning before seeing the first reopening dashboard. As the mayor said, this should be your first, second and third job. You talked the talk of social justice but dont walk the walk. We dont fix structural in equity by renaming buildings, disadvantaged and vulnerable students cannot attend and prioritizing similar actions while the school day is 90 minutes on zoom. You are barely a third of the way to bring back 4yearolds, much less all elementary, middle and High Schoolers. Its clear its a lost year for kids and at best you might reopen next august. As parents and taxpayers we expect better from you. 100 standard for everything is ludicrous when we have the crisis of Distance Learning, harming families, military families and single parents. You need to work with the city, parents and nonprofits instead of against them and move faster. Thank you. Thank you. Hello, matt. Yes. Thank you. Appreciate your time. Matt aldridge. A parent of two children. Im also Critical Care physician and the executive medical director of care at u. C. S. F. And my wife is also. I speak for myself and my wife, i mention this, because i have been deeply involved in response to pandemic and personally cared for many critically ill patients with covid19. I am well aware and personally involved with the care of patients. I know the seriousness of the pandemic and the impact on patients and families. With all that in mind, i firmly believe our children need the opportunity for inperson education. The impact of School Closures on children especially our most vulnerable described by many people already at the meeting tonight and i know many of you are aware of deeply concerning studies and reports. We have an opportunity in San Francisco to be a leader in the safe reopening of Public Schools. We are nowhere near as far along as we should be. We are a city that has done a great deal to mitigate the impact of covid, and yet we are not taking advantage of our low prevalence rate. If there are needs and resources, the one thing that sfusd and the superintendent can do, better engage with parents and allow us to help you identify resources to work with you, to provide technical guidance, seek funding sources, but ultimately we have to prioritize inperson education, the most central part of the reopening and recovery. Thank you. Hello, anthony. Hi. Can you hear me . Yes, good ahead. So the plan seems to be we are hoping to reopen in january, im curious, why we have not had like a survey of parents, who would be willing to put their kids Large Population would still not be comfortable, and so that would take care of the big issues in terms of how do we divide the population in half to mitigate, and secondary, hillsboro Public Schools opened this week, whats the difference for them and they aecom accomplished it, hope we are closer to getting our kids back in school. Thank you. Thank you. Hello, heather. Yes, hi. I wanted to speak to this notion of safety versus risk. And its really sort of have the district unpack what that means because you know, as everyone has pointed out, we are in the yellow zone. I dont think that theres any theres anybody who assumes that Opening School in the middle of a pandemic is going to ever be safe, but there is, and safe for everyone. There will be instances of infections, but what is the risk of in the opening versus the risk of opening where we are now and in San Francisco, and secondarily, based on the individual school site plans, what resources can we bring to bear in terms of parent resources and private sector to sort of address ideas around whether they are testing, planning, and sort of meeting the individual benchmark in your reopen plan on a site by site basis, involving the individuals and the p. T. A. S to help bring each location up to the reopening standard for us. And as an involved parent and a parent who works at another university in the city, the testing protocols are not mandatory and especially the surveillance testing, they are recommended but not mandatory, so, unpacking what are riskbased choices we are making. Thank you. Thanks. Hello, melody. Hi. I am a parent of a kindergarten student and he hates school. And i have to force him to log on, and it breaks my heart. My husband and i both work fulltime, we both have postgraduate degrees, and education is very important to us. And Public Education is very important to us. And i am so frustrated and so upset with how the board of education is handling School Reopening in San Francisco. It is unacceptable. There is not i am shocked superintendent matthews you say the chart you put up is the percentage that we have reached shows transparency. Because its anything but. Rather than showing the percentage of what you have done and reached, why dont you put out a clear list and directive of what needs to be done and how people can help. We are a rich city. We should utilize our resources. We have a mayor, we have supervisors who have indicated they want to prioritize School Reopenings. We have parents that are educated. We have a Public Health department that has done an amazing job in this pandemic to help us keep our numbers down. We have billion Dollar Companies and access to private money if we can tell them what is needed. Is it money, is it resources, what do we need . We need a directive, we need a list. I am also upset that the change shifted from k to 2 to prek, no explanation, no explanation. Thank you, thank you. Hello, joe. Hi. Yeah, thank you. My name is joe, a parent of a 1st grader in glen park, currently in 90 minutes of zoom a day and thats her school. And its really, really frustrating as many of these other callers have attested. As the previous caller said, 2a phase was changed without any explanation from ktwo to prek. Why is that, why cant a 1st grader go back to school. Another caller says new york city has 1. 1 Million Students and open for three weeks. We have 5 of that student body and we are starting to gradually open schools. And San Francisco is yellow in covid preparedness and health measures. Private schools are open. Private tutoring is happen. Inequities are getting worse. 57,000 students are completely out of luck because the board is talking about things like renaming schools and deciding whether theres a lottery for thats not the thing. Get the kids back in class. If levi had a shortage of demin shortage, they would have all hands on deck. The school board needs school. Tens of thousands of parents that want their kids in school who are educated, means, who have some time let us be involved, tell us what we can do. We would absolutely be all hands on deck for this, and frankly, the notion that we are being transparency thank you, your time. Its laughable. Thank you. This is the email, clny cln that is my daughters email, because i often put her on her zoom classes using my personal computer. Go an ahead. Saprina ray, i want to thank the commissioners have made some inquiries to Outdoor Education in the past. I am one of the parents who called previously and commented previously about the failure to even consider Outdoor Education. District and the board are failing at their most basic responsibility, to get our kids back to school and learning. Distance learning is not good for kids and sfusd acknowledges that, and thats all the plan does. Not an option to go inperson, whether in or outdoors, and plenty of schools around the country doing this. We are fortunate to be in the city where we have good leadership and we have a low covid rate, under 1 in terms of positivity. And in the yellow. And yet sfusd amazingly to me constantly wraps itself in the mantle of safety and equity but the plans are not achieving these. Safest things, clearly, outside. If you are inside, certainly they could do much more than it has to get things moving. In addition, in terms of equity, as always, these plans harms more students than its helping. Thank you for taking my comments. Thank you. Hello, stan. Hi. Thank you, dr. Matthews and board members. Im not here to discount the School Districts intent with providing safety, health and safety is the number one top priority, im here to mention a couple facts regarding the Staffing Levels of engineers that i represent, that maintain the facilities at the School District. So, i represent station engineers, Staffing Levels, twothirds, yeah, 33 vacancy rate. You have a strong possibility that these individuals are going to be moving on to other employers specifically the city and county of San Francisco, and potentially even the city college. Primarily because the wage discrepancy between the two. Wages approximately 10 behind. By the end of this year, 12 behind. By the middle of july, theyll be close to 15 behind. So, what i recommended to chief officers john, greg john, excuse me, with labor relations, some measures to keep employees there to make sure they provide a safe Work Environment and School Environment for the kids. Our station engineers take care of the hvac system, its clear to science and c. D. C. That aerosol transmission is the biggest threat with covid19 and in order to ensure the Safety Measures in place, you have to have the engineers there onsite to make sure the systems are operating 100 . 100 , making sure the staff and School Children are in the safest environment possible. Thank you. Kamal. Hi there, thanks for letting me have two minutes to talk. I want to echo what most parents have said today, especially dr. Aldridge, taking advantage what we have in the city and the parents that are invested in these schools. I am one of the parents that has the privilege to have a choice between public and private and we have chosen to stay in the Public School system, not because i think the education is necessarily better than private education, but because i want to be part of the solution. You guys spent five hours talking about inequity and how we can work as a community to solve these issues and yet by not having kids in School Despite other big cities having solved this issue, its though this whole 100 of everything before we can even start bring back the most vulnerable, almost a recipe for failure, and i would say in the city we have ucsf, partner with ucsf. I cant imagine they are not willing to do what they can to bring back children into schools. And so you know, instead of saying we dont have solution, lets find solutions. Otherwise more and more families, ive seen many this year, leave for privates and these are the families, the ones that can help make some of these issues better. So, lets be agile, please do what you can to bring back students. Thank you. Thank you. Hello, josh. Hi, good evening. Can you hear me . Yes. Thank you. Im the parent of a 1st grader at glen park elementary, and as others have noted on the call it appears as time has moved forward and Public Health data has improved, the district and commissioners and they have moved backward. Groups have been removed without explanation, staff is not prepared to talk about phase 2b. Phase 2a is not complete despite the seventh month of the pandemic, and supervisor matthews evades. If you look for reasons not to reopen youll find them. Susan was. 18 Positivity Rate, her quote it sounds like a nice low number but its hard not to think about the 28, solomon said. We are not going to get so 0, but is there a number we can say we live with that. Take miss solomon at her word, and wants lower rate than. 18 , should we accept the official position and will not agree until the test Positivity Rate is that low, just for reference, the current rate is. 88 , 500 of what miss solomon is referring to. District is far behind other public districts in planning for reopen. Alameda county Just Announced a comprehensive testing. What is the district doing all that time. You have lost the mayor, lost other elected officials, and thank you, thats a concerned parent, are you there . Yes, im here. Go ahead. Hi, a parent of an Elementary School student at a Public School here in San Francisco. Please open our Public Schools. I mean, San Francisco moved today to the yellow tier of minimal spread, minimal spread. That means restaurants, churches, bowling alleys and the like will reopen. But sfusd las vegas far behind. Private schools are already opening up. Sfusd is failing our Public School students, i personally know so many families moving away from San Francisco or leaving our Public School system for private school even though they cant afford it due to the utter inadequacy of zoom school. And the loss will likely grow the longer sfusd will not give the real education and School Community experience. Its already been seven months since our children were at school. This is far too long. Especially given the research that clearly shows the pandemic lack of Health Effects on children. Also for those of us who only have one child, we are very concerned the isolation and loneliness of staring at the screen by themselves, away from their peers will leave terrible longterm effects. Please reopen our Public Schools. Thank you. Hello, megan. Hi, megan, im a behavior analyst with the School District. I appreciate the tremendous efforts the district staff to lay out the complexity of reopening a large diverse public School District. Some may not know Public Schools do not get federal assistance for this pandemic but private schools have had access to p. P. P. Loans and received 5. 7 billion across the nation. California is the 39th in Public School funding in the nation. And i understand that our Public Schools have always been asked to do the best we can with far too little. And appreciate focus on equity and inperson learning for students who need it the most. Some require special considerations when planning for the return, increasing the complexity of the effort. Thankful for the thoughtfulness of this process and encourage the board to continue to seek out the voices of those students and families most impacted by covid, to understand the what and how of reopening for them. I also encourage you to continue to be forthcoming and transparent with information. Educators and families must be on the same page. I would like to remind folks the district accepts donations. Thank you. Thank you. Hello, charles. Hi, can you hear me . Yes, go ahead. Charles, and im the father of a 1st grader at new traditions. By all accounts we know Distance Learning is not serving younger children and disproportionately aebts marginallized communities. My child simply cannot handle zoom. Shes not learning anything, and its doing more harm than good. Its really frustrating to see so little progress made towards reopening. I have to wonder, what has the city been doing all this time n you see the dashboard, and very little progress. I want to point out mayor breeds comment, we have hit the state guidelines, gave the ok to reopen schools over a month ago yet we are just getting the update about the dashboard that shows tons of work needed. Compare ourselves to other School Districts in the area. The lack of transparency from San Francisco is mind boggling. Other schools are open, private schools are reopen, some are reopening a couple days a week, yet we dont have a functional plan from sfusd. And children are good at Wearing Masks. Preschools have been open along. Other cities have shown it can be done. San francisco has gone into the yellow phase and super frustrating to see that most of the work for reopening has not even started. We have been waiting and waiting, and even dr. Matthews language shows hesitation. He said if we are going to open, if we are going to bring students back. But no, we have to, we live in the richest city in the world and no excuse for this. Im calling for clear deadlines and accountability. Unacceptable. Thank you. Hello, andrew. Can you hear me . Go an i head. Thank you. Andrew noble, a father of three children at fourth, second and kindergarten. I never felt the need to attend a meeting before, but im concerned about the lack of energy and focus on reopening as evidenced by the fact this conversation was started over five hours after the meeting began, and we are only now getting to this issue of reopening. And the fact that the district is going for the divisive exercise of renaming schools rather than focussing on how we are going to get kids back in class. This is not acceptable. San francisco has done its part. Infection rates are some one of the lowest in country. We are now in yellow tier, private schools have been able to open successfully. Catholic and other religious schools can do it. Other Public Schools can do it and i dont understand why the San Francisco unified School District is unable to accomplish this. Kids go to soccer practice, shop, we can start going to restaurants, you can go to movies, shop at target, but we cant attend Public Schools . Its insane. You need to stop blaming, stop blaming newsom and take responsibility for getting the schools open. Thank you. Thank you. Cassandra. Yes, hi, seventh grade Language Arts teacher. I am also on the Bargaining Team so i have been in meetings in which these issues have been discussed. Ive also been working in San Francisco for ten years, but i live in oakland. And the fact that the insinuation that there should be a comfortable rate of infection that we should be willing to endure as teachers, as students, as Community Members, is super disheartening to hear. As an individual for which, or for whom some folks are willing to allow infection or responsibility. Further, i whole heartedly disagree with the narrative that was created that the School District business and progress on a more equitable School System cannot continue with the exact same time as crisis learning and solutionoriented meetings are taking place. That is a false juxtaposition. We are in a Global Pandemic which the country has not gotten ahold of and yet the responsibility falls on teachers and other Community Members to bear the brunt of. Comparing our School District and our community with the unique conditions and needs as densely populated urban area plus commuters who come from all over the bay area to attend our School System, to compare that with another communitys lower standard for School Reopening, or a standard that meets their unique communitys living situation. These are not apples to apples comparison. These are very specific and very different. Thank you, thats your time. Thank you. Hello, seth. Good evening. Thank you very much, superintendent matthews and members of the board. My name is seth brensell, i am a parent at glen park school. And i have found myself joining a group of other parents in a group called decreasing the distance that in the last week came forward with a petition that came to you, i think you received a copy of it and members of the board did in the last couple of days. We have more than 1200 signatures and counting. And thats just because we need more information. Dashboard that was presented today has no future dates and no accountability. It sort of describes how much additional work needs to happen just to get one student into one building. What im concerned about is theres not a dashboard for all students back in all buildings. And thats the level of transparency and the level of information that needs to be presented. Im also extremely concerned that this item was item h on an agenda. Its like its almost an afterthought, and i know thats not really what you want to intend but for those of us who are still here, we wonder if you are as serious about this as we need you to be. Please act with urgency. Thank you. Hello, amanda. Its well into the night and you are finally getting to this item. This is the single Biggest Issue facing our children right now. Put it first on every agenda. We are ten weeks into the school year, i have received countless texts from sfusd with parenting tips, and a single brief survey months ago about reopening. We are ten weeks into the school year, and you are finally acknowledging that no kids will be back in school in 2020. We are ten weeks into the school year, and the scientists at d. P. H. Have deemed it safe to reopen schools. Superintendent matthews, kids need your brave and bold leadership. Parents need to hear from you frequently and beyond shallow platitude and defensive statements we have heard from you so far this year. Invest in outreach and communication to all corners of the city. Listen to parents. We want to know what you need and how we can help you. Set a goal for reopening for our children and then fight like hell to meet the goal. We dont need your parenting advice, we dont need your finger pointing, we need your singular focus to get our kids and teachers back to school safely. Thank you. Thank you. Hello, kate. Hi, thank you. Im kate morgan, a parent. So we know as of today San Francisco is yellow, so environmentally the safest it has been for inperson school but we are not ready to reopen. So my ask, like many others, is to please be open to and creative with private funding for Public Education. This seems like the only way we are going to get there. Dont let the budget be a barrier. If they want weekly testing, what the teachers need and the staff needs and weekly testing can lead to safer schools, lets fund it. There is so much wealth in San Francisco. Lets take advantage of it for the good of the students and our labor partners. Like many others have said, we, the parent community, will work with you. We just need to know more specifically what needs to be done and how we can hold together to make it happen. You know, there is a lot of opposition and a lot of tension but what we really want to avoid that, figure out how to come together and make it happen and be partners with you, too. Thank you, superintendent matthews for sharing the earliest opening date. Critical information we need to get, especially for the most vulnerable families. Many of whom you will not hear from directly as president sanchez has pointed out because this Public Comment process is not easy, you know, several hours in. But in conclusion, i want to thank you all for the work you are doing. We want to do it with you, and especially to thank shavon hiens foster for continued leadership and bravery. Thank you. Hello, kate. Hello. Theres another kate. Hi, thanks. Thank you, mr. Steele. And members of the board, and delegates, such a late hour as im putting my daughter to bed. My name is also kate, a parent of a 1st grader at monroe elementary, and two older kids, one graduated high school and another in the Transition Program and partner of a 25 year sfusd educator, and im students during the crisis, and beyond and the members include families working tirelessly in the Southeast Side of the city, excelsior and behavior. And concerned about the timelines and the children in the city, or the lack of will and vision or the cant do messaging leading sfusd. I know its hard and just saying its hard is not the answer. My request is that the district improve communication to families and make more effort to include parent feedback, increase transparency around the planning process for safely reopening and support implementation to expand capacity, utilizing outdoor spaces. And we have gotten over 1200 signatures and thank you for hearing us out and collaborating for the health, wellbeing and continu continued education of our students and staff in San Francisco. Thank you. Thank you. Hello, cassandra. Speaking director here for Roosevelt Middle School and the Current Community hub director, i want to thank you all for prioritizing the health and safety of our students, our staff and our communities. I would like to highlight some learning we have had at the Community Hubs before you take this process on. Scheduling students in a hybrid situation is a massive task and i do not envy the School District in this. We have 16 students in the hub right now and 11 schools we are juggling and ten different schedules. So, thank you for even considering a hybrid solution. While its developmentally appropriate, the continuity of learning is something that may be more important than inperson learning. We are currently staffing at a 21 ratio, thats two students to every one staff. And may have to close a cohort later this week because of ambiguous illness until our covid19 tests come in. We cannot afford an entire school having to experience that. I agree communication needs to increase, but our city and not just sfusd showed its priorities when we decided that bars needed to open before our schools did. Thank you. Thank you. Alita. Hi, mr. Steele, and commissioners, superintendent matthews and districts Leadership Team. I would like to echo the comments of superintendent matthews about the lack of resources. This is not work the district can do in a vacuum and i know from my work and my capacity as Advisory Committee member who does a lot of work with various districts departments just how burnout, how overwhelmed, how just the work load is impossible right now as it is for parents, the same is true for district employees who many of whom have kids and are juggling what we are all juggling. So i just want to thank you. It cant be easy to hear all of this comment, all of these comments and i really do respect the urgency and the challenges that our commenters have raised. And i think some of what they are saying is right. You know, doing this in a vacuum, the challenges of not nothing are really, really hard. Deputy superintendent met with advisory parent leaders, Leadership Teams and gave us updates a couple times and was helpful, allows us to provide more information to our members and somewhat trickle down, not completely but the best we could to help be a conduit for sharing information and i think thats a great opportunity to improve communication. Also one of the things i do is volunteer in the south side of the city. I live in district 11, and we have two Free Covid Testing sites. One on monday, one on friday, sponsored by various Community Collaboratives and d. P. H. Thank you. And colored labs provides feedback for families in 24 hours. Something we could partner with. Many more collaboratives like that we shouldnt be doing the work on our own, thank you. Hello, jim. Hello. Jan chin, im a representative of the local 21 of the sfusd, and yeah, ive been listening and its i didnt realize how important teachers were, you know. And its like im being facetious, but you know, the people that want to reopen schools so quickly you know, if you care that much about teachers and all that, maybe care about, you know, about their health, you know. I mean theres been a lot of cases when schools open and the virus hits and people die. Im just saying we should really we are probably going at the best rate we can. I mean i mean you know, the reason why we have such a low virus rate is because we are being very careful about whether we reopen or not. So, i stand with, you know, the teachers, 1021, local 39, that you know, where we know we have very many buildings that probably not going to are probably not going to cover, you know, being safe, you know. They are old. They dont have the hvac systems that newer Public Schools thank you, that is your time. All right. Well hello, molly. Hi. This is ben, im using my wifes computer. My child is a 2nd grader at west portal elementary. Dr. Matthews, thank you for finally providing us some transparency with respect to the status of the completion of your decisiontry. However, does not give clarity with the problems and hurdles at issue, so you can mobilize us, the parents, who care so much, to put pressure on the city and the state and other stakeholders to give you the resources you need to open. If its a dollar amount, give us the fundraising goal. P. P. E. , tell us how much you need. If its testing, tell us so we can ask our amazing San Francisco medical institutions to help out. Please, dont hide things from us, mobilize us. Otherwise you are going to lose us who have the privilege of being able to go elsewhere. And the inequity of the schools will continue to grow. Please mobilize us. Thank you. Hello, david. Hi there, can you hear me . We can, go ahead. Perfect. I am both a parent of an sfusd student and also a Public School teacher. Im not here to talk on behalf of teachers, im talking for myself. Extremely disappointed and dumbfounded at the slow pace with which the district is moving. Private schools are opening, Public Schools are not, that is a definition of inequity right there, moving into a twotier, twoclass society. Presenting us with a dashboard while its nice to know something is going on, feels like madeup percentages. A lot of things in here you cant measure and the dashboard feels like a traffic light, sit and wait for it to turn green and may not happen another year or so. Extreme lack of urgency. This should be our number one priority. This should be the only thing we are talking about. And yes, other districts can do it, other schools can do it, my sister, im from germany, my sister is works for the department of education in munich, they opened schools in june after a hybrid setting, and after the Summer Holiday they opened fully, and Elementary Schools should no longer be Wearing Masks too much to put ob the little students and those students are the safest populations. Im worried about a lot of things, worried about the Mental Health of the students, worried about the loss of education, worried about losing parents and families to private schools to other cities. Ive had one student move out of the city and reenroll and go to a school that was open. Thank you, that was time. Hello, chris. Hello. Can you hear me . Hello. Go ahead, yes. Im an educator with San Francisco unified School District. Work at a high school in the district and would like to share that i am a special Education Teacher first and it has been heartbreaking to work with my students and see that i am not able to adequately support them. The email i got from a parent recently indicated that it is just as heartbreaking and the feedback i have heard from parents tonight is just as heartbreaking. However, i have some concerns. I have a friend who works at a private school in the north bay area. Just across the golden gate bridge. Private school opened up ksix and this person works in a third grade classroom. And within a week of opening up, a student developed flu symptoms. My friend after the student developed flu symptoms, when, after leaving school, also developed flu symptoms from what their school site determined was not close contact. Covid is definitely still able to be transmitted by students and i would hate to think of the impact on a student if they were to bring it home to a family member, even if the student did not get sick, or if a teacher were to get sick or pass away in the middle of a school year. Let alone the impact on all students at a school site if a school site had to shut down due to covid. I just it has been incredibly frustrating as a teacher to know as much as i try to do to help my students, i cant beat this pandemic. Thank you. Hello, gregory. Hello, yeah. So ive heard a number of concerns about safety here, but the professionals, the people that, you know, who do this for their job, epidemiologists, s. F. Department of health say its safe to open. And they are who we need to rely on in this. I hear the feds should do it, state should do it, we are not a health department, not a testing agency. The city has an agency that does that stuff and they are working with all the private schools to make it happen. Theres 56 private schools that have been approved to open. And 0 Public Schools. We are not even looking at opening except for the smallest subset in at least two more months. I dont understand how there is no urgency on this issue. The i mean, you went on and on for hours about equity. This is the most unequitable situation you could actually divide. Like if i wanted if i were an antiequity racist, i could not think of a better way to push my agenda than what you are already doing. Im just livid, and our friends are leaving the city, heartbreaking. And my daughter, its heartbreaking. I dont understand why there is no urgency. How long do we have to stay closed before we say hey, maybe this superintendent is not getting the job done. Maybe we need somebody else. This guy is not getting it done. Thank you. Hello, heather. Hello, heather. Hi, this is heather and jeremy. Its been seven months, the level of progress presented is embarrassing. You are not listening to the science. Emphasize that the safest option is Outdoor Education. Sfusd could be putting effort into making it a reality. Its ridiculous to spend a day in the academy of science around hundreds of other people, eat inside a restaurant and go to the gym but dont have outdoor hybrid learning available for the kids. Survey parents and teachers to find out who is comfortable to come back and share data. Do it now. Thank you. Thank you. Cara. Hi, sorry. My name is tara, im a teacher at an Elementary School here in San Francisco and son goes to john muir Elementary School. I want to say my teacher is a very good teacher. Are you enjoying Distance Learning . Yes. Whats your teachers name . Miss mieya. Anything else . Ok, all right. So, as we get ready for bed here, i just had a few thoughts, and anyway, he loves his teacher and Distance Learning is not ideal, its keeping him safe. As i said before, im a teacher and his dad is an essential worker, so we are grateful the district is taking the time and listening to scientists and making sure our buildings are safe before we go back. I really miss my students and being inperson, and i can see how some of my kids are suffering, right . Like, they are sad that they cant be with their friends. But other students are doing pretty good. I dont see the blanket statement that the kids are not learning is fair, and even those suffering are still coming to class and trying their best and are making progress. So many thoughts, so many thoughts going on after hearing some of the parents and speakers speak. I want to thank alita for pointing out how hard it is for educator, appreciate that acknowledgment. We are suffering too. We miss our kids and we miss the normalcy of being inside our buildings. And to the parents that need a dollar amount for donation, why. Just donate. You need like a number, thats ridiculous. If you have money to give, give. Not all of us do. Its like thank you. Thank you. Thank you for everything you are all doing. Have a good night. Okay. Marissa. Go ahead. Yes. Family liaison, i work in the bay view, its not prepared to go back to school yet for safety and health and my risk and i love my babies and i miss my babies and miss my im not ready to be in that position. Marissa robinson is a mom, quick story. My kids attend learning hubs, and immersion program, so, theres no way as a supplement and education that she is receiving nor immerse her in her program, so we opted to put her in a hub, and my preschooler was at home, and i was working from home. My preschooler is now back home with me, why, because she was exposed to covid. We are speaking about inequity, and how its affecting people, risk versus health, all of that. This black mom with her black kids, all of those categories helped, a child who was a preschooler, and a child an immersion program, should be a category. Anyway, talk about that now, a now at home quarantined with her family of seven with a husband who reports outside of work but cant go to work. Because he has to quarantine because my young child was exposed to covid and hes waiting on the test to see if its positive or not. And we have to think about when our kids and our families are exposed, that 1 , how that trickles down. I was told my baby has to use a separate bathroom, a different room, cant do this, i live in San Francisco, three bed, one bathroom hours, i dont know where they think i have the space to manage that. Speak and think of these things, think of the other half and im appreciative of dr. Matthews being able to show those dash boards and also appreciative of the apec and representatives to sit on the committees and looking forward to being more transparent and the information that they are receiving, that black families are seeking and providing information for you. But yes, just i want people to think about that other side when they think about these risks and dont rush the process, slow and steady wins the race. Minute we ramp up and doing stuff, when the numbers change, regardless of the science and thank you. We have a few more people to get to before time is up. La toya. Yes, thank you, dr. Matthews, board of education, and everyone that has worked to get our children back in the class rum. I ask that you consider the health risk of the parents of a child, blackity, blackity, blackity students and a parent, they miss the students, and they have created and plan to let them learn how to be better humans at school shouldnt be the motivator to reopen the school. I dont care what other cities or School Districts are doing, you shouldnt be jumping on the band wagon trying to play keep up with the joness. Laymans terms, deal with it do whats right when its right. Furthermore, we are planning to return to learning and most have not completed certain trainings. Consider the fish in the pond analogy. All the fish are sick, do you blame them for being sick or investigate whats going on in the pond that makes themself. Sfusd is a toxic pond, and the scenario, nobody blames the fish but blame the students and families nor not being whales and we go along as if the pond is not polluted. I am urging sfusd to implement solutions to inoculate the fish, prevent pond from being polluted again. Tony, would you like to go ahead . Hello, toni heinz, my daughter is a senior. Uncertain time for the family as we navigate covid, her senior year and getting her prepared for college. Perhaps shell be online in college next year. Im anticipating that the day when and if she can return to the Abraham Lincoln high school campus. Everyone in my family has a medical condition that if we were to contract covid19, we could die. Covid19 seems to have a racial bias against African Americans and latinx. We are affected in higher numbers more than other people. I understand the desire of parents on this cause for schools to open as soon as possible, yet i cannot consciousness promote for the community at large. I support your caution to wait to open the schools. Thank you so much. Thank you. Kevin, would you like to go ahead . Kevin robinson, parent and educator in the district. As an educator, i have no problem wearing a hazmat suit in class if necessary. Be that as it may, the schools have been closed over seven months now and dont expect for another three. This in spite of the fact the district could petition for a waiver to open schools for most vulnerable students as far back as july. We are in the planning phase, the schools i have seen are not ready. No chairs are moved or desk rearranged since the day the district decided to close. The children are feeling the real effects socially, emotionally, educationally, and physically of not having the inperson construction. Other schools sin San Francisco and districts across the nation have opened, or waiting on petition approval, we are waiting for when the time is right. This is not ok. We use the same data as everyone else, sit on our hands waiting for a sign from above. In the meantime, families of means are able to start pods or enroll their children in private schools, exacerbating the socioeconomic and divide that has plagued the district for decades. Logistics team, i mention as others, the decision would have an undue hardship on students and families. Well, it has. We suggested having outdoor classrooms, sports fields are not used. Fell on deaf ears. The children and families need leaders to make remember this when you cast your ballot on november 3rd. Thank you. Thank you. President sanchez, that concludes Public Comment on this item. Thank you very much. Thank everybody who came out and waited to speak, its been a long meeting. Commissioners, and student delegates, if you would like to make comments. Vice president lopez. Thank you again, i do appreciate the level of detail because it clearly shows how seriously we want to take care of our students and staff. At the same time, continuing to build out Distance Learning and its important that we see what has been done around learning by our staff and our educators and the continue inconsistent work. To say nothing has been done, a lost year, no learning is happening is to discredit everything being done by educators right now who are always the ones taking on the work. Look at what has been done and the supports in place for our families to work with their students at home safely and that many of us staff on this call, including myself, have done maybe 2 to 3 times a week, this is something we are consistently working on and building on. When we are thinking of that 1 , look at who it is that is adversely affected, and we know thats black and latino communities. And what has been proven to be a lack of response and support of these families by the department of Public Health, when they test positive, many of the callers probably have the means to isolate to afford to miss two weeks of work to have the supplies needed to get better. The families im talking to dont have that, and theyre staying, do not want to come back. This other piece people are for getting when we are reOpening Schools. Not a majority. Its a very big risk for many families and what we want to focus on is improving the learning that they are getting right now until we have everything set in place so no 1 . We will not risk any teachers, any families, to get back to school because its a hard time for everyone. We understand that. But im going to continue to support what we are doing now and build out the learning that we are, that we have created for our families. I want us to remember that resurgence is always looming and this is coming from the chair of the Health Committee of the Latino Task Force that has taken on a lot of the testing that we have done and seen in San Francisco. Testing shows who is affected and great job supporting the community when they do test positive. So, also direct communication with ucsf who has held it down for the entire country. And we need to stop the comparison to private schools. Those are completely different numbers. You are working with hundreds of students and staff compared to the thousands at the School District supports. And these are also faces that do not have a union. I work directly with private School Teachers who when asked do they want to return to inperson learning, all the staff said no, they did anyway. They dont have the same rights and connections as we do, and thats what we want to continue to honor. And lastly, the piece about new york city, there is also moment that showed the data 124 schools were shut down and so what we really want to make sure we dont do is open before we are ready and then get back to where we started in march. So i hope all of these pieces are things people are keeping in mind when we are talking about reopening and if you really do want to work with the School Districts, join us in all of the Board Meetings we are having that cover this topic and Work Together to figure out where the gaps are and find solutions together. Until we feel completely safe im not going to support a reopening of schools. Commissioner cook. Thank everybody for enduring the long meeting and weighing in on this topic, and appreciate your comments and i hear your frustration. Dr. Matthews, there was a lot of comment about, you know, what would it look like to rally the city around, or rally these parents around providing resources. Did you have any response to that . I heard that, i heard more communication, with ive already heard about communicate more, but spark, given the spark. But right now we are, you know, doing everything we can internally, not only internally, but d. P. H. , other counties, so no, you know, i have not heard that, so you know, of course we have a policy team meeting and will give that some thought what that would look like. But our energy right now has been focussed on moving the barometer and getting those areas safe and clean. And know there has not been an effort to ok, lets, you know, have another track when we are rallying the parents. Ok. Would that do you think accelerate at all some of the percentages, i know you have not had a lot of time to think about it, does that seem viable to you, or something not as viable . Im not sure, you know, we have a team meeting tomorrow morning, so the entire team will listen to the comments, and give us an opportunity to take those comments in and see how viable, and if its another stream we would want to start or go down. Ok. There was some comments from our mayor that i dont think were especially helpful or constructive to the discussion and thats a woman that i support tremendously but i thought she was, i dont think a lot of her statement was aligned with what we are doing as a city during this time. Nor reflective of the setbacks that a lot of major cities have had with opening. If you look at the New York Times october 5th, the city article about opening and reopening, or closing some schools and Chicago Tribune yesterday, they halted their reopening plan for their Public School because of a spike in covid cases. So, you know, there is i heard a lot of comments from families about other districts making progress, and i would encourage you to continue to read up on whats happening around people, School Districts that are opening because they are closing is also happening. So, maybe thats a risk that some folks want to take but it sounds like we are taking more cautious approach to get this right. At the same time, i do believe in the sentiment of like a deadline or a day or a target, i think that thats useful around trying to get to a certain end point. Just when it comes to resources, right . Like we have all sort of accepted that people we have seen, as the world has seen that people are having positive results and we are all living with it, you know, as a society. Its a difficult thing to weigh. So i just want to say that generally to the public. Im actually currently im looking at what atlanta is doing. They plan to open on november 16th. So there are other districts doing, they are setting dates, they are creating opening plans, and we have seen that some cities have had setbacks, so with this idea around a date, dr. Matthews, you mentioned that as a way to set expectations possibly there wont be a date released for 2020 calendar year. Thats correct. Would you be comfortable with the idea of setting a date in general . Not at this point because we dont, you know, what has really helped us with even determining the 2020, we actually were looking at doing everything we can to try to open before the end of this school year. What helped us determine we wouldnt be able to do that, the fact we had established the dashboard, that we are looking at the percentages of the work that has been done and whats still remaining to do, and that helped us to understanding or the frame that we knew that we wouldnt, because of testing, that we wouldnt be able to open before the end of this school year. As of right now, no, could i set a date when we could, no, i would not be able to do that. But the dashboard, and i say over the next few weeks its going to help us as we move forward. For the districts around the country that have reopened that have protocols and that have set a date, would you be open to considering those strategies as a part of a reworking of the dashboard you ha dashboard created . Yeah, we talked to many of those districts and or maybe Vice President lopez, many of those districts have set dates and then for example, a number of people said new york, new york had to push their date back three times, and thats something two things we dont want to do, set a date and push it back, the other thing we dont want to do is open just to end up closing down. Ok. So to speak to some frustration, and this is my last question, and maybe chief smith or whoever can answer it best, if we were to set a date for november 1st, without all the protocols in place, how would that play out in terms of like, im trying to paint a scenario, we dont have the systems we say we need, we set a date anyway, how do you imagine that would play out . Well, we would set a date, you said november 1st we already know, i guess the public is upset, they want schools open yesterday. You are telling them all that we cant do it today. So we set a date to appease the public. What do you imagine would happen . We set it, if we set a date like you said for november 1, 1 of the so a number of things that have to be in place. We have to have protocols to the families, so you know, its what, october 20th now, so even if its for the small group we probably would not get protocols to every family, all the Staff Members, one, we would have to have m. O. U. In place, so if thats in place we dont have Staff Members back, say we did have it in place. All the all of the Staff Members would have to have all the protocols and then go through all the protocols. We would have to have a testing plan in place, which i just said we are not going to have, so that means that Staff Members would be coming back with no testing plan. There would be no entry testing, no surveillance testing, if there was some type of exposure or as you just heard one of our parents talk about where they, we would have to do contact tracing, that has to be in place. All of these things part of the testing plan would have to be in place if there was some either exposure to or break out of a positive test, a positive case. All of that has to be done and those things are not in place right now. Thank you. Could you talk how we went from prek, and now focussing on prek . Im sorry, i didnt know when we had 2a on everything that i have seen, i didnt know where it came from. I heard a couple people say we switched. 2a was always prek and remains. Five prek sites and anticipate five sites for so, i dont know, i heard that i heard a couple of people say we just switched. What ive seen, and other members of the policy team are on, 2a, as far as i know was not, was never aimed, thats 2b. Anyone else have any insight on this, or clarification around it . It did come up a couple times in the comment. And anyone else can answer. I want to make sure im clear. A couple times in answering commissioner cook, commissioner cook, i want school year, what i meant to say was calendar year. So, december. Not june. All right. Thank you for that clarification. Anyone else have any feedback for the prek to secondary comments that came up tonight . President sanchez and Commission Commissioner moliga. I believe it is true, i believe, that there was at least one occasion in which a report on School Reopening, gradual return to inperson learning did include kindergarten through 2nd grade, or may have been kindergarten and 1st grade, i cant remember. But they were included in one of the diagrams as being part of the first group of students, which would be have mapped to phase 2a, but that has not been our thinking for quite some time, so i believe thats what i believe some of the public speakers may have been referring to if they were tuning in, i cant remember if it was july or august, but that has not been our thinking for several weeks. Ok. Did we inform the public that we switched . So all the all frt of the information informing the public has been through either the digest or through the website, so that helps my clarity, as for some time, that was august, that we so a specific notification, no. But i would say that all, you know, definitely for the last two months now, if you are talking august, september, october, it has been, and the previous diagram that we showed, it definitely was prek and severe mod. Ok. I just, you know, moving forward, you know, just hearing parents, you know, talking about they assume it was one thing and its another. Im thinking on our end, you know, we could just continue to figure out how to best communicate even minor changes, big changes to parents as much as possible. The other thing i wanted to talk about a little more was around the testing and how that process was coming along. So, we have been in communication with districts, Alameda County has started looking, this is not the district, but a county, looking at testing one of the parents earlier talked about finger pointing and blame, not blaming Governor Newsom but its not its not, she said angrily pointing fingers at parents and i have not done that. What i was saying was that we have had to come up with this system on our own just as every district has. Every district is on their own trying to figure this out. So, right now we are in conversations with d. P. H. , department of Public Health for San Francisco as well as looking at different counties and what they are trying to do, as well as other districts as you, you know, as you heard, like we are looking so far example oakland has not figured it out, san jose hasnt. We are trying to work with them, and each of us is working with them and on our own trying to figure out a system of testing. And i told you the types of tests and whether its surveillance or coming back to work or if there is an outbreak and contact tracing, all of that we have to do and figure out on our own. Does the city and county offer help with that . I just said d. P. H. If they offered to do the testing, the answer is no. They are trying to give us guidance in making it happen, like giving guidance to many people talk about the private schools, giving guidance to the private schools. However, as you heard commissioner, Vice President lopez say earlier, if the guidance around you know, guidance having to test. All right. So, do you think the city and county would be open to providing us resources to help us with testing . I know they have a test site opened up, whats our what do folks think . I mean, the mayor did come out and say you know, open up the schools and im just curious to know, well have our joint select committee on friday as well, ill bring it up. Has there been any discussions around sharing resources so that we could actually use their test site to potentially, you know, support our educators. Do you want me yeah. Thank you for the question, commissioner moliga. We have been engaging, myself and the chief h. R. Have been meeting with the department of Public Health and other city folks over the past couple of weeks to look at what resources what you are talking about, whether the city could expand some of their testing sites to provide a dedicated one for sfusd, for like the return to work and the surveillance testing, what we might be able to coordinate with them on the symptomatic testing and the exposure testing. And they are very interested in trying to figure out how to court us in that. The city released a request for proposal on testing. Probably some time in september and they are in the process of identifying a new contractor to expand their Testing Services as well. So we are coordinating with them as they go through that process, could some of that expanded Testing Capacity be part of supporting the School District. So we are working closely with them. And then also at the same time, meeting with, as dr. Matthews said, Alameda County and trying to understand how they are doing their testing, and one of the things is, its the testing itself but its really an end to end, because we need a registration system, a way families can easily access it and do all the testing. So, its the testing itself, but its the how do we register, what is the portal, do we have a call center, multiple languages, is it easily accessible, can you get a test quickly, can you report the results to sfusd and the outbreak mitigation, so the end to end what that means, thats what we are having to work through because whats really important i know from the city is for outbreak mitigation and transmission like the quicker we can make sure that we are doing symptomatic testing or exposure testing and really understanding if a cohort in a school needs to be closed, school needs, or the entire school has to be closed, or even the districts have to be closed. So as commissioner cook said, probably a lot, but those are some of the things that we are working on now. Sounds like we need to put out a whole new program and new team to roll this out. If i could just jump in. That model is already created. Again, like reference the Latino Task Force, they were able to implement this with the support from the department of Public Health but of course beginning with ucsf and able to build it out in other parts of the city and its not any type of registration process to get tested. It is walking up, it is getting tested immediately, and it is getting the two weeks of services needed should you test positive without there being this whole system in place in order to get our families tested. So i would not even begin that conversation. I would head straight to them, the experts who have implemented this and shown the country what we should be doing around testing. Thank you for that, commissioner lopez. Yes. Ucsf folks are part of the d. P. H. Folks we are meeting with, so based on the plan they have so not reinventing the wheel, you are right. The work the task force is doing, they have learned a lot, we are all learning. Thank you for reminding us on that. And my followup, ive been talking to other School Districts and folks in so cal and able to get systems in place to partner with Peoples Insurance companies, and able to like, you know, i dont want to say cut cost but cost save i guess through kind of methods and so i know i mentioned last time, what do the partnerships look like with the Latino Task Force and also curious to know like what does our Partnership Look like with the federally qualified Health Centers as well, also providing this work. And i know its a lot and know its new, just curious to know what the current process is in terms of our partnerships. So in terms of the billing, so the good the good news is i dont remember exactly when all this happened, but educators are identified as essential workers, which means that we can build a health plan for the testing. So, that we know that which brings the cost down. There are going to be some of our employees who may not have health plans, we want to make sure theres no cost to them, so doing some modelling with d. P. H. To understand what might be those costs. Same thing with families. The whole end to end process is that there is the billing built into it, so that there are not additional costs to the district. So thats definitely part of what we are looking at. Do we have a total cost of whatted covid process will be for us . We were throwing out some numbers last week. Do we have another rough estimate . Im not sure. Do you mean for like everything, the facilities, the p. P. E. , the testing all of that . Yeah. Last week we started talking about, you know, 100 to 300 per test. Thats the range, generally 100 to 300 a test for the billing. Again, whats going to help us is d. P. H. Is sort of helping us again with the ucsf folks on the d. P. H. Task force do some of the modelling, so i dont have the numbers. Surveillance testing is a little easier to figure out, ok, if we bring 1,000 teachers back we know how many tests we have to do a week and do it for the exposure, symptomatic testing in general, the exposure, thats a very complex epidemiological modelling based on what, thats what we are relying on ucsf and d. P. H. To help us with that cost modelling. So dont have a number yet. The number they had, they were not happy with, so they wanted to to some more modelling when we met with them on tuesday no, monday. Thank you. Commissioner lam. Thank you. And thank you to the parents who provided testimony tonight expressing both the urgency to have our students back while we have families that expressed serious concern about the timing and safety with our students and our educators returning to the to inperson. I have lots of questions, as dr. Matthews can anticipate. One question is related to when do we plan on sending a survey to our students and families to recognize the, you know, where families are at around, would they want to remain in Distance Learning for the rest of the school year as an example, or ones that are ready to return in some sort of hybrid fashion which we had presented from the summer, so thats my first question to dr. Matthews. We have not discussed that as a member of the policy team, so hopefully well be discussing it soon. The other aspect is hearing, you know, loud and clear about the intensive fiscal impact that reopening a large system will have. For chairing the budget and business services, i raised it at the last meeting as well, how important to get a cost analysis for each phase. Thats something i would like to request or ask for, so public, the folks can see what that looks like and testing and tracing piece is huge but folks can see we are going to be working through the different phases and to understand what the possibilities may look like, and right now our facilities and looking at air filtration and ventilation is a major consideration. We have heard from the public, they want to know, so i think thats just an example. I think the fiscal analysis will be another layer there. So you are making that request . Yeah. We will put that in. Great, thank you. We talked about the testing and tracing. Have talk about either what parts of the testing, i think we have a sense of kind of the end to end capacity that is needed. We have talked about the potential costs and the reimbursement. Anything else that you want to share around the testing and tracing because its kind of like the front and center right now, that you have not been able to just shed light on the process that we are having to undergo . Anything i left out . I dont believe so. I mean, we have to do consent and release of coordination, work with d. P. H. A lot of the surveillance testing and the return to work surveillance testing, the exposure testing and the symptomatic is, we want to work, we are working very closely with d. P. H. Because if we are testing large numbers of people it helps in the outbreak and the hot spot identification so there is a system where we are working very closely to identify like what is the data that we have to share and how would we get information to d. P. H. And then back to us and identifying families or staff, the contact tracing. So, those are processes that we have to think through, we have to put the systems in place for them, and then they are also part of our Partner Agreements on how how we do all the testing together and different roles for people in the symptomatic and general exposure and contact tracing. Those are all things that we are talking through. Thank you. Shifting gears around our age group focus. I have expressed my concern, particularly for our earliest learners, and i know that is cover in our 2b and because of what we have heard some of the testimony tonight about their Age Development as well as for me, very concerned about Literacy Development and reading development. So do we have a sense then of dr. Matthews, from your perspective and the team and its planning, how much time, you know, will you need in order to communicate with families about the next phases and kind of the, you know, the scaling over time of opening up for the next grouping, 2a, 2b, so on, third through fifth, middle. Im not sure about the amount of time, but i will say that we should be able to more accurately and i would say the cadence should increase now that we have the dashboard and are able to monitor that. Thats updated weekly, so that will give us a sense being able to see how much progress we are making over time, and by monitoring that and the progress we are making as i know, as you know on the policy team, something that we are looking at every friday so that will give you the idea how much time its going to take and update the community on a more frequent case. And from your perspective, in addition to getting us to, you know, the 80 threshold or 100 in each of the phases that has been established through the dashboard, i would like to see clear milestones for what we feel would be success, right, in each of the pieces. Is that something that you have thought with the team around what the milestones may look like, and if not, i would like to see what those considerations would be. Im not necessarily saying open, just for me around milestones around the plans. So, i would say if thats something that that would be something for the team to discuss and tomorrow morning at the team meeting you can bring that up. Okay. Thats something i would like to again get some clarity on so we have some dates for being able to report back out, communication with our parents and the public. And i also want to recognize to president sanchez and Vice President lopez, i would like to ask that this is reopening is a standing item for each subsequent Board Meeting. I had a followup around the frequent mention of the policy team. I think it connects to a lot of comments around what seems like a lack of urgency, and give dr. Matthews the opportunity to respond to that sentiment. What is the amount of time speed limit are spending on reopening, how is it a priority for you and your team. So, policy team meets three times a week. And i would say the two biggest strands of our work have either been around getting Distance Learning up and effective, and as effective as possible and continue to improve it as you heard president solomon say, and the other as aspect bringing students back. 50 to 75 of the time is doing one or the other. And constant most of the meetings, you know, i would say the team, you know, not to being real, the team probably works anywhere from 10 to 15 hours every day and its basically from the time we get up to the time we put our heads back down is working on either effectively doing Distance Learning or, and most of the work after Distance Learning has, the shift has become much more on trying to get students back. So yeah, i think its definitely useful to have this as a standing item, commissioner lam. Was that your request, or ok. For every Board Meeting. Yes. Yeah, definitely. Was that your last question . Yes. For now. Ok. Circle back. Commissioner norton. Thank you. Yeah, i was going to request i think it would be a good idea, i mean, i really appreciate dr. Matthews you talking about the amount of time that you and the staff are spending to work on this and i think we know that but i think its important for the public to know that you know, that the staff is very focussed on this, and that theres a lot of problems to solve. And what we, the board has maybe not communicated as well as we could that we are monitoring this work and so i do support the idea of a standing item so the public can follow along. And i wanted to say for members of the public, especially if you are new to our meetings, you may not be familiar with how our agenda is put together. So, somebody mentions that this item was item h, and that that seemed long it was so far down the agenda. And the reality is is that our agenda is very, very regimented for what goes where. Its actually a matter of board policy what goes where, so, item a is always the superintendents report and always a student delegates report. And its actually enshrined in the policy what goes where. And other items not for action are always item h. Its not because we think they are less important, its where they go. That does not mean we cant move up item h or other items which i saw us do tonight and i think president sanchez made the decisions he made what to move things up based on sometimes there are members of the public to make a special request for an item to be moved up, sometimes they have a lot of students, so we move those up to get them out of the meeting faster, its never perfect. No way to make everybody happy how we arrange the agenda, i wanted to make that more transparent to the public, particularly those who are new to the meetings. But i would support having it be a standard item h on the agenda, depending on what we are talking about that night might get moved up or not moved up. I did want to ask in the dashboard itself online, the tableau file does not have percentage, and i think the legend could be clearer about, you know, where we actually are or those percentages should be added. Is that possible . Yes, we are yes, we are working on yes, we are working on that. Was that mine or ok. We are we are working on that and those should be, you know, it was just uploaded today, we are working on that aspect. Yeah, i think that would make it more transparent. And i also wanted to just say to second what Vice President lopez said about private schools and i think dr. Matthews you alluded to it as well, i mean, its a completely different situation. I was talking to a friend of mine today who has a child at one of the very, you know, very elite private schools in the city and his daughter is just going back to i think on thursday, and the testing regime is like incredibly expensive, they have done extensive modifications to all the classrooms, you know, i wouldnt be surprised if they have spent, you know, several Million Dollars just for the small school of maybe a few hundred children so its just a completely different thing and there are resources in that system we dont have. And school board association, which represents School Districts, all over the state, 1,000 School Districts in california, they have been saying for a long time there needs to be a statewide solution. There is not statewide support for what districts are going through, and every district has to figure it out on their own, and thats unconscionable for such an underfunded Public Education system to, you know, basically we have been left to figure it out on our own every single district, and thats just not right, and the governor and the state superintendent really need to figure this out. Im sorry if it sounds like finger pointing but it is a part of the problem that we are dealing with, and we were stretched to begin with, and its only gotten worse. I just think its important to note that. At the same time, i really do want to say to the families that came out. We hear you, i hear the anger, i can tell you are really frustrated and i want to own that, and though i think a lot of attention and work is hang behind the scenes, i want to own that maybe the board has not been talking about this enough and i think we should be talking about it because i know all of us do take this seriously, we do care about what families are experiencing, and we also know that families are not monolithic, and some families are upset with Distance Learning and others are terrified to have their students exposed. So its not an easy situation. But i do just want to tell you that i hear the frustration and i think we can do a better job hearing you and paying attention to all the concerns that are out there. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner collins. Thank you. I want to really appreciate the folks that come out tonight, its a long meeting, long for us, and you know, for folks who dont do this, you know, i do appreciate that, and appreciate the comments that have been made and i really appreciate commissioner norton again for helping to kind of, you know, i learned something new. The idea we have the structured kind of agendas and i wanted to also talk about this idea of communication just from the top. I think whats difficult, and all struggling with this, all like there is too much stuff changing and theres so many things happening and theres so many people doing work in different ways and trying to communicate that. Just as a city we are trying to communicate with the district in city college, and there are so many committees and meetings and so ive been pushing, you know, we have all been pushing for more communication from Central Office that does not necessarily mean that its the right type of communication, and so i think more communication does not necessarily mean its going to meet familys needs and i think the question is what do families need to know and how do we respond in ways as commissioner norton says make them feel hurt and give them information they are looking for. We share a lot of information and i want to celebrate Central Office. Since ive been in this district, commissioner sanchez and norton have been around, we have never done much communication with families. I put my kids in the district and didnt even have a newsletter, and now we have emails. We may not be giving the families the information they need and want to celebrate the work that the staff has done to put together a dashboard. I think that i think helps to make it really visible, like when you just look at an individual item and see, these are things that we have been having conversations about as staff, that makes it visible and more transparent to the community. I guess i had a question related to commissioner lam, which is i think the dashboard makes it easy to see, kind of what we are doing and where we are at. But it does not add that piece that i think im also interested in which is the timeline. And so when commissioner lam talks about timelines or milestones of a project plan, where are we at, and where are we going, where have we been. And the same time, im also wondering, you know, some of these things, i dont know how we are going to do it. If we wanted to bring all students back, you know, like we can want that, you know, i want to go to hawaii right now, thats not going to happen. And so whats the stuff that we is achievable and how are we meeting those goals and feels like some of the things we dont have control over. So thats a question for you, superintendent matthews, im thinking how would i build a plan for something i dont have control over. Right . I can like when it comes to, you know, if we wanted to bring all of our students back tomorrow and lets say we had Everything Else sorted, would we have enough buildings to socially distance our students and have like a room for them, we also have to have a separate room if kids are sick, we can put them in. Would we have enough space. Lets start with something really basic. No, we would not have enough space we have estimated if we socially distance, based on six feet, we could bring 15,000 back. Out of how many of our students . Thats out of 54,000 students. So, and so thats something that ive been hearing about and i wish honestly the newspapers would report on. I think that would be very interesting, im hearing some private schools are actually renting buildings, i dont know if its true. If we had an ask for the city or the billionaires, would we be able to ask for more space, could we rent buildings, is that something we can do as a city and guidelines for where kids can be schooled . No, in order for kids, certain criteria the buildings have to meet. Earthquake safe, so certain criteria, appropriate. Actual like law, field act. Yeah, ok. And so we could not just rent any buildings. The second thing is the thought is over time the hope is either theres a vaccine or as we get further along that the hope is a place where maybe we wouldnt have to socially distance or maybe not all students, so as we get further along. But the question, if we had to do it tomorrow. People are like i want it now, schools opening now. Tomorrow, yeah, it would be 15,000 students, a third of our, i guess a fourth of our students we could bring back. Additionally, i know with kindergarteners, i was thinking about if we have the school, the mission bay school, you know, we cant mix High Schoolers with kindergarteners. Is there some rules around which kids can be in what types of buildings, additional restriction as well . Definitely theres certain so, the k and 1 on the first floor. 2nd grade on the second floor of a building, they have to have their own fire exit. Those are other things we have to look for if students are coming back and in buildings not our buildings. In our schools, 2nd grader on the second floor, they have to have their own fire exit. 15,000, isnt that close to the prek through second or third graders . Thats about, yeah. But then they would not actually we have the real estate but they would not actually be able to utilize it, no not all the buildings are first floor buildings. Correct. So we would also if we just focus on that group, with he would not even if we have enough physical space, legally we would not be able to put them in third floor buildings or high schools. Correct. And our thoughts on the number, you know, you said, that includes all k that number would be, we know that many of them, i wont say many, some would choose not to come back. Say, no, i would rather stay, at least at this point, stay in Distance Learning. And then ok. So, i was trying to be creative this summer and thinking what about like flipping kids, and like what if kids could come on different days, that way you could have one building and you could have one group of kids on monday, another group on tuesday, and they could so we could have twice as many kids in the same building. Why arent we considering that . So so before we can consider any of that, we have to get through making sure thats what we are working on now, is making sure that we have the protocols in place, the testing plan in place, p. P. E. , making sure the buildings are set up, and all of that before we can get to the place ok, now we can bring kids back on monday, wednesday, or tuesday, thursday or all day. L Everything Else has to be in place before we get to that. The last, 8 and 9 are my brain is exploding, also remembering we have to its not like kids could go to school on monday and not go to school on tuesday, when we alternate, right . No, so if they were here on monday, we would have to offer distance, thats what the hybrid model. So they go half a day, then the second half would be Distance Learning, or mondaytuesday, and wednesday, thursday and friday are Distance Learning. Not a day, and then not have any instruction the next day. If my high schooler, they were going on monday, on tuesday they would still have to be online, and wondering if their teachers were teaching the b group, would they also have to hire new staff, or hire more staff so we can do the Distance Learning with one group while we are concurrently bringing another group in. Thats being worked out in the instructional plan. Say to the public, and these are the conversations i have, and the questions im having, this is the level of complexity and i guess when we are comparing an entire district to a private school that maybe already has a smaller class size, has the capacity to do retrofit, and also ventilation, you know, if you have to buy, if you had like, i always like to maybe some schools that invested, is a part of the plan buying individual desks so we can socially distance, some had group desks. Is that also in the plan . That or dividers. Like we have remote work sites and then at the front desk of the remote work sites we have clear dividers up now, so that if we have the desks, if they are going to be, they have to be six feet apart. These are all things we are working out. Ok. So so the many of the private educators that i have had the opportunity to speak with, the fact that they already had class sizes of 12 to 15, so they already had smaller class sizes where they could physically distance and gives them the ability to stay in a cohort, the class sizes were already small enough. So, that it was that piece, testing is on a much smaller scale, testing 30 to 40 adults, and you know, tuition at these schools average between 25 to 40,000 per student. Where our, you know, where we have, you know, 9, 10, 11 per student. So, those additional dollars assist in the ability to do all of those things. And so when people say, as ive said earlier, the private schools can do it, why cant San Francisco unified, its just we are not on the same plane. Right. And commissioner lopez said some of the African American parent leaders are bringing up concerns around safety for concern communities that may be higher impacted, right. Im also wondering about the testing, and a question, maybe its a change, i remember listening to a town hall, folks were asking, why cant we just get tested and an misconception that d. P. H. Is in charge of that. My understanding is d. P. S. , they ko dont run they are not in charge of testing. No. And let me make sure they are not in charge of testing for school, right, they are in charge of the city testing, the different testing sites. Like the hub kind of thing. Exactly. And one of the questions teachers were asking is, what can i live in oakland, could i get tested in the city hub. At the time they were saying we are not sure. Yeah, thank you for bringing that up. That is something that we are discussing because clearly you know, we have to think about further surveillance, it makes sense if it makes sense to come with a dedicated site. But exposure or symptomatic, it would sort of depend. If you knew someone got exposed and they were in the school that way, we would want to get them tested in San Francisco, right . But if they went home and we found out, we would not want them to come to San Francisco if they are in oakland or some other county. So, those are the coordination things in terms of for the outbreak in the mitigation and all of the symptomatic and general exposure. Like one of the parents said, if you are on a 14day quarantine and you dont live in San Francisco, we dont want you to come to San Francisco. Another coordination between different counties now we are talking about in terms of gates test results and things like that. And the other question around testing, seems like a lot of the requirements are based on, kind of wanting folks to use their own Health Insurance in order to do the testing. Is that correct . I love my Health Insurance but also if we have a plan based on people using their Health Insurance, like thats, im worry about other people like my Health Insurance is not working or i forgot my card or i dont have it, and so im wondering how that even plays into this planning. Thats a really good question as well. A couple of things. We are looking for the scenarios where the testing is done, but the health plan can be billed for the Testing Services that the person does not have to go to their health plan. So, if you say im a kaiser member and im going to get tested at a dedicated site, thats for sfusd employees, the test would do at that site and not we, the district, we dont have the system set up but working with kaiser to be reimbursed for the test. Thats another thing we have to work through the details of. That is one of the models being used, billing, doing testing at a different site and billing the Health Insurance. It would not be a barrier to getting the test right away. It could be. Those are the things we are working through, the plan, we want to be able we, as well as the city, when we keep our low Positivity Rates figuring this out together, so the goal is to be able to have pretty robust, people being able to access the test in a relatively short period of time. I guess finally, ask, ucsf, they are great, i love them, would they be able to just test all of our students and our staff . Is that something that we can do . And maybe they can provide . That has not been an offer from them to do that. There has been some discussion of maybe doing some type of testing related to research, but that, we are really just want to focus on Opening Schools and getting Testing Services just around, you know, surveillance, symptom testing, exposure testing, and not layer, sort of research on top of that. The only way that they could really provide all of that is if we are like in a research study. It was not to provide all of that, it was to do it for a small group. Ok. So they are not going to cover all of staff, just for numbers, we have 52,000 students. How many staff . You know, how many total staff are we looking at, and also how often and where are we talking about getting this testing done . So, we have about 10,000 staff, that would be central and school sites. Guidance requires, all the numbers, right, staff are tested at least every other month or 25 of staff are tested every two weeks. So, you know, if we had 10,000 staff, you can sort of say im tired, im not going to get the math right. I know. It could be 2500 tests a week. So that would be the cadence, and thats the surveillance testing, right . The one we can imagine scenarios of what it looks like. Symptomatic and exposure, clearly now because our Positivity Rate is down, our cases are down, maybe that symptom and exposure will be lower, right . And as things spike, maybe its going to be higher. So, that is the modelling that we need support from ucsf, really smart epidemiologists and modelling, they have to figure that out. It would look different and we all know this on this call, i think, the commissioners are well aware, commissioner lopez has done a lot of work around this with the latino and latinx task force, the testing Positivity Rates are not the same in all the parts of the city, nor are they the same among all the populations. So, having to do that modelling, you have to look at some pretty who are our students. Who are they, what did it look like in the surge, to understand what the need for testing may be, and that, you know, we need to understand that, the city needs to understand that, thats important for their work in keeping our numbers low as well. Thank you. And finally, a shout out, ive been following new york educators with a lot of these conversations about why not be like new york. Ive been following educators there who are fighting with the district for opening, they have been very frustrated, most recent post, ill following annie tan wont die for the department of education. Thats what they are going by, and she consistently is sharing information and one of the things is testing, and shes saying they have been teaching and they were promised testing and i think its, you know, you can see its just been they are not getting its been ten days, even though we are supposed to be tested weekly. I had just want to say i feel the concern of families, i want transparency, i want us to be safe. I love the idea that families want to support us and advocating, and at the same time, i also really appreciate the board and staff, and labor partners, like in the sense that you know, we want to make sure that we are keeping not just our staff safe, but also our families and 15 of the latinx population makes up San Francisco, i mean, San Francisco as a whole, 15 is what makes community and they make up 50 of the cases. So, i do also appreciate, you know, that some communities are harder hit than others and appreciate our concern for safety and doing things in methodical way. I dont want to open and close schools. Also very destructive and stressful for families as well. Any last questions or comments . Commissioner cook. Yeah, i had just a couple more. I have some more folks that want me to ask questions, ill send them in a followup email, i wanted the superintendent to comment on the sentiment around the socializing for students, especially in kindergarten, and i know we are doing it as best we can. With the protocols, but for the folks that are pushing for the younger students to be back in school, what your message is to those families and what you think the impact will be for students socially as we continue. As i said earlier, we know that its bad for studen its for students when they are back in session, and heard the teachers call in to say they really want to be back, but, so i know that the best thing for them in terms of their socializing and for just their growth is when they are in school, but we want to make sure that its safe, and you know, one of the things that was on a tv show with tony thurman and other superintendents, we miss you, we are trying to do everything we can, its hard to be on the computer screen so we did the tv show. So i totally get it, and totally understand. But at the end of the day, my job, as ive said. Get everything on our dashboard green and thats what we are going to be working night and day to do to get all of those green so it is safe. Not only do our Staff Members feel safe, but we want the parents as you are dropping off your kids at school to know that its a safe environment. So, my last comment to that, to the public, is that i know you wanted more aggressive timeline, and i think you know where the district is at, whether you are satisfied with that or not is another story. I do believe in the idea of setting a date, i do believe the superintendent when he says overwhelming majority of the time that his team is spending is on reopening. I would like to see the schools come back before i leave the board, but thats just me. But in the coming weeks i will be in more conversations about the concept, idea of trying to select a target date and i know, you know, superintendent is being cautious and making sure he has all the measures in place before he does that. I think a date would be useful for the city. [please stand by] or actually meet their timetable and had to shutdown. I think its important that we improve upon our communications. I think we messed up some of the information raised by commissioners. I think we need to make sure that the right kind of Communications Going out, often enough not to overwhelm being, but often enough so that parents and families understand. I think the dashboard is a very good start in that direction. People can monitor it, and it will improve over time, as well. I look forward to having these regular updates at every Board Meeting. The reason why this item came so late is we know a lot of students would be on the call for the discussion, and that took up the bulk of the time before we got to that item, so i apologize for that, but it was something we had to do. So well leave it at that, and look forward to talking with you at future Board Meetings. We have two student delegates who have basically authored with the s. A. C. , k, proposal for immediate action and suspension of the rules. Resolution number 201020a1. I am the board sponsor, but really, its the student delegates from the s. A. C. So im asking that we suspend our rules so that we can later vote on this item. So we need a motion and a second to suspend our rules. So moved. Second. Okay. Thank you. We need a motion and a second to hear the resolution. So moved. Second. Okay. Great. And im hoping that our student delegates are still here and awake. I see katya, and judson, i know i had sent you a text. I think theres some student delegate names that are in our audience. Yes. Ill leave it to you all right now to read this resolution into the record. Okay, great. I think what were going to do is have shivan read the title, ill read the whereas, and shell read the wherefore. So resolution 201020a1. Whereas the right to vote is mentioned five times in the constitution, more times than freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and even the right to bear arms. And whereas this country being formed on the idea of representation, many communities and people are left underrepresented to this day. And whereas youth specifically those under 18 account for 13. 4 of San Franciscos population but are not entitled to a vote on policies which affect them. And whereas young people, upon turning 16 can pay taxes, drive, be subject to adult criminal charges and work out a limitation on hours but are still denied the right to vote. And whereas extending Voting Rights to youths of ages 16 and 17 would empower young people to be engaged and their voices to be heard more. And whereas, in addition to empowering youth, it would foster an environment which encourages them to participate in discussion regarding issues affecting them. And whereas youth of ages 16 and 17 are fully capable of comprehending and taking action on political issues as a study by daniel hart and Robert Atkins show that youth between the ages of 16 through 17 have roughly the same political knowledge as 21 year olds and are close to average comparison to adults. And whereas all high School Students attending sfusd are required to take a onesemester class of american democracy. And whereas the San Francisco unified School District, in its essence, is obligated to educate its student during their life and beyond their youthood. And whereas the sfusd states on their website that equity is a work of eliminating oppression, ending biases, and ensuring equal outcomes through all participants in the creation of multicultural, multiling ra, multiethnic, and result eye racial practices and conditions, as well as removing the predictability of success or failure that correlates with any cultural or social factor. And whereas the San Francisco unified School District teaches 45. 81 of the population of youth under 18 in San Francisco. And whereas the sfusd student Advisory Council is a citywide youthled organization that is committed to providing a voice for the students of the San Francisco unified School District by representing and presenting the interests of the students to the administrative and policy making bodies of the San Francisco unified School District. And whereas the sfusd student Advisory Council continues to support the San Francisco Youth Commission in their long efforts to pass vote 16 in november 2016 and november 2020. And whereas the sfusd board of education unanimously passed the encouraging students to exercise their Voting Rights resolution in 2016. And whereas the San Francisco unified School Districts core beliefs and values fall greetly in line with the measure vote 16 aims to incorporate. And whereas a measure, vote 16 would implement, correlate with the efforts of the sfusd student Advisory Council. Therefore, be it resolved that the sfusd board of education and sfusd student Advisory Council urges the mayor and the board of supervisors to lower San Francisco city and School District voting age eligibility to 16 years of age. Further be it resolved that the sfusd board of educationtion and sfusd student Advisory Council urges elected senator state wiener, philip y. Ting, and david chu, to prepare legislation that would provide for a state 14 constitutional referendum to reduce the voting age to 16 for all state elections. Further be it resolved that the sfusd commits to educating high School Students of prove voting measure through the [inaudible] everybody, please mute your screens. Go ahead. Yeah, go ahead. President sanchez, youre on mute. I was muted. All right. Go ahead. Did you finish the reading . Okay. My bad. So, of course, its not the first, and its the last time itll happen. I forgot to call for a roll call on the suspension of the rule, so well call for a roll call on the suspension of the rule. Clerk thank you. [roll call] clerk thats seven ayes. Thank you. Now lets go to Public Comment. Operator raise your hand if you want to speak in Public Comment. Looks like there are nine hands up, president sanchez. Okay. Lets give them a minute. Operator 13, 14. Okay. 90 seconds. Operator 90 seconds . Okay. Hello, sarah. Hi, board. I know its been a long meeting, so i really appreciate your attention. My name is sarah ginsburg. As a 12year sfusd student and an active member of my community, i am deeply concerned with the lack of youth participants in our voting process. We are one that has experienced firsthand the difficulties that School Closures, transportation closures, and job instability from the pandemic. It is only equitable that we are involved in the decisions that will so heavily impact our future. This is a step towards a more equitable and Representative Democracy for years to come. One in three sfusd students are living in households with immigrant parents, meaning, they have no vote in the voting process. Overall, endorsing prop 2 will be a huge first step in making our city more of a democracy, fair, and equitable. Thank you so much for your time. Operator hello, sarah c. . Hi. Im sarah chung, and a High School Senior and a mayoral appointment, here allowing 16 and 17 years old to vote year olds to vote will get us more involved in their community. When youre 18, youre in a transition. Youre going off to college, and it can be difficult to navigate voting education and guidelines. Youre in a supported environment with your family, teachers, and peers to be able to make informed decisions. 16 and 17yearolds will vote and are interested in voting. Weve already seen that in tacoma park. Its important to build the important habit of voting at a young age to get more young people represented and interested in our democracy. These are just a few reason why im asking you to support the enfranchisement of 16 and 17yearolds in november. Thank you so much. Thank you. Operator hello, adriana. Hello. Hello, commissioners, students, community activists, and parents. My name is adriana zhang. As a student and a community member, im concerned what life would look like after covid19. If i could vote, i would vote to elect leaders that would listen and take input to [inaudible] and the youth around me. Passing prop g and expanding Voting Rights to 16 and 17 year olds in municipal elections is so much more than [inaudible] we deserve a say on the people and policies that affect them. As extensively discussed earlier, covid19 has only highlighted the inequities and disparities in our education, transportation, and learns environments. Prop g will allow an underrepresented demographic to be represented. I urge the board of education again to unanimously support prop g. Thank you so much for your time. Operator thank you. Kelley . Thank you for hearing this resolution to support the vote 16 prop g campaign and for calling this item sooner so our youth could speak to this. When, not if, prop g passes, the youth would love to collaborate to implement not only this resolution but another encouraging students to exercise their Voting Rights that was authored by commissioners fewer, norton, and former student delegates. As policy advocates, we know its just not about passing policy, but to actually implement it. The San Francisco Youth Commission knows when prop g passes, we will need numerous efforts to educate and create awareness so that 16 and 17yearolds know they will be allowed to vote. Its go time for us, and i encourage you to vote to support this resolution and support prop g. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Operator hello, jeffrey . Hi. My name is jeffrey zhang. Im from galileo high. [inaudible] the things theyve been reading and having a vote would be really good for everybody, yeah. O