Good afternoon and welcome to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors' regular meeting for today. Tuesday, October 1, 2024, Madam Clerk, could you please call the roll? Thank you, Mr. President, Supervisor Chan. Chan President, Supervisor Dorsey. Dorsey President, Supervisor Chan. Chan, President, Supervisor Dorsey. Dorsey, President, Supervisor, and Guardio. And Guardio, President, Supervisor, Mandelman. Mandelman, President, Supervisor, Melgar. Melgar, President, Supervisor, Peskin. Peskin, President, Supervisor, Preston. Preston, President, Supervisor, Ronin. Ronin, President, Supervisor,an, Ronan President, Supervisor Safaille, Safaille President, Supervisor Stephanie, Stephanie President and Supervisor Walton. Walton President, Mr. President, all members are present. Thank you, Madam Clerk. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors acknowledges that we are on the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramatusha Lonee, who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula. As the indigenous stewards of this land and in accordance with their traditions, the Ramatusha Lone have never ceded, lost, or forgotten their responsibilities as the caretakers of this place, as well as for all peoples who reside in their traditional territory. As guests, we recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional territory. As guests we recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland. We wish to pay our respects by acknowledging the ancestors, elders and relatives of the Ramatusha Lone community and by affirming their sovereign rights as first peoples. Colleagues, please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Madam Clerk do you have any announcements? Yes thank you Mr. President the San Francisco Board of Supervisors welcomes you all to attend this meeting in the boards legislative chamber within City 2nd floor room 250, you may watch the proceeding on SFGOVTV's channel 26, or view the livestream at www.sfgovtv.org. To submit your public comment and writing, you can either send an email to BOSatSFgov.org or via the U.S. Postal Service to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, the number one, Dr. Carlton B. Goodlitt Place, City Hall, room 244, San Francisco, California 9402. To make a reasonable accommodation request, under the Americans with Disability Act or to request language assistance, you may contact the clerk's office at least two business days in advance. I'll give you the telephone number. It's 415-554-5184. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Would you please call the consent agenda? Items one through five are on consent. These items are considered to be routine if a member of Jackson item may be removed and considered separately. And colleagues before we call the role on this I know that we already passed item 5 unanimously last week but I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge and highlight this legislation in what I believe will be its final passage. This legislation represents a unique and innovative approach permitting reform, the first actually in the country, about which other downtown business districts have already reached out seeking to replicate. It creates a streamlined master permitting program for arts and culture activations by putting the community benefit district in charge of the master permit over a longer duration. It allows them to get the permit once and more quickly activate public spaces, incentivizing CBDs to build and sustain long term commitments to arts and cultural programming and to commit stewardship of underutilized public space. Our downtown recovery has immense assets, CBD governance, community partners, arts and culture institutions, public funding and underutilized public spaces. And each CBD has gone through an in-depth creation of public realm action plans with community and stakeholder input. This legislation puts those assets to work over the long term. I really want to thank Robbie Silver of the downtown partnership for his brain power and stick to it, Scott Rohit's of the Europe of Boinas CBD, Andrew Robinson from the East Cut CBD, Ken Rich and Marissa Rodriguez of the Union Square business improvement district, and arts and cultural partners including Soma Filipinas, SF Playhouse, Soma Arts and brick and mortar businesses including Daniel Pan, Michelle Delaney, John Anderson, and many others. And with that, colleagues, roll call on the consent calendar, please. On items one through five, supervisor Dorsey. Dorsey, aye, supervisor Rengardio. Ingardio, aye, supervisor Mandelman. Mandelman, aye, supervisor Melgar. Melgar, aye, supervisor Peskin. Aye. Peskin, ayeyesupervisor Preston. Preston Ayesupervisor Ronin. Ronin Ayesupervisor Safaegi. Safaegi Supervisor Stephanie. Stephanie Ayesupervisor Walton. Walton Ayesupervisor Chan. Chan Ayes. There are 11 Ayes. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Those items are finally passed. Next item please. Item six, this is an ordinance to amend the police code to establish prohibitions for vehicle side shows and to make violations of these provisions a misdemeanor. Supervisor Dorsey. Thank you, President Peskin. In line with our conversation on this item last week, there are some amendments I'd like to make to the findings. These have been distributed to you all by email and by hard copy on your desks. I want to express my appreciation to colleagues who last week pointed out the need for better clarity on this. And so on page three, line 17 after seized 67 vehicles, I will move to add quote, including eight from side shows and 59 others from reckless evasion. When a person flees or attempts to elude a pursuing officer while driving with willfully or want in disregard for the safety of persons or property, including street takeover maneuvers such as donuts and burnouts. End quote. I understand that this amendment is sufficiently substantive to require another vote on the legislation next week. And with that, I'd like to formally make a motion to amend the file I just read into the record. Motion made by Supervisor Dorsey. Seconded by Supervisor Sappi. Can we take that motion without objection? The ordinance is amended as described and then is there a motion to continue the ordinance for one week? Oh no, we'll vote no we have to vote on it. Yeah. Vote on it now and then second reading. Okay, so on the item, we will take it same house, same call as amended. It is passed on first reading. Next item, please. Item 7, this is an ordinance to retroactively authorize the Office of Economic and Workforce Development. To accept and expend a $14 million grant from the California Economic Development Department for the California Jobs First Catalyst Program for the grant period May 1, 2024 through September 30th, 2026. Same house, same call, the ordinance is passed on first reading. Madam Clerk, please read items 8 through 10 are three resolutions that pertain to accept and expand grants from the Public Health Department. Item 8 authorizes the accept and expand of approximately $138,000 grant increase for a new amount of 173,000 from the National Institutes of Health through Florida State University to participate in a program, adolescent medicine trials network for HIV and AIDS interventions, scientific leadership center, December 1, 2023 through November 30, 2024. Item 9, except and expense, $178,000 grant from the Department of Health and Human Services through Helena Health for participation in a program entitled My Prep Plus, Development and pilot testing of novel pre-exposure, profil access support tools for transgender women. Through September 6, 2025, an item 10. This item retroactively authorizes the acceptance and expenditure of $89,000 grant increase from the National Institutes of Health through Haluna Health for a program, the bridge clinic optimizing injectable prep delivery for transgender and non-binary people through January 31st, 2025 for a new amount of 160,000 through January 31st, 2025. Supervisor Ronin. Thank you. I'm just very excited about these programs and think it will get us to get even further although we're doing a great job to getting to zero and would like to be added as a co-sponsor. Thank you. Seeing no other names on the roster we will take these items same house, same call. The resolutions are adopted next item please. Item 11 is a resolution to approve the 6th amendment to a contract between the city and Hunter's Point family to create employment opportunities job training and workforce development programs and to ensure the availability of safe and clean public restrooms for the pit stop workforce development grant program to extend the term by nine months for a new term through June 30th 2025 to increase the contract amount by seven million for a new total of 16.2 million and to authorize the director of public works to make the necessary non-material changes to the amendment before its execution. Same house, same call call the resolution is adopted. Next item. Item 12 resolution to authorize the environment department to accept and expend an in-kind gift of pro bono tax services with an estimated value of 112,000 for a term of engagement effective upon approval of the resolution through May 31, 2025, provided by Deloitte Tax LLP to help the city identify opportunities to obtain federal tax credits for qualifying sustainability activities. Same house, same call, the resolution is adopted. Next item. Item 13, this is a resolution to approve and authorize the director of property and the mayor's office of housing and Community development to enter into a commercial ground lease for real property owned by the city at 725 Davis Street With Broadway Davis retail associates LLC for at least term of 70 years and one 24 year option to extend with an annual base rent of $1 to develop ground floor commercial space for community serving uses to approve and authorize the director of property and the director of M O H C D mayor's office of housing and community development to enter into a first amendment to the residential ground lease to remove the commercial property from the least premises under the ground lease between the city and 735 Davis senior LP related to a 52 unit affordable housing development for low income seniors to include 15 units for homeless seniors and to adopt the appropriate findings. The same housing call, the resolution is adopted. Next item. Item 14, resolution to approve and authorize the director of property and the executive director of the Department of Homelessness and Support of Housing. To enter into a ground lease with five keys, schools and programs for the real property owned by the city located at 42 Otis Street for an initial lease term of five years with 10 automatic extensions of the lease term for an additional term of five years each and total rent not to exceed one dollar in order to operate the property as permanent support of housing to affirm the secret determination and to make the appropriate findings. Same house, same call. The resolution is adopted. Next item. Item 15. This is a resolution to approve and authorize the director of property on behalf of San Francisco's Mayor's Office of Housing and Community Development to acquire real property located at 3,300, 3306 and 3308 Mission Street from 3300 Mission Partners LP for approximately 4.1 million under the agreement for purchase and sale to place the property under the jurisdiction of MOHCD for use in constructing affordable housing to authorize the director of property to enter into a ground lease for the property. To lease the property back to the borrower for 75 years and one 24 year option to extend with an annual base rent of $1 to construct 100% affordable, a 35 unit multi-family rental housing development affordable to low income households and to approve the amended and restated loan agreement for 12.4 million and a minimum loan term of 57 years. This finances the development and construction of the project and provides payment guarantee in an amount not to exceed 1 million for MOHCD to benefit of when cop and circle LLLP and to adopt the appropriate findings. Same house, same call, the resolution is adopted. Madam Clerk, could you please read item 16 through 19 together. Item 16 through 19 are four resolutions that respond to the presiding judge of the superior court on findings and recommendations contained in the following 2023 through 2024 civil grand jury reports. Item 16 come, Hill or High Water, flood management and a changing climate. Item 17, Commission Impossible, getting the most from San Francisco's commissions. Item 18, building San Francisco, designing construction and maintaining city infrastructure. And item 19, lifting the fog on budgets, innovation, silos and more, and to urge the mayor to cause the implementation of accepted findings and recommendations through her department heads and through the development of the annual budget. Supervisor Preston. Thank you President Peskin. I just want to reiterate my thanks to the civil grand jury for all of these excellent reports and also acknowledge and thank my colleagues on GAO. We each take the lead on different reviewing and responding to each of these and wanted to thank Vice Chair Stephanie and Sir Reser, Chan for all their work on these reports and also thank Melissa Hernandez, my staff who leads our offices, efforts on these. We did have one minor technical non-substantive correction on item 17 that was circulated to the board a correction on page 15, so I would like to move that amendment before we adopt these. Okay, should we do that now? And that's item 17. Correct. Motion made by Supervisor Presson, seconded by Supervisor Walton and we will take that without objection. Supervisor Melgar. Thank you so much, President Peskin. I just had a couple questions about item 16 specifically if I could ask the chair of the committee. This is the Civil Grant Jury Report on our climate Adaptation Strategies and what we are saying back to the presiding judge in terms of what we agree or disagree with. How did you come to these conclusions? I mean, specifically the conclusions about, let me see, this page. So anyway, I wanted to know what the thought process of the committee was about how we are agreeing or disagreeing with what we need to pay for in terms of the climate adaptation strategies and specifically how we calculate the cost. what we need to pay for in terms of the climate adaptation strategy and specifically how we calculate the cost. Supervisor Preston? Sure. I think I will defer to my colleagues who took the lead on this and I believe Vice Chair Stephanie, do you want to respond? Sure. Through the president to Supervisor Melgar, I off the top of my head at this moment, I have to look into it and figure out exactly what you're referring to, which finding are you talking about? So, okay. So we say that to the presiding judge that we disagree wholly with finding number F6 for the following reasons. The city regularly communicates climate change risks to residents through planning department, PUC, Department of the Environment. So how did you come to that conclusion? And then we in line number 12, I'm looking at page five of the legislation. We say that recommendation number R32 will not be implemented because it is unwarranted as general obligation bonds are paid through by specialty taxes. So there's a bunch of things that we're saying to the judge that we're already doing and stuff that cannot happen because there's no money allocated for it. So I'm just wondering how we came to the conclusion of putting that in our response to the judge. I wasn't there at the meeting. I'm so sorry. I just wanted to hear the thought process. Yeah, that's fine. And I wish you would have probably asked me before we got to board but at the same time and what we did is that we reached out to the departments and asked them in terms of what their communications were on these issues and came to the fact that the climate change risks to residents are communicated regularly and that was our response back that there was nothing more to do and then it's just that. We had to do that. We had to do that. We had to do that. We had to do that. We had to do that. We had to do that. We had to do that. We had to do that. We had to do that. We had to do that. We had to do that. We had to do that. We had to do that. We had to do that. I did not know you had questions and I really wish you would have asked me before. Okay, thank you. Mr. Reviser Stephanie. Okay. Nothing further. So with that on item 16, item 17 as amended, item 18 and item 19, we will take them same house same call the resolutions are adopted Madam clerk, could you please read the next item item 20? This is an ordinance to amend the planning code in the zoning map to establish the 559th Street special sign district to encompass the real property consisting of assessors, parcel block, number 3781 and lot number 003 to modify sign controls for the existing shopping center and to affirm the secret determination and to make the appropriate findings. Seem how same call the ordinance is passed on first reading. Next item please. Item 21 this is an ordinance to amend the administrative code to expand the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission's social impact partnership program by requiring that all covered contracts that include a social impact commitment include those contracts that were solicited before April 22, 2023 to increase such commitment upon amendment or modification of the contract and by removing the minimum threshold for applicable amendments or modifications. Same house, same call, the ordinance is passed on first reading. Next item please. Item 22, this is a motion to appoint. Claudia Cuyneon is, Residency requirement waive to the child care planning and advisory council term ending March 19th, 2027. Same house, same call. The motion is approved. Next item. Item 23, motion to appoint Melinda Burris to the sugary drinks distributor tax advisory committee term ending December 31, 2024. Same house, same call. The motion is approved. Madam Clerk, why don't we go to committee reports, items 27? Item 27. This item was considered by the Land Use and Transportation Committee at a regular meeting on Mondays of September 30th. It was recommended as a committee report. Item 27 is an ordinance to amend the building code to excuse the requirement for professionally prepared architectural drawings for building permits to change certain use designations that do not increase occupant load or occupancy class or include alterations and to affirm the sequence determination. Seeing no names on the roster, we will take this item same house, same call. The ordinance is passed on first reading. Madam Clerk, let's go to roll call for introduction. Supervisor Dorsey, you're up first to introduce. Submit, thank you. Supervisor Angardio. Thank you, Madam Clerk, Mr. President. I want to wish a happy 100th birthday to President Jimmy Carter. He has led an exemplary life, and even now, in his final days in hospice care, he is a role model of how to accept our mortality. President Carter has always focused on doing maximum good, even at the expense of politics. President Carter was ahead of his time, but history will be very kind to him. He showed great wisdom in his views on human rights, our constitutional system with checks and balances, and the environment. He put solar panels on the White House roof 45 years ago before Ronald Reagan ripped them out. Imagine how much better the world would be if we had followed Jimmy Carter's vision and spent the past half century focused on advancing renewable energy. I have a plaque above my desk that says, what would Jimmy Carter do? I find it helpful to reflect on that question. I'm glad President Carter has lived long enough to see his ideas and his kindness more widely embraced and I hope we can help create the world President Carter envisioned the rest I submit. Thank you supervisor and cardio supervisor mandelman. Thank you madam clerk. It's very gay day over in district eight. I've got a couple of introductions for you. Colleagues today, the Mayor and I are introducing an ordinance authorizing the acquisition of property at 22 AD Market Street for the purpose of operating there on an LGBTQ History Museum. This legislation has been a long time coming and many people and organizations deserve a share of the credit for getting us to this point and I am hesitant to thank people because I'm sure I will be leaving some out. But I want to start with former District 8 supervisor, Bevin Duffty, who more than 15 years ago struck the deal with Walgreens that allowed for the GLBT Historical Society to open a museum space in the Castro on 18th Street between Castro and Collingwood. Although that space has been a great success and a destination for visitors to the Castro and neighborhood residents alike, we've all known for some time that it would not be the museums forever home. And beginning in 2021, the mayor set aside funds in each year's budget to be used for a permanent home for an LGBTQ history museum, the fitting San Francisco's role in the story of queer liberation, culture, and politics. Colleagues, I want to thank all of you for keeping those funds in the budget over these intervening years as we looked for the right location for the museum. I believe that at long last we have found it. Locating the museum on Market Street between Noe and Sanchez will help ensure that the Castro will forever be recognized as the world's greatest gay barhood. The vacant space on the second floor of the building will be available for the operation of the museum in a short period of time, in a space many times larger than it has at its current location. And the ground floor, which is currently occupied by tenants and generating rents that will help ensure the successful operation of the building over time, provide space for the museum to expand in the future. Many of you are familiar with, may have worked with the community art stabilization trust or cast in your own districts. They exist precisely to support community serving cultural nonprofits in the acquisition and operation of real estate and I'm excited that they've been willing to lend a hand in this project as they have in a number of others. Their involvement gives me a lot of confidence that we will be able to successfully pull off the build-out and operation of the museum and the eventual acquisition and ownership of the building by the GLBT Historical Society. I'd be remiss if I did not call out another of my predecessors, former district eight supervisor and now State Senator Scott Weiner, who's found five and a half million dollars of state funds to help pay for the initial improvements to the building and give the Historical Society a solid start on what will be a significant private fundraising project to sustain and grow the museum's operations in the future. In addition to Mayor Breeder's self, I want to especially thank Victor Ruiz-Cornejo and Andre's power in her office, along with Andrico Pinek, the director of the city's real estate division for all their work on this project. The road has been long and windy. We've looked at a number of sites, entered into several letters of intent, requested appraisals negotiated with various owners, had our hopes raised and dashed at various points. We would not have gotten here without Victor Andreessen-Andrico. I also want to acknowledge Brian Chu from OCD and Ralph Remington and Lisa Zias Chen from the Arts Commission for all their work along with two arts commission alumni who made important contributions along the way, Joanne Lee and Lex Lifeite. Lauren Curry and Nancy Taylor in the City Attorney's Office also deserve a lot of thanks as do at least three district eight aides. Adam Talks about currently with my office and formerly Jacob Bent-Lifton, Tom Traprano all carried this project along the way. Secondly, I am introducing the latest saga in the effort to allow gay bath houses in San Francisco. Colleagues, you may recall the back in 2020, we passed amendments to the health code that undid the 1980s prohibitions on the operation of gay bath houses as a health code matter. Within a couple of years, we had operators coming forward who wanted to try to open a gay bathhouse who found that as a planning matter, we hadn't allowed it in so in 2022. Thank you colleagues who were here at the time. We amended the planning code to allow as permitted uses in some places, conditionally permitted uses in other places, adult sex venues, including gay bath houses. We're getting closer and we do actually have folks who are trying to open these things and they have now found another piece of the code in our police code that needs to be modified. This is San Francisco, nothing is simple. There are varied rules and regulations everywhere. This is a section of the police code that dates back to the 70s and governs the operation of bath houses generally and makes it a matter for the police department to regulate the opening and operation of bath houses and has a bunch of requirements that I think are outdated and make no sense. In conversations with the police department and the health department and the DBI and others, we determined that this section of the code probably could be deleted without hurting anybody, nobody on the city side seems to object and so we're just going to do that. And so I want to thank Supervisor Dorsey for your early co-sponsorship. I also want to thank a long list of staff working for the city in the Department of Public Health on of Elidzic. Snéhypital, Susan Phillips, Eduardo Sida, Andrew Rodriguez, Patrick Fosdal, and Jennifer Callowart. Lieutenant Steven Jonas, Andrew Foynes, and Carl Nassita from SF, from the San Francisco Police Department, and Anne Pearson and Valerie Lopez from the City Attorney's Office. And I want to thank Calvin Ho in my office for his work and the rest I submit. Thank you, Supervisor Mandelman, Supervisor Melgar. Submit. Thank you. Supervisor Mandelman, Supervisor Melgar. Submit. Thank you. Supervisor Peskin. Thank you, Madam Clerk, on this day of record breaking heat, while hundreds of thousands of residents of North Carolina continue to deal with the devastation of recent historic flooding in the wake of the hurricane, it is only appropriate that we discuss new innovative policy initiatives relative to local climate policy here today. Earlier today, together with Supervisor Preston and Supervisor Melgar and many supporters, we announced the creation of a new eBike incentive program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions lower the Cost barrier to the sustainable option and advance our climate and transportation equity goals. I started working on this policy with Supervisor Preston and advocates because of the Outpouring of support from thousands of San Francisco's calling for this program E-Bike incentive programs have been tried successfully in Denver, Colorado, in Austin, Texas, and at dozens of different state and local governments, filling a gap neglected by federal climate policy. These programs have shown to replace card trips, reduce congestion, especially for parents dropping their kids off at school, and actually have a far lower carbon footprint than even electric vehicles. The purpose of this policy is to make sure that all San Francisco have an opportunity to participate in this new mode of transportation and benefit from our investments in bike infrastructure and not just folks who are well off. The legislation we are introducing today will create a fund which provides a foundation on which to build and expand a new program. The fund is eligible for County Transportation Authority grants for the purpose of transportation demand management and will be set up to seat local state and federal grant funding. It also advances our previous work to ensure that lithium ion devices are fire safe by providing funding for folks who want to replace unsafe devices. I want to thank my staff, Nate Herrell and Preston Kilgore from Supervisor Preston's office. And I really appreciate working with folks in the transportation equity community to ensure that reaching communities that are underserved by our transit system and overburdened by air pollution are going to be met by this legislation. The rest I will submit. Thank you, Mr. President. Supervisor Preston. The minute. Submit. Thank you. Supervisor Ronan. It's 234. Should we? Yeah, I mean, do you have anything for roll call? We're almost okay. Why don't we go to our 230 special order of commendation starting with supervisor and ending with supervisor Ronan? Thank you. You can tell I'm excited about this. I want to ask Brian and Edwin Souti Lopez to come forward to this to the front here. Colleagues, I am extremely proud to recognize two very special young men who have a remarkable history right here in City Hall and in honor of Latinx Heritage Month I am commending brothers Brian and Edwin Souti Lopez. I met Brian at and when ten years ago after they had recently arrived to the United States after fleeing dangerous conditions in the home country of Guatemala as unaccompanied minors. They were 11 and 7 years old then. Brian and Edwin had family here in San Francisco and soon enrolled in Longfellow Elementary School and Visitation Valley Middle School. While adjusting to a brand new country is already daunting enough as a child, Brian and Edwin were forced to face deportation proceedings alone. As some of you know, immigrants who are in deportation proceedings are not provided legal representation regardless of income level or competency. That means that children like Brian and Edwin at ages 11 and 7 have to face a judge and DHS prosecutor by themselves without any trusting adult to guide or let alone represent them. At the time, there were hundreds of other immigrant children in our city facing the same daunting circumstances. Remarkably, Brian and Edwin came to City Hall, walked these halls, and spoke for the board of supervisors then, and at their young age advocated for emergency funding for attorneys to represent unaccompanied immigrant children like themselves. I have a clip of this special moment when Brian and Edwin were 11 and 7 years old that I'd like to play for everyone right now. A little bit of San Francisco history. I'm here to ask for help with the attorneys, because in my country there's so much violence. In my country every day children are shot and killed. They are shot and killed. Because they don't want to join these gangs, and they are killed for not joining the gangs. And that is why I'm here to ask for your help. No, yo no sufra ese esos sufrimientos que sufren las mamas And that is why I am here to ask for your help so that I don't have to suffer the what others suffer including including mothers If I can ask them a question, put it on up, they want that. If they can say what their age is, put in this use without poor forward. Doles. Contaños bien es ese. Sebe? You can give them a round of applause. They're younger sounds, a round of applause. I wanted to take a moment to recognize our beloved Jeffa Dachi was right in the front row for that fight, right behind you too. And then of course, you can tell why I hired Anna Herrera to be my legislative aide. She's been in this fight for a very long time. I was chief of staffer, supervisor David Compos at the time, and together with an incredible collaborative effort of advocates and individuals like Brian and Edwin, we created one of the first right to counsel programs for unaccompanied children in the country. The San Francisco Immigrant Legal and Defense Collaborative, or SFILDC. Thanks to their advocacy, Brian and Edwin and hundreds of children like them secured legal representation in San Francisco. Anna Herrera, now, as I said, my beloved and brilliant legislative aide was their immigration attorney at the time at Dolores Street Community Services and won their immigration case. Yay! Now as a U.S. citizen, Brian will be voting in his first election in November. Brian is a student at UC Santa Cruz where he is majoring in electrical engineering. He successfully transferred from City College of San Francisco where Brian remains a mentor for other students of underrepresented backgrounds. Brian has completed internships with Tesla and Ease Education, which is a partnership with San Jose State to mentor youth who are interested in AI and robotics like Brian. Edwin is a senior at City Arts and Leadership High School, here in the city on the Cusp of graduation. He is planning his next steps, which he hopes to involve assisting immigrants like him and his family. Brian and Edwin's parents who are here both work at Faces Pre-School in the Bayview District where their mom is an early child's could educator and their dad a bus driver. Edwin volunteers there with his parents as well. I invited Brian and Edwin here because it's been 10 years since they spoke in the same chamber as children where they advocated for this crucial and critical public policy change. I can tell you from working on that legislation that they single-handedly convinced some members of the Board of Supervisors, I'll just mention the chair of the Budget Committee at the time, who was not going to support us, to pass the ordinance that day. That was you, you did that. And that San Francisco today wouldn't have provided legal representation to immigrant children like Brian and Edwin, who are the bright lights that are changing our world and contributing in such amazing ways. Unfortunately, the political discourse around immigration has gotten so much worse since Bryn and Edwin first arrived here 10 years ago. Even in our own sanctuary city of San Francisco, scapegoating immigrants has recently reared its ugly head again. It's critical that we resist these harmful political tactics and instead uplift our values and the incredible immigrants who make our cities so proud. Brian and Edwin, thank you so much for your courage, your perseverance, your leadership, your achievement. You each overcame an incredible amount to be here and make your entire family and the entire city so proud of you. You remind all of us of what is possible when we invest in our communities and provide meaningful opportunities to immigrants and those who are most in need. We are all so proud of you, Brian and Edwin. Congratulations on all your accomplishments to date and the many more to come. Thank you. Please, if you'd like to say a few words. Hello, good afternoon members of the Board of Supervisors and steam guests. My name is Brian Suchi and it is both a privilege and honor to stand before you today. Ten years ago, I was one of the children who stood here in front of you, pleading for and it is both a privilege and honor to stand before you today. Ten years ago, I was one of the children who stood here in front of you, pleading for help as I phased the petition without legal representation. I fled Guatemala's champion, the by-lens that tore my community apart, seeking safety in the future in San Francisco. With the tireless support of Anadreda from the Lawrence Street Community Service and other incredible advocates, I was given the chance to tell my story. It was because of the courage and compassion of this board and leaders like Supervisor David Campos and now Supervisor Hillary Ronan that funding for legal representation for children like me became a reality. You gave us more than legal assistance, you gave us hope. The impact of that decision cannot be overstated. You didn't just offer us legal aid, you offered us a lifeline, a chance to leave free from fear and have a leave that we too belong here. Your compassion and your action created the foundation for a brighter future, not only for me, but for thousands of children who face impossible odds. Today, I stand before you, not as a scared child I once was, but as a testament to what happens when a community becomes together and protect its most vulnerable members. I am now a student at UC Santa Cruz pursuing a bachelor degree in electrical engineering, something that looking at the Latino population in higher education would seem impossible. But with the support I received, I have not only persevered, but I have trived. And now I am dedicated to helping others who come from the same background as mine, ensuring they too can achieve what many have said is at a reach. I want to remind everybody here that we as immigrants, whether Latino, Asian, or any other corner of the world, are not just a part of this country. We are the harby. We are the dreams, the struggles, and the contribution that fuel the strength and vibrancy of our communities. We are the threat that binds this nation together and reaching with our cultures, hopes, and our relentless pursuit for our better life. Let this moment echo through time. We as a community are stronger when we uplift the marginalized. We as a city are greater when we defend the voiceless. And we as a nation are truest to our values when we open our arms to those in need. Let the future generation look back and say that this was the moment San Francisco once again stood on the right side of history, let this be our legacy, a legacy of companions, courage and unwavering belief that every child regardless where they come from, deserve a chance to achieve their dreams. Thank you. So beautiful Edwin, did you want to say anything? You'll let your older brother speak for you? I just want to thank you all for being, letting me be here in this moment and thank you for all the people here that I saw. Madam Clerk, let's go back to roll call for introduction. Supervisor Safaihi, you have introduction of new business. Great. It's roll call for introduction. That's why I'm going to say something. We'll see something. New business. So I just, I want to say a quick word on a passing. It became public today. It actually passed a couple of, actually last month, but it was an influential actor, I think, that impacted maybe some of the people in this room, John Amos. He was the actor that played the father in good times. Also, the monumental Siri roots and the impact that it had on so many people being the first all black cast ever in American history and the influence that it had on so many different people's lives and so many actors. So I just wanted to say rest in peace and honor him. He's somebody that had an impact on me in an early life and so just wanted to honor his passing and the rest I submit. Thank you Supervisor Safaiyee. Supervisor Stephanie. Submit. Thank you. Supervisor Walton. Submit, thank you. Supervisor Chan. Submit, thank you. Supervisor Ronan, did you have? I did, thank you. Please. Colleagues, today I'm submitting a motion calling for a committee of the whole. I'm sorry. I know we have a lot of those lately. I'll tell you why. And this time it's about SFUSD's whole school lesson study math pilot. That was funded by the city to the tune of $8 million. So it was a significant investment we made in our students in SFUSD. There's great news to share for once. Yay, SFUSD. There is great news to share for once, yay, as a USD, that at the four schools that were part of this pilot located in District 5, 8, 9, and 10. Because of the resounding success of the program, the district expanded the strategy to two new schools this year using PropG student success funds. In addition to understanding the data from the first two years of the pilot, I intend to clarify that SFUSD and DCYF commit to continuing the program with funding from the student success fund given its demonstrated data driven success. Sadly colleagues, I have had to intervene numerous times since this pilot program started to ensure that the program was implemented as intended. It's worth mentioning now that the increase in scores has been significant for students overall, and in particular, black, Latinx, and English learners have made dramatic gains. Despite initial challenges in staffing, the program during the first two years due to delays in SFUSD hiring and other issues. To give you just a taste, a preview of what will here in much more detail, John Murerson increased overall of 28% in SBAC scores in grades three through five, and a 27% increase for Latinx and 23% increase in black students' math scores on the SBAC. I can tell you that leaps like that do not happen normally. That math scores for these populations stayed stagnant or went down in schools that were not part of this math pilot. There were also big gains in other schools. There were other, in the other pilot schools, there were other significant gains, like massive decreases in student absenteeism. Decreases like they've never seen at these schools before. An increase in teacher retention. And students and teachers just having a different atmosphere, a different excitement to teach and learn at the schools. Given the success of this pilot, we want to hear from SFUSD and DCWIFT to understand their commitment to the continuation of this program with dedicated resources to shore up not only these schools, but planned expansions to others. Why is this important? Well, as you all know, there's been a lot of talk about returning eighth grade algebra. And we know that the only way that all students, all students, including African-American, Latinx students, will be successful in eighth grade algebra is they have mastered the fundamentals of math and elementary school. That is not happening in many, many schools throughout the city. This program is one path to achieve that goal and it's really promising. I urge you all to support the motion and I wanted to thank Supervisor Peskin for agreeing to hold this committee of the whole on the October 29th and I would especially like to thank supervisor Melgar for her partnership in guaranteeing the success of this program and the rest I submit. Thank you, supervisor Ronan. Mr. President, seeing no names on the roster that concludes the introduction of new business. Let's go to public comment. At this time, the board welcomes your public comment. Please line up on your right hand side of the chamber along the curtains. You may speak to items 30 through 34, the items of adoption without being considered by a committee. You may also speak to other general matters that are not on today's agenda, but must be within the board subject matter jurisdiction. We are setting the timer for two minutes. Welcome. Thank you. Well, is Judgment Day October 17th? Time will tell. There are many Christians that do believe it will fall during the Feast of Tabernacles. But I'd like to read a prophecy here in Ezekiel and tie it into Judgment Day. Therefore, thus saith the Lord God because you have made your iniquity to be remembered in that your transgressions are discovered so that in all your doings your sins do appear, because I say that you're come to remembrance, you should be taken with the hand. And now profane wicked Prince of Israel, this would be Zedekiah, the last king that's that on the throne of David. And now profane wicked Prince of Israel, whose day has come, when iniquity shall have an end. Thus sayeth the Lord God, remove the diadem and take off the crown, this shall not be the same. Exalt him that is low, that's nib, and abase him that is high. I will overturn, overturn, overturn it, and it shall be no more until he come who's right it is, and I will give it him. And so we have a chronology in the Bible that tells us precisely how many years it was from when Solomon's temple was destroyed to when Christ came. It's 70 years plus 490 years. That's 560 years. And so I got to thinking, you know, the Bible has a mystery that says that Christ is going to come back in three and a half years. And so I thought, I wonder what that would be, 560 years multiplied by three and a half years. It's 1960 years. You can actually change, check your math using the number 666 to see if the interpretation of three and a half years is actually 1960 years, but I have 19 seconds left and it's not going to happen, but call upon Jesus, he will forgive you. You read Gracie the robber, right? Powerful book about these guys that murdered a couple of backslidden Christians and they actually got saved. Okay, I believe God will save anyone, except for a pedophile or an abortion doctor. Thank you for your comments. Next speaker please. Hi, my name is Will Patterson, and I just have a question. I'm not clear. I'm here to make comment on the school board. That's coming in three o'clock. Just. Yeah. Will public comment be before the presentation or discussion to help inform your discussion or will it be after? It will be after. First we're going to have the presentation then we'll have public comment. Would you consider moving the public comment to before so that you can consider our public comment and how you ask questions? I will raise that at the time that it comes up with. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker please. Clerk, I hastily be passed out. speaker please. Clerk, I hastily be passed out. Sure. We'll be down there. Pick it up. Good afternoon. For those who don't know me, my name is Jake Conner, Beortega, and I'm president of Team Jake Conner. Over the past few days, I spent in three massive neighborhoods, the Mission, South of the Market, and Union Square, which supervisors Ronan, Dorsey, and Peskin oversee. To prove the efficiency of the sport, you all manage a $16.5 billion budget, spend it all and can't track where it all goes to. I complete each neighborhood count in one night each and only costing me $20. $4.80 for printing these color pages if I can use the overhead. This is something I had completed in about three nights and what you can see is the mission. All the red dots are closed businesses, the purple, roaming, homeless, the blue, empty homes, the orange tents, the brown prostitutes, and the pink RVs. This is something I printed out and gave to all of you, which I hand off to the clerk to give to you, GVU, because I, from what I understand, the residents of your district have not heard from any of you in a very long time. It's funny because we heard from someone who came here from Guatemala for a better life, but like many in our immigrant communities who continue to suffer, this board pushes forward to turn our communities into the healthscapes that many have come here to avoid. While I collected this information, I've spoken to many lifelong and multi-generational families who watched you all destroy their homes. I understand if it's a big task because if I was a supervisor who had two months left, I also would be quite quitting in order to get to my trip to Spain like supervisor Rodin. The rest of you will be here and we will hold you all accountable for this. Thank you. Next speaker please. Excuse me, would I have to leave? The public comment is going on right now. Yes, okay. Thank you. My name is Namdev Sharma. I am speaking on the behalfavapurchan's taxing delivery holders. Sun Francis has said, crops have destroyed the city very badly. No one has sick of magic to recover it. It will take at least next 10 years to recover, taxi-developed, bank-trupped and disappeared. You have big buzzard for empty employees and hospital employees over time. Don't you think taxi drivers take sick people to hospitals work day and night and longer shifts? Where is our over time? Where is budget for taxi drivers? City-based and billion of dollars for homeless people, they are still homeless. No one considers us humans. But the hell is going on here. Mr. Eatman with the purchase of sexy Madali holders. Mascar powers right. Extortionists enjoy rides here. We are going through a catastrophic situation. We are words to death. You left us as headless chicken. Don't you know poverty taken per se taxid medal holders need you help? City did nothing for us last six years. No one has an empty for us. One month left in election, please help us have due the price of medallion to $125,000 that will help us to sustain in taxi business. Thank you. Thank you for your comments, next speaker. Good afternoon, you guys. This is again taxi issues. So we're day by day we're going really like a struggling, struggling, and it's very difficult. And that's all I've been keep going and begging you guys. Please get together and solve that problem. Otherwise, you don't know, we'll be the worst in homeless. We're struggling very bad. And I don't want to just keep saying something, but I please get together and solve our problem because all the monsters right eight of us right there and they're working and we're just suffering going hours and hours and we don't get anybody so please get together and help us out just for sake of God if you will help me believe me believe me this city is going to be blooming like a green because justice provide everything only justice need to be served in the city. Everything will be just fine and not too long. It will take a lot to long, but we need to just be sincere and not to keep any against the cab driver who have been working hard for the city. And we deserve to give some hands from you guys. And that's all I need to know. Thank you so much. Thank you for your comments. Next speaker please. My name is Jim McFee. It's come into my attention that for some reason we need an inspector general here in San Francisco to root out corruption ostensibly because the FBI can't be defended on. That's pretty much a quote. It doesn't sound like much righteous indignation, does it? However, this inspector general is going to be probably in the same department or wherever that the whistleblower program is. Well, they didn't seem to root out too much corruption. We also have a city attorney who's quoted in the paper before he took over the position of stating that he would root out public corruption, wherever it existed. What about the 12 people who died that were transferred from Laguna Honda? No public corruption involved there? Really? Citations for the city? Fines? No mention of the honest service of fraud that was done with these transfer assessments. It caused these people to die. Taxpayers pay fines. People die. Nobody cares. Laguna Han is recertified. Laguna Hanley gets resorted by. Laguna Hanley's problems are far from over. I haven't even mentioned my partner Randy. And you guys got evidence of them lying by this condition. And it's so secure to me by being in bezel. It's far from over. Laguna Hanley's problems are far from over. the next speaker. Any other members of the public who would like to address the board during general public comment, please line up or these will be the last two speakers. Welcome. Afternoon, I'm Sarah Greenwald speaking for a 350 San Francisco and as a resident of District 2. We would like to express our continuing concern about the San Francisco versus EPA lawsuit that was discussed in closed session at the last meeting. You've ordered then not to disclose the outcome of the session. We remind you that even if there are discussions going on that you cannot report in detail, do we understand? Time is very short. And your constituents deserve to know that the city is going to resolve the contamination issue constructively, not by suing to protect its ability to dump sewage into our waters. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Next speaker. Yeah, I was really, my name's Audit Duffy. I was really enjoying seeing those two young men coming up here and especially the one that's going into engineering. It's better than politics. It's an interesting thing. The reason that we require a lot of fossil fuels that, and electrons don't like being in close contact with each other. And fossil fuel and fuels, they allow very high energy electrons to be very closely stacked next to each other. When we try to do that with electronics, as in lithium batteries, it sometimes becomes difficult. They go off by themselves. I appreciate, so I appreciate looking into the safety of those things, especially when it comes from off-brand electrical devices like cell phones, for instance, that are manufactured in small Eastern European countries. Thank you for your comments. Please welcome. Ladies and gentlemen, I came coming here to do some facts. I'm sure you've been here quite some time. I'm gonna pick them up on a crime scene that you guys don't get your point. But here I am telling you for a public hearing because I didn't know you all passed a law that a rep was not a crime in this city. I got stitches on my right eye from the city employee. I have enough to underground with a concussion for a city employee that tried to throw me down and stay away back with my city employee. And I went to these districts. I went to the Human Rights Service, 25 Van A. I'm a victim. I'm old man. I'm just able. You understand what I'm saying? But your guys don't seem that your care about what's going on in these programs. I was in a program trying to get my life in order. In order to do that, you have to go in these programs to get housing. But you guys don't want to acknowledge that women are being ripped in these places. You don't want to acknowledge that people are being bruised and youth in these places. I mean't want to acknowledge that people are being bruised and used in these places. I mean, will they all actually sit in here for? I ask you all for a public hearing. Your guys denying it. This is a serious charge. And I got proof. I got everything. I want the public to have a comment on this. Please, ma'am, I ask you to be a gay and for a public hearing. It must know what's going on. People should not have to suffer when they're trying to get their life together. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Mr. President. Public comment is now closed. Madam Clerk, let's read the adoption without committee reference calendar and then we'll go to our first 3pm special order. Yes, items 3334. We're introduced for adoption without reference to committee a unanimous vote is required for adoption of a resolution on first reading today Alternatively a member may require a resolution on first reading to go to committee There a motion to excuse supervisor Melgared by supervisor Walton. We will take that without objection. Supervisor Preston. All right, to sever 32 please. Severe item 32 on the balance of the calendar. A roll call please. On items 30, 31, 33, and 34, supervisor Dorsey. Dorsey, I, supervisor and cardio. In cardio, I, supervisor, mandalman. Mandalman, I, supervisor, peskin. peskin, I, supervisor, Preston. Preston, I, supervisor, Ronan. Ronan, I, supervisor, Safaigee. Safaigee, I, supervisor, Stephanie. Stephanie, Iaigee? Aye. Safaigee aye. Supervisor Stephanie? Aye. Stephanie aye. Supervisor Walton? Aye. Walton aye. And supervisor Chan. Aye. Chan aye. There are 10 aye's. Those resolutions are adopted and motions approved. Madam Clerk, could you please read item 32? Item 32, resolution to support. United States House of Representatives Bill HR 9662, the Homes Act introduced by United States Senator Tina Smith and Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, to address the affordable housing crisis by establishing a national housing development authority to create permanently affordable climate resilient housing and to provide an alternative to market rate housing. The provides your press. Thank you, President Peskin and colleagues introduced this last week but did not speak to it given the late hour of our meeting but did want to say a few things before we vote on this important item and the item before you today is a resolution in support of the Holmes Act introduced by Senator Tina Smith and Representative Alexandria Acasio Cortez. To address our nation's housing affordability crisis, I want to thank my co-sponsors, supervisors Ronan, Saffae, Walton, and I believe Peskin, thank you. And this bill would establish a national housing development authority within the Department of Housing and Urban Development HUD to function essentially as a public bank and developer that will build permanently affordable homes for millions of people in this country, stabilize rents and provide home ownership opportunities. The bill would create 1.25 million climate resilient housing units, invest $300 billion in affordable housing, and create over 400,000 jobs annually, prioritizing equitable opportunities for marginalized communities. Colleagues with the regional housing bond here failing to make it to the ballot and with the state's failure so far to to scale up housing funding to meet housing mandates this Federal Act the Homes Act could be a real lifeline for affordable housing tenant rights and jobs not only in the Bay Area But across the country. I'm also excited that the bill, if pass, would repeal the disastrous faircloth amendment that we have discussed here in these chambers that arbitrarily continues to cap public housing in this country at a time when we need a dramatic expansion of public housing in our nation. So colleagues, I hope you'll join me in putting San Francisco on the record in support of the Homes Act. Thank you. Seeing no other names on the roster, we will take this item same house, same call. The resolution is adopted. We'll go to our 3 p.m. special order item number 24. Madam Clerk, would you please call that item? Item 24, this is a public hearing of the Board of Supervisors to convene a committee of the whole. Today, Tuesday, October 1st, 2024, at 3pm to hold a public hearing to examine the unaccounted for 20 million in the San Francisco Unified School District's budget for special education and the unfilled positions that support SFUSD special education work. All right, Supervisor Safaie, the floor is yours. Thank you, Mr. President, and also thank you for co-sponsoring this urgent hearing today. Colleagues, I think most of us by now, I've spoken to many of you, have been receiving urgent phone calls and emails from parents and students in distress about the impending school closures or potential school closures and the district's lack of transparency engagement with constituents that's a lot of the feedback that I've been getting. I know personally, this is a very stressful time for parents, guardians, teachers, and CBO partners who provide services to our public school students. More so for families and students who have felt are in the margins with limited or sub-optimal educational environment and services who have borne the brunt of the districts mismanagement in these situations, including our dedicated and hardworking teachers and paraprofessionals are educators who stepped during the most challenging times. To learn that on top of this significant stressor, SFSD this past spring first cut, or didn't approve and then froze critical special education positions, leaving some of our most vulnerable children in many cases without the legally mandated instruction or services is frankly extremely frustrating and distrustful. We initially thought that we were speaking about $20 million from the special education budget that was either initially frozen. Later to learn that it actually was over $30 million for federally mandated position and instructional support. As a father of two dyslexic learners, this hits home for me personally. As I deeply understand how important adequate learning environments are and services for the development and success of our children with learning differences. Everywhere I go in the city, every meeting neighborhood gathering that I attend, the issue comes up, parents and guardians, those who care for our public school students are dismayed and confused as what's happening right now. And as I've continued to dig in deeper, we've gotten some answers, but the reason we're here today is to get more information and support. My staff has been reaching out for briefings, meetings and information to have a better understanding from SFUSD for the support, and I know that parents have been reaching out to all of us. Unfortunately, the shocking news of special education staffing, and then more recently, I think in the same week almost, finding out that there were over 350 non-credential teachers in the public schools, along with the pending conversation about school re-alignment, has caused a lot of concerns about transparency and information, and that's why I felt compelled to call this hearing and examine what's going on, and I've had some good conversations with some of the presenters that are coming here today from the superintendent to the head of the Department of Children, Youth and Families, to presenters that are coming here today from the superintendent to the head of the Department of Children, Youth and Families, to people that are engaged with our Citizens Advisory Committee. And so we're going to hear from all of them. And also thank you, President Matt Alexander, for your continued outreach and your push for transparency and engagement with our office. I think we all generally agree that this is unacceptable and we have no way, we have no specific governance role over the school district, but we do have a critical role to play here at the Board of Supervisors. We are the parents and members of this community, representatives, students, parents, teachers, paras are our constituents and we owe them support and leadership on this issue. Additionally, as the city and county of San Francisco, we provide, as we know, significant, significant financial support, sub-resurronin, reference to program earlier. We're going to have a future conversation about that has had tremendous impact on learning. And that is some of the collective work we've done together to help support the school district. So this is not a witch hunt. This is an investigation on how we can do better collectively. But it's incumbent upon us to constantly scrutinize and look into how the money is spent and the programs are being administered right now. So we're looking for transparency from the school district and the city departments that have been asked to step up and support as part of the newly created school stabilization team. It's my hope that we can conclude this hearing with a better understanding of what happened to get us here and more importantly what immediate actions are expected to see to remediate the situation and we can restear the ship, ensuring that resources are properly being used as intended by the San Francisco voters. So this, of course, is a cursory look to what happened to get us here and also an assessment and investigation is taking place. I know the controller's office has been asked to partner and investigate with some special education leaders along with the financial advisors that have been asked to come in. So for today's hearing, we have four presenters. We have the Board of Education, President, Madal, Exander, Vanessa Moreiro, Parent and Community Advocate and Executive Director of Parents for Public Schools. Director Maria Sue from Department of Children, Youth and families, and our superintendent Matt Wayne and his team. We have additional people on standby our controllers here today. Thank you, controller, a rec and park, mayor's office, human services agency, department human services and treasurer tax collector. Should questions come up specific to those departments in their role as part of the stabilization team. President Alexander and Miss Marrero will have five minutes to present and Director Sue and Superintendent Wayne will have ten minutes present. I'd like to take questions after the entire presentation so we're not slowing down. So colleagues please if you have questions specifically to any of the presenters write them down and then we'll get to them after the full presentation. So I think this will allow for more robust conversation and a flow. And I know that there's a special meeting that Superintendent has and the board has today at five o'clock. So we want to be respectful of that time as well. And I know members of the public would like to comment. So President Alexander, if you can come up first, you will present first the floor as yours. the public would like to comment. So President Alexander, if you can come up first, you will present first the floor as yours. And again, thank you for your partnership and your push for transparency. Thank you, supervisor Safa'i for calling this hearing and thank you, President Peskin, for hosting it. We are grateful, the school board is grateful for the partnership and the transparency and accountability that this is providing. This issue of the special education hiring is not just an issue of a budget mistake. For me it's personal. And I know it is for a number of you, probably all of you have either family members or people that you care about who have disabilities and who could be impacted by a situation like this. Before I joined the Board, I spent 20 years as a teacher and principal in our public schools. And while I was principal of June Jordan School for Equity, a small school in the Excelsior District, Supervisor Safi's District, we served nearly 30% children with disabilities. And I know so many young people with IEPs who thrived because they had fully staffed classrooms. They had resource teachers. They had pair educators in their classroom supporting them. I'm thinking in particular of a young man who graduated about a decade ago from June Jordan who had come to our school from where he wasn't succeeding in more traditional school environments. He came to our school. He had a resource teacher who connected with him who really understood the details of his IEP. He had parent educator support. He had that consistently through his four years of high school. He graduated. went to San Francisco State University. Then completed a master's in cell and molecular biology at SF State. He did a fellowship at UCSF and I have to read this because I didn't know what this is. But he did a fellowship on microtubule motor proteins in mitochondria and stintor regeneration, sorry, can't even say it. And now he's beginning a PhD program at UC Davis. And for me, so, you know, I think about a young man like him, who by the way is African American, third generation San Francisco and with an IEP again, if he had not had that support, if he had been today in a classroom that didn't have a teacher, that didn't have a paraprofessional, not only would his life choices have been so constrained, but we all would have lost out on the brilliant scientific mind that he's contributing to our society. So this is serious and let me be clear, what happened with special education staffing this summer was completely unacceptable. And there were a number of other issues that we have uncovered on the Board of Education in the past month that were also unacceptable. And that's why we took the step of reaching out to Mayor Breed for support. And I am very grateful to Mayor Breed for responding to that request and for creating the school stabilization team that's going to be working in partnership with us. This is not about the city coming in and telling us what to do. It really is about a partnership. Maria Sue and Phil Ginsburg have been fantastic. We've already been working together for a week and we're creating plans on how to support the school district in lots of ways. But specifically around this special ed issue, there's two priorities. Number one is to support our human resources department in the district to ensure that those positions are all filled. And Superintendent Wayne will talk more about the plans around that. But secondly, to ask for an independent assessment. And we've asked the Board of Education is asking, and the school district is asking for an independent assessment by the controller's office to determine exactly what happened and why so that we can prevent this and ensure that it never happens again. I am confident that this is a practical way to move forward. And I want to say, to me, it does represent an ongoing partnership and supervisor Safa, alluded to it in his comments. We are, oh, there you are. You move. We are so grateful for your leadership, for Supervisor Ronan's leadership, and the leadership of the entire board around the Student Success Fund, which we passed in 2022 with nearly 80% of the vote and is bringing in $35 million a year to our school district. Thank you to you all for doing that. The John Muir Mathematics pilot that I assume you were referring to earlier. Again, that's your, you all said we want to support our public schools. To me, this is just another example of that, right? You're having a transparent forum for us to be held accountable appropriately so, and to make sure that we get it right. And so we're just really grateful. I think we can all acknowledge that this situation was a major misstep. And now we need to work together to make it right. And so again, grateful for you creating this space and for your partnership and accountability. And I'm confident that together, we can make the public schools that this great city deserves. So thank you again for having this hearing. So President Alexander, you still have having this hearing. So President Alexander, you served two minutes left. I know we're not taking questions, but just to put a fine point on it, can you just give a little bit more clarity? I know that the superintendent is going to talk about this, but just for the general public, want to know exactly what we're talking about in terms of special ed. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I want to talk about the positions, the amount of money when it was identified and the planning forward. Well so I learned about this on August 30th I believe that this issue was out there. The Board of Education actually passed the budget in June and we thought these positions were included in that budget. So I learned on August 30th that that was not the case because principals were trying to hire these positions and the budgeted money was not there. And so I immediately the next Saturday morning I contacted our fiscal advisors from the CDE, I contacted Superintendent Wayne and they worked quickly together to get the budget approved, I believe it was two business days later on the 4th of September. And so since then, but again, since then those positions have been, we've moved toward hiring those, but that was two weeks after school started. And the board believes that those positions have been included in the budget, but they were not. Apparently they had not been approved by the budget office. And again, I'll let them speak to the technicalities. But again, so those positions were not able to be filled and hired for because the budget that we thought we had passed with the positions apparently did not include them. Does that answer your question? Yes. Yes. And how many positions? I believe it was approximately 250 but again I appreciate your partnership I know that you engage with us immediately as did many other people like our United Educators and others that were really concerned about this issue and parents and others so thank you we'll keep the presentation going. And you'll hear from the superintendent I'm grateful for his leadership and his willingness to move quickly to address this and to partner with you all and partner with the city so he'll give you the details you You know, at the board of it, we're really representing the vision and values of the community. You know, we all have other day jobs. So our job really is to hold the superintendent accountable and support the superintendent and staff to do what's needed. And so again, that's why we're bringing in city resources and that's why we're grateful for your support in this as well. So thank you. Thank you. Ms. Moreiro, is she here? Yes, please. You're next. Okay. Okay, good afternoon, everybody. My name is Vanessa. I'm a community advocate and a long-term educator. I want to thank Supervisor Safai for having me and our organization and your house today and thank all of the supervisors for your servant leadership to our communities, especially the communities in public schools. Today I'm gonna talk really briefly in very high level about something called the Special Education Local Plan area. The intention and purpose of this presentation is to provide you with information. We'll go through the overview, we'll go through a context of need. I'll share a little bit about what the service plan is, and then last the adopted budget. I think for a lot of you, this is gonna make perfect sense as I go through the slides. And please know that all of this information was sourced from leg info as well as California Department for Education and you can look at the US Department of Education under individual disabilities, Education Act for information as well. In the state of California we have 136, what we call special education local planning areas. You'll see this in this kind of blurry map that they're all over the state. And San Francisco is your unique. It is a city and a county. So it has what we call its own Selpa, which is an acronym for the Special Education Local Plan Area. This is each area can serve a range of students from as little as 1,000 to as many as 10,000. And from a governance standpoint, the SELPA can work within multi-districts. It could work with the county office of bed. There are single-districts. That's what they call us in San Francisco. And it also includes charters, because charters according to the code are considered public schools. And I'll talk a little bit about other schools that are it includes. I want to reference to you all the education codes. I'm not going to go through them. But if you look them up on ed code, you'll see where the ed code delineates, what the SELPA is. From a funding standpoint, you know, SELPAs receive funds from the state and federal government to provide special education services and related services. And so I'm telling you, you may know about something called the Individuals for Disability's Education Act. This is a federal law, and it's just for it's just for a special education and cellpas are part of that and what they do is they help they help their member districts in implementing the law. There's a few sections of the cellpa again. This is very high level. It is a very dense document. So if if you have questions I'm happy to take them at a later time but three areas I think are really important for the conversation is one is contracts and stratifications contacts so this is who at the LEA and the county office of ed are the contacts for the SELPA it includes the SELPA administrator it includes a school district superintendent and it also includes a county office superintendent, which in this case, we have the state of California and that it's to the Department of Education. The second piece I'll mention is the budget plan. So any services that are needed and need to be accompanied by revenue. And then the last is that there is a service plan. And the service plan is a host of services that are dependent on the needs of the students and that's selfa. So every district is gonna look very different with its selfa because it's gonna really relate to what President Alexander mentioned that IEP. So think about all the young people that hire IEPs and what are the needs there. This I'll just do this really quick. I think on this slide, what's a particular notice that is there's two kind of folds, what besides what we call a local educational agency with ditch in this case is SFUSD there's a county office and SFUSD is Does have a county office arm and there's also an entity that the supervisor mentioned that's called the community advisory committing There you go you got 30 seconds you can talk about that because that's the thing that I really wanted to hear from you about today and how I played a role in the decision making. Sure. So I'm going to go ahead and go forward a little bit. And I'm happy to send these slides to anyone here. Just so you all know the We sell plans or public, they have to be public, they're actually on the district website, so if you just enter a SELPA, SFUSD, you'll be able to see the plan that was approved in May of 2024. The community advisory committee is a really important component because it consists of a governing body that is actually elected, this is an elected body of parents with students with disabilities. They meet on a monthly basis, as well as convene meetings for the community. And the service to the community is a number of topics over the school year. So they may be talking about dyslexia one month and another month they'll talk about tutoring or something. One thing to note that the plan itself does need to be done and collaboration with the Community Advisory Committee. So meaning that the plan cannot be certified without the Community Advisory Committee. The other piece that's important is that when the plan goes to what we call public hearing, which is a time when the Board of Education looks at the plan, they may ask some questions and then they may approve or not approve the plan. So this is super important because it happened in May where there was a plan that was approved for X amount of dollars and again that's here and this PowerPoint. Do you have any other questions about the issue? You said the plan was approved. Do you have that slide up? You said the amount of money in the plan that was approved? Oh yeah sure. I'll go here. This is information that you can take from something called board docs. If you look at, go online and go SFUSD board docs, you can find the main meetings for 2024 and you can actually see the PowerPoint with this visualization. So I source this visualization from the board docs. And in this case, you see that there's a number of total proposed budget that was discussed and may it 2020-24. And just I know we're gonna, we're gonna, we can ask more questions, but this is what I really want you to end with. The special education community advisory committee, they have a role in setting recommendations and a proposed budget. they sign the budget in partnership with the School district is they yeah, they sign something called a certification So it's this right here certification number four The there's different entities as sign the local educational agency will sign in this case it would be the superintendent County office would sign again. We're a single single district that means it's the same person superintendent and then the community advisory committee which is this body that I'm mentioning which is a body of parents. Okay great thank you if we have any other questions we'll call you back up for sure. Okay well thank you for having me. No no absolutely, absolutely. Director Sue. Good afternoon supervisors. Maria Sue, Director for the Department of Children, Youth and their families. Thank you for inviting me here today. I think the original question for us was around the $8.4 million at the mayor had allocated, but maybe I can just very briefly talk a little bit about the school stabilization team. Yes. So. That would be very helpful. Our staff is loading this up. So as of last Sunday, September 22nd, the mayor's office, the mayor received a phone call from President Alexander from the Board of Education requesting support and help. As you all have already heard from President Alexander, the school district is facing very critical and heart-wrenching decisions ahead of them, mainly around their budget. And due to that, President Alexander asked if the city could provide additional human support and resources so that we, together, with the school district, can figure out how we can best serve our children, youth, families, teaching staff, and administrators. So the mayor very quickly formed this team that I have the honor of co-chairing a co-leading with Phil Ginsburg from the Department of Reckon Park. The team is comprised of several key leaders within our city, one of which is Cha Yuma, who is Deputy Director of the Controller's Office. You have Susie Smith, Deputy Director of Policy and Planning from the Human Services Agency. Hong May Peng, who is from the Mayor's Office, who is the Mayor's Education Policy Advisor, as well as Amanda Khan-Freed who is from the mayor's office, who is the mayor's education policy advisor, as well as Amanda Confried from the office of the treasurer and tax collector, and Sean Sherbin, the assistant director from the Department of Human Resources. The mayor identified these key departments based on conversations with President Alexander of what are the things that the school district needs right now? As you've already heard and unfortunately this hearing is about staffing and budgeting. So that's why the majority of the people that is part of this team have those expertise. Since Monday of last week, Philkins-Berghani have had many conversations with leadership from the school district, starting with President Alexander and Vice President Lisa Weisman Ward, as well as senior members of Dr. Wayne's cabinet. And in those conversations, we've identified key areas that the city can provide supports on. Namely around bolstering infrastructure. As you've already heard from President Alexander alluding to a breakdown in the system. That's part of the operational and infrastructure support that the school district is asking us to bring our expertise in. And for that extent, we've talked to the department of human resources, sorry, about lending some of her support to figure out how we can help the school district either bring in additional staff. So you essentially deploy city staff to help the school district process payroll or process hiring folks or really think through the steps to bolster the operations, the back and office operations. What President Alexander has spoken about in terms of the city controller support, is that when this was identified as an issue, the special ed situation was identified as an issue, President Alexander and Dr. Wayne asked the city team immediately for help in deploying the controller's office expertise to help them identify how did we get here? How did the school district get to this place? And more importantly identify how did we get here, how did the school district get to this place, and more importantly, how do we never get to this place ever again? And that is what Mr. Greg Wagner, our controller, is going to start working with us on. I will say that's just the first week. And now moving into the second week, we're going to continue to have deeper conversations with the school district around other areas that they would need our supports in. So moving into the budget component of the press release that the mayor shared, I know that there were some questions regarding how did we get to $8.4 million. And what does that make up? People have heard that in the press release, the $8.4 million were unallocated or unspent funds from the Student Success Fund, which is true. And I just wanted to share with you how did we get to those numbers. So what you have in front of you is the two buckets that make up the $8.4 million. So the first is the $6.8 million of unspent funds that were left or that were remaining in the grant that we allocated to the school district last fiscal year. So in fiscal year 2324, DCYF allocated $9 million in grants to the school district and they were able to use 2.2 of those of that $9 million, which means that they left on the table $6.8 million of unspent funds. We took those dollars and we're going to put that into the $8.4 million. In this fiscal year, fiscal year 1425, we've already allocated $26 million to the school district to do all those wonderful projects that our schools and school site councils have requested of us. However, there's a portion of funds that still remains at DCYF, that we plan to use to provide technical assistance to our schools and to school leadership, as well as, of course, general administration. There's a remaining $4 million that we have not allocated yet. So we're planning to use a portion of the $4.6 million. We're actually taking 1.6 of it to put into the pot to make this $8.4 million that the mayor is going to make available to the school stabilization team that we will work with the school district to identify how to use, how to allocate them. So these are some of the questions that we've heard from our community and from you, our board members. I don't think I need to read this, but essentially it says that the $8.4 million will one be allocated based on conversations that we will have with our school district. And it could be allocated to a number of things, such as address emergency needs, bolster as FUSD's capacity, support emergent strategies that the school district might come up with, particularly around supporting our families during the transition from closing schools to welcoming schools. I want to reiterate that the $8.4 million will not reduce any grants that are allocated to our schools now. It does not impact the grants to our schools right now, nor actually in the future. With that, I'm going to conclude my presentation and I'm available for questions. Yeah, we definitely will have questions for you, Director Sue. Thank you. Superintendent Wayne, also want to recognize the school board member, Alita Fisher, for being here as well. Thank you for being here. Oh, Phil Kim. Oh, good to see you as well. Thank you for being here, school board member Kim. Sorry. His head was right behind her head. I couldn't see him. No, you were blocking him. Go ahead, super. Oh, whenever you're ready. Yes. And, yeah. Good evening, Board of Supervisors, our good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. You know, whether we're talking about our students or residents from your districts, I understand that together we serve the children of San Francisco. And that's a responsibility I take incredibly seriously and I know you do as well. So I appreciate the opportunity to talk about how we're serving them and where we're falling short and how we can work together to make sure that we're delivering for our students. In this presentation, I'm going to share briefly an overview of special education in the district and explain how we failed our students at the beginning of the year because it was a failure. And share what we're doing about it right now, as well as what we're doing in the long term to fix it. So, when we talk about special education in San Francisco, you know five, we say all of our students receive general education services and all of our students are general education services, but some receive special services that are required based on their individual education plan. And when a student receives an individual education plan, we're legally obligated to provide the services in those plans. And we have about 14% of our districts, 49,000 students, who have these IEP plans. And the services, you know, can vary some mean that they're receiving speech therapy. Other might mean that receiving support for, you know, academics, some might need be in what we call a more restricted environment where they're with the same students all day. Others are getting what we call push and support in the classroom. And then our special education budget is $224 million this year what we approved and this represents more than 20% of our overall general fund budget. So when we talk about, on the next slide, when we talk about the services that our students are receiving, who's providing these services? Well, when we're talking about the students in the classroom, we have 516 Certificate of special education classroom positions of which 64 of them right now are vacant. We have 1,300 and 12 special education classified support positions. These are commonly referred to as parent educators. And we have 209 of those are vacant. And these numbers include 250 positions that we identified at the beginning of the year that we needed to add that were actually put in the budget, as President Alexander said, after the school year began. We're also looking at our caseloads because the number of students educators can serve is governed by our contract and by legal requirements. So we're looking to make sure we're matching the appropriate number of students with the appropriate number of educators. And here's the real issue, and here's where the failure is. Unfortunately, San Francisco unified like many districts have start the year with vacant positions and special education. We're facing a local, state, and national teacher shortage and a shortage for support. But what is unacceptable this year is that we started with some of those vacancies when we had candidates ready to move forward. And we didn't have the positions in the budget set up. So it's not just that there's the ongoing teacher shortage crisis, but there's one of our own making by not being prepared to move forward with candidates who are ready to serve our students. So how did that happen? Well you heard a bit about we go through a budgeting process in the spring and in the spring we received a budget request to increase special education budget by $60 million. Now this came after the district had already increased the special education budget by $40 million in $23.24. So that's a significant increase. And so we were working to reconcile the additional funds being mindful of our fiscal limitations as we work to prepare a budget for the 24-25 school year in June. And that's where our processes broke down and that reconciliation did not happen well enough to make sure that the budget captured the needs. And so when we started, then, the prepared to start the 2425 school year, we heard from the special education department, while not in the budget, these are still needs. We heard from school sites about this. And so we started looking into it, and at this point, the CDE had escalated their oversights who are working with our CD advisors, because if we are going to add anything to the budget, we need to make sure that we are working with them on that. And that ended up, meaning, as President Alexander said, we didn't add to the budget until after the school year had started, and we increased the budget by $30 million in the end. And now I do want to recognize, when I say how did this happen, I'm sharing a very technical, rational analysis of where we felt short and what happened. But in no way, I want you to think that for me, as the leader of this district, that I don't feel the impact you all described as well, that our students in the end are the one who suffer when we don't have these processes in order. That our staff at school who are already working so hard suffer when they're waiting for additional staff to support them to come on board. So that's what happened. But Mr. Wayne, I'm sorry to interrupt. I know it's Professor Sapphai. He wants us to run through all of this stuff. But didn't you make a bunch of offers to teachers in the spring and then rescind those in the fall? I mean what I heard you to say is there was internal lack of communication and you didn't budget for them, but on the other hand there's this story that you offer a couple of hundred teachers jobs and then didn't have positions for them. I'm not tracking. Yeah, how about I finish the presentation. I'll speak to that specific issue at the end. I think that'll be important to clarify. So let me just speak to what we're doing about this and I can share a little bit more of the context our district is in. So okay, funding now has been allocated and we are hiring for these positions, okay? And we do have candidates ready, we're expediting the onboarding process. So we also have substitute teachers and pair educators and school staff do step up to help ensure the kids receive the required services even when we have vacant positions. Because then I shared we've had vacant positions in the past. We still need to be providing the services. We also work with service providers who can come in and provide those services when we are short staffed. And then as you heard we're working with the City of San Francisco to actively recruit our efforts to fill those positions. And this is what's, this is really critical support. I want to appreciate President Alexander and the Board of Education for reaching out to the city because we've exhausted what we know are our means to recruit for these, particularly for these pair educator positions. But we've already in those strategy conversations that Director Sue reference already knew ideas came out about how they can help us reach out to different folks to be able to bring them in. So this is really, really helpful partnership. So that's what we're doing immediately. In the long term, we, you know, a lot of our issues come from having poor financial and operational systems. So we're implementing a new human resources payroll and financial system to replace our flawed system. One of the reasons why it was so hard to understand why the increase was requested and if we really needed it, because in our current system we did, we have human resources and payroll data in one system, one environment, and our financial system and another environment. And they do not talk to each other well. That's why even after having invested so much in this system that we have now, we knew we needed to get one that was right for us that is used by majority of K-12 districts and designed for K-12 schools. As you heard, we're also going to conduct this independent assessment from the City of San Francisco and they're going to be working in partnership with a retired county office of Superintendent who's been a self-addirector because the city will bring incredible expertise of looking at processes and systems. We want to make sure the K-12 content meta expertise is there as well. Then we already knew we had issues with our special education processes and systems. So we had already reached out and contracted with the fiscal crisis management assistance team to conduct an in-depth analysis of our programs, systems, and processes. So long-term, we're doing what is necessary to set us up to ensure that these issues don't happen again, but we also do need to know from this assessment what happened in our internal processes that led to these challenges. And I'll use the last minute then for us to speak to the broader context. We're doing this under increased state oversight with declining resources. And that was one of the challenges as we were finalizing our budget and preparing for the start of the 24-25 school year. The increased oversight meant two things. One, when we submitted our budget, we needed to demonstrate how we'd have a balanced budget over the next three years. And then two, we needed to implement a hiring freeze and stop moving forward with positions unless they were absolutely necessary. So to Supervisor Peskin's point, what it happened is before that intervention, we had been planning our schools had been planning their budget and have been ready to move forward with positions. Let's say for a classroom teacher, our first social worker. At the same time, in June, I'll just add on to it, in June, we submitted a budget that had identified specific reductions for the 2526 school year. So when we started implementing our hiring freeze, our CD Advisors asked the right question. Why move forward with the position this identified for Reduction in 2526? Why move forward for it now then in 2425? That's what led to us needing to hold off on Offers that we made. These were not necessarily in the special education. Classes are in these other support positions. Thank you. Okay. So, colleagues, if you have questions, please put your name on the roster. I'll call on you, but I'm going to start with a few questions, superintendant Wayne. So, we were provided a letter, and again, I've spoken to you in advance. We were provided a letter from the special education budgeting analysis that was done by the fiscal advisors. The reason I want to drill down on this a bit is because again, I think the purpose of this meeting is one, first there was a lot of confusion over the last two weeks, exactly how much money was held up, how many positions we were talking about for special education. There's still some concern about how many families have been impacted. I'm going to ask you to talk about that a little bit. But we want to make sure that this doesn't happen again. I mean, that's really what we're trying to get at is to put controls in place. So the letter talks about the special education department coming with recommendations based on their analysis of the situation, how many students were in need, how many additional staff were required, and they presented that budget in May. And then I'm just going to read the line here so you can clarify because I don't understand some of these what they're referencing. But it said that the special education budget requested an additional 60 million and was brought to cabinet. Can you tell me who cabinet is for review? The budget was discussed in cabinet and a decision was made that the special education department would need to make cuts to bring their budget to the same level as 2024. With this decision the budget office contacted the Special Education Department May 8th, 2024, and asked them to remove 283 FTEs totaling around $30 million. In addition, the budget office requested the budgets for contracted services for non-public schools and other services by $37 million. So it looks to me like the special education department using their expertise came and said, this is what we're requesting. And then they went through the Citizens Advisory Committee, which I understand has to sign off on that process. I heard from the president of the Board of Education that they approved the budget, assumed that this was approved, and then were not made aware that this reduction was happened. So can you explain that a little bit more in detail? And I'd like to know who cabinet is. I'm assuming that that's your superintendent's office, and why it was decision was made not to trust the recommendations of the special education department and team based on their understanding of what's happening in the school district. Yes, so cabinet as you as you surmise is myself and then the senior leaders from the district. And we have two main responsibilities during the budget system, during the budget development process that we need to balance. Is make sure we're maintaining fiscal stability and using our limited resources well and ensuring that we're providing all the services and supports that our student needs with those limited resources. And so when the request for additional funding came to cabinet, as I mentioned, this was on top of our having added an additional 40 million during the 2324 school year. And what the pattern had been in San Francisco is that at the end of each year, we did not spend what had been allocated every year for in special education, as well as in other areas in the budget. We had a lot, we call it, what fell to the bottom line. And so that was district leadership's concern, is we're now under this pressure to make sure we're submitting a budget that accurately reflects our expenditures. While at the same time we're getting requests for more, when we're not even sure that the amount that was being, that had been allocated the year before was even going to be spent. And so that's why then it was sent back to special education to make some adjustments. Let me just ask, is there anyone that's part of cabinet that has expertise or specialization in special education? Yes, so on the, yes, we have the Associate Superintendant of Educational Services. He oversees special education and is a former special education teacher himself. So wouldn't, I mean, wouldn't they understand the number of, I get it. So it sounds like you were asking for backup documentation. You didn't get that documentation. But and I asked you this question the other day and I had, this is something I'm Understanding a bit more about is there any other part of your budget? That's legally mandated and required by the federal government that you actually have a legal obligation to affirm yeah So in terms of service in terms of including services in the budget there You know special education is definitely the primary one. We are obligated to provide services for our multilingual learners, but special education is the key service that we're required to deliver on and needs to be reflected in the budget. I guess what I don't understand, and again, I'm reading from the fiscal advisors, Elliot, Dushan, and Pam. Their main recommendation was ask the special education department to submit their budget templates earlier than the end of April. So that if you get this and this back and forth, you're not flowing into the school year. But I guess what I would say is, and I said this to you the other day in preparation for this meeting. If this is your only legally required, I mean one of your most important legally required, and you have children that are in contract, in families that are in contract for legally required services and support. And it doesn't make sense to me that there's any way and you have a special education advisor I mean part of your cabinet how we could allow this to flow into that's I guess that's what I'm trying to understand the breakdown You have the advisory committee you had recommendation to the school district school special education department and then somehow this got delayed until here we are now and Do you have an understanding? No, and I think as you highlighted here there's the technical understanding but the reality is we and I'm going to say I as the leader of the district let a budget office drive an educational decision when it needed to be driven by the education office. And so when I see this, you know, when it leaves cabinet, it's we need to balance the budget. But then when we see how this played out, it actually just became a directive to reduce the budget in this way. That did not allow for the kind of planning that's necessary to make adjustments to ensure that the services are being provided. And it also clearly, and this is what's gonna be helpful with the city coming in, like I said, we have flawed information systems, but our processes weren't appropriate because the circle back to cabinet and to understanding, you know what, the directive that was given may negatively impact kids. By the time that happened, it resulted in our approving an increase, but after candidates had already been lined up, after the school had started. And that's why I do say that this is not acceptable. So how many children and families are impacted by these 252 positions? So when we talk about impact, again, as you saw in the slide where I said we're taking action, we are ensuring that students get their services. And if any individual family is not getting their services, we have a process to address that. I can't tell you that, for example, of the 64 vacancies we have right now, and some of them existed before we added the positions, but many are after. We have one in our early education, mild moderate classrooms, So, I think that's why we've been doing this for a long time. We've been doing this for a long time. We've been doing this for a long time. We've been doing this for a long time. We've been doing this for a long time. We've been doing this for a long time. We've been doing this for a long time. We've been doing this for a long time. We've been doing this for a long time. We've been doing this for a long time. for middle school, 12 for high school. So these are the classroom teachers that aren't there. And then depending on their classroom, they may be serving anywhere from 10 to 25 students, or depending on their caseload. So we can share this more. You had asked for the scope. We could share this more detailed information as follow up with the commissioners. But that gives you the idea. When we say 64 classroom teachers, these are the classrooms where kids are either in and getting the direct support from most of the day from the teachers or their classroom teachers are pushing into the other rooms to support the students in their general education classes. So you don't have a number of students that are impacted? In terms of students, it would be that the students potentially impacted in these classes. But again, we're working to make sure that there's still a needs class. Reserving their, they're still receiving their services. Well, it can range depending on the class. Like I can say, so in our, in our moderatious severe, special education classes that we refer to, then they're a smaller setting. They'll have like eight to 12 students, and then it goes up to about 25, 10 to 15 amount modern in a general education. The special education teachers who support them in the regular education classroom have 28 students. So it could be around 1000 students that are impacted by vacant positions, yes. So let me ask this, and I heard the president of the board say this, is there a process when you make a decision to reject the budget, particularly one that's been approved by the Board of Education, for you to go back then and inform the Board of Education that you haven't, that you've changed the budget that they approved? Yes. So we're required at three times during the year to do that. We submit the budget and then we do a first interim report. And at that time, we will show where adjustments are needed for the budget. That happens in December. We'll do a second interim report that happens in March. And then when we submit our budget, we do an end of year report that shows how we made adjustments. So when I say we added the $40 million during the 2324 school year, by second interim, that had been included in the second interim report in March, but that's why I say we weren't sure yet if all of it had been spent, because, but we wanted to make sure in March that we had enough funding available to provide what was necessary for the students. So, this is my last question and I'm going to hand it over to my colleagues. But have you looked into how many Williams complaints have been filed since this information has come out? Yeah, so Williams complaints are the mechanism families can share concerns. We've received four Williams complaints around teacher vacancy or misassignment and three of them have been related to special education. And my understanding is for lost hours of instruction that there's a process by which families are legally required to be compensated. Is that something that you have thought about or you're going to raise to a level of urgency? Because I know again that's something I talked to you about. We've had families that have contacted us that are concerned now that they have to go through a cumbersome process to be compensated for last hours. Can you talk about that? Yes, so we have a process that we go through to provide what we call compensatory services, to make up for lost services. And as I said, right now, even with the vacancies, we've had vacancies in the past where we're always work to make sure the kids get to their services. But if there are families that haven't gotten services, particularly when we're talking about a situation where we had candidates lined up and they didn't get to start to lay, yeah, we want to make that as quick and easy as possible, process as possible to provide those compensatory services. Okay. Supervisor Ronan. Thank you. Thank you, Superintendent. I'm wondering, so you passed a budget that was $20 million short and then recently you added $30 million to special education. Where did that 30 million come from and what has been cut as a result of that transfer of money. Yeah, so I assumed with the city also, the budget ends up being dynamic. And so we're now in the phase of where we're doing the unaudited actuals. So this is where I said, in June, we kind of closed the books. This is now our official closing of the books. So we do have additional money that has become available for, you know, that fell to the bottom line that we're going to be using to support this increase in the special education budget. So there's nothing that's being cut from elsewhere? So right now there's nothing that's being reduced from elsewhere. However, when we look long-term, you know, if that 30 million ends up being an ongoing expense that we need to keep in the budget, we will have to find ongoing revenue for that. Because what falls to the bottom line is only one time revenue. I see. And so, but so is there a massive change from year to year in the special education budget or is it pretty consistent? So it's been increasing, it consistently increases and there's typically, you know, some increase in terms of staffing that's required. But we have seen a real significant increase in the last couple of years since the pandemic. And so they said last year, I mean, you know, when you think about the, if our budget this year is 224 million and we increased it last year by 40 million dollars. So that's increasing from what the board adopted in June of 2023. That, you know, represents, you know, doing the math in my head quickly almost, you know, 18% increase. Now, some of that was a planned increase. We increased salaries for our teachers and for our parent educators, but still the 40 million way exceeded what the cost of the salary increases were. And that's why we were hesitant to prove more, even though there was salary increases for this year as well that we were aware of. That's why we were hesitant to prove more. But even as I say that, I just want to emphasize, that was the air there was allowing that hesitancy to hold up what needed to be done for kids and then rather than looking too much at what those financial obligations are. So we heard from Maria Sue how she interprets what their work is going to look like in the beginning. It's sort of high level. I still don't fully understand it. But I would love to hear from you. What do you feel like this team is going to do for you both immediately for the district immediately and in the longer term. Yeah, so immediately, as I mentioned, the recruiting for positions will be really helpful, particularly for the parent-educator positions. Because for the parent-educator positions. Last year when I say we increased the budget, we also eliminated some vacant positions last year because we really struggled to fill them. The salary increased help, that was one of the challenges we faced at the beginning of this year as we had more candidates than we typically had. And then again, we didn't have the budget lined up for it. But we still have vacant positions. And so there are help in recruiting for that and giving us new avenues to find candidates will be incredibly helpful. In the long term, I appreciate what Supervisor Safai is saying. Again, even myself, I'm the leader of, I take full responsibility for this district, but it's an organization with 8,000 employees, 49,000 students, a $1.3 billion budget. When I read in the report that budget told Special Ed this, the responsibility I take is what processes do we have in place that allowed that to happen and how do we change that? And I know the city's controller office having worked with them now in my first two years. I'm very strong in the process component of developing budgets. That's where they're going to go deeper and find out, oh, here's where in your process you're missing the bringing it back to cabinet. Or here's where in your process you're missing the, bringing it back to cabinet. Or here's where the alarm was raised, but you didn't get the appropriate person didn't provide the appropriate response. So that's, and I think having that independent assessment of that will be really helpful. And then again, the county office's superintendents support will be, we'll provide the K-12 context for it. So, I've had a lot of experience working with you and working with the district and implementing the Japan math and lesson study pilot, which we're gonna do another committee of the whole on, so I'm not gonna get into that in detail today, we'll do that later. We're all going to Japan. No, I said We're having a committee of the whole in the future but In that experience of both working with you on prop G and with the district and on The the math program I've had to intervene a lot to keep the original intention of the program or of the PropG students' success fund money as it was intended. And a lot of the problems seems to be in communication. A month between you and your upper level staff, between your upper level level staff and their report tease between the report tease and the teachers and the school site. And I'm wondering if that's something you're looking to improving because it's been really problematic and I haven't seen a major change. And I'm really, you know, me being termed out and only being here for three months and having played such an active role in these two programs. I just, I can tell you that I don't have the confidence that if there's not someone checking constantly or who hears directly from the schools, what's really going on or that they've been told no or that all of those things that these programs will continue. And whether it's the math pilot that we're gonna talk about very specifically on the 29th or PropG, which on the next to have some questions for Maria Suon, that is a real worry of mine. And so I'm wondering, aside from the financial systems that the controller is looking at and helping you improve, is there anyone from the city or internally that's helping you improve communication systems and you know and whether or not there's a way for the for the principal at the school site to communicate to you when they're being told no time and time again through staff and then you don't even know that that's happening. Yes, you know, I share your frustration. I'm just starting my third year as superintendent. And I appreciate when people talk about the district, they say that it's taken decades to get into this problem. But we don't have decades to address it. And in year three, it is frustrating that we're starting the year with still the kind of miscommunication and the lack of alignment that's necessary. I do have confidence in my leadership team and they are working to really change both our structures and how we do things. So, you know, part of whenever there's a budget crisis, right, we always like, we leaders at least like to talk about a crisis can be an opportunity. And so the way we were organized previously was we had a schools division and an educational services division. And while the two leaders worked well, the divisions were still not coordinated. And so that's where you'd hear yourself. Curriculum and instruction would say one thing and a school site would say another thing. So Dr. Aguileraort, who's now the educational services associate superintendent, the school's division position, the person retired, we didn't fill it to save money, but also to give him an opportunity to realign that division so that schools and curriculum instruction are talking, and so that school and school leaders have more direct access to these kind of decisions. So you know, it is, so I understand the skepticism, I, in some way, share it, but know that that, yes, those moves have been made to try to change that dynamic where it just gets caught in a, you know, communication vortex rather than is very clear. Dr. Aguilita Fort is in charge of educational services, that school size curriculum, special education, and we, and he's setting up structures to make sure that they all talk to each other and are in the same room together, rather than, you know, as it has been in the past, just different meetings that lead to different, you know, different plans, different expectations, different outcomes, which then lead to phone calls to your office of like, wait, I thought this is what we were doing. Right. Right. Okay. I think I have questions for Maria Sue, Dr. Maria Sue, but thank you. Thanks, and that's, that's all right, go ahead. Oh, okay. Are we? That's fine, that's fine. I was, that's fine. Or did you have a, No, no, no, that's okay. I, the superintendent, I think it would be good to get as many questions to the superintendent as possible. So I can get back in line to ask my question. That might be better. Okay. So this question is for the superintendent, Professor Chan. Yeah. Sorry. Thank you for being here, Superintendent Wing. And so I think my question is clearly though, your fiscal stabilization plan that was updated on June of this year indicated that you probably roughly have to close, or you have about worth of $103 million of solution to balance your budget. And so I think I'm kind of curious. I think in June you already knew what you needed to do. That's including sort of reconcile, you know, folks that are retiring, about to retire or resignation, seems like, you know, you have committed to, or your team have committed to sort of the position of the alignment, which is about 490 vacancy. It looks like you also have to try to figure out restricted alignment revenue of $20 million. Could you actually tell us a little bit about the progress on those three things? Yeah, well, so let me start with the fiscal stabilization plan. So yes, when we submitted our budget for the 24, 25 school year, school districts are required to submit a budget that shows the upcoming year and the two years in advance. So we had always intended to be deffesis spending for 24-25. We had significant reserves. And so we knew we'd be spending more revenue than we brought in. And what we did is we had planned to say, here in 25, 26, we're going to make this amount of reductions, we have two kind of funds unrestricted and unrestricted. But, you know, $50 million and unrestricted and $70 million, and $63 million and unrestricted. So that gets to 100, it's actually $113 million. What the state did that was different was they said, $63 million restricted. So that gets to 100, it's actually $113 million. What the state did that was different was they said, you can't for $25.26, just say you intend to reduce those positions. You have been deficit spending for too long. We need to see very concretely what that looks like. Now that's different than what often other districts need to do. They can say, well, we're going to reduce this in 2526. It's the second year out. We'll share more details about that when we submit our first interim report in December. That's one thing. So that's where we get the 113 million. Now, how do we reduce the 113 million? That we identify reductions in consultants, in materials and supplies, but 80 plus percent of our expenses are staff. So that's the 505 positions that we identified that would need to be reduced in 2526. And then just since I know there's a lot of numbers we're throwing around, I'll just say like going back to what President Petskin shared, those are positions then that we're planning to reduce for 2526. So while we started holding off on hiring for them, if we could get the services covered. And yeah, so now with the fiscal stabilization, what we need to do between now and December, is that plan was put together in June pretty quickly. We need to now reconcile that to make sure that we've closed the books on last year and that it all, and that the positions we identified and the steps we're going to make are actually ones we need to do in order to submit that balanced budget that isn't deficit spending. So those are the things that need to come together in the next two months. But I don't need to interrupt, but specifically I'm asking, there's three recommendations specifically about really positions. One of them really is about those who are retiring as well as resigning, have you reconciled that number and if you have or you know do you have a projection of roughly what that numbers look like because what I'm trying to say is that, you know, clearly somehow that it just went ahead and that you somehow the decision was made to go after the special education hiring freeze. Instead of saying, hey, this is what we actually acknowledge is that we're gonna reconcile those who are retiring, the numbers of those who are retiring, and then those who are resigning. That should be our priority, because those people are not gonna be in the system anyways. And then the second would be according to that plan, is then you're gonna freeze the 49, 490 vacancy that you already is not vacant, it's already vacant. You don't have to hire them. But instead, you went after the 250 something special education positions, that not only that you have lineup, that you know that you require too higher, but you also have actually higher and you actually have to resend the offer. So how many understand what went wrong in between what you have identified? I understand what you're asking. Yes. So when we, it was kind of two different situations. The 250 did not get included in the budget for the reasons we've already talked about. Then when the CD advisors came in and we did the hiring freeze, that's exactly what we did. We reconciled how many teachers resigned, how many teachers retired. So even though we did the freeze, we then did move forward with hiring people because after reconciling all that and making sure the number of students that you say you're going to have, you'll have, so here's the number of teachers, we did move forward with hiring, not with every single one that we offered a position to. That's why we got some of those situations. So that included special education in that process. We did that. What was different about this one is they weren't in the budget initially to do that reconciliation. So that's what the problem was. So it's not that in that process we said, well, we'll look at retirements and resignations only for general education. We're not going to look at it for special education. We did. We just didn't then have additional positions that we had said we needed to move forward with until all this came to light and We realized no we still need these positions to provide the services and that with that calculation So does that mean you know because you mentioned earlier was 60 million Buy increase because you already put in the 40 million in the in the budget But then as it comes back now at 60 million dollars told is it total or a 60 million additional to the 40 or is it just The 20 on top of that for yeah, and then just to clarify that so 60 million was requested in April That was on top of the 40 okay, so that 224 million dollar special education budget that figure I showed you know last year Our budget was about 180 $4 million. Okay, so that was the 40 million. In the end, we're only adding, right now, 30 million dollars more to that $224 million. So the 60 million was what they initially thought. And that's why you do have that, I mean, to some extent that, you know, we did have the appropriate back and forth and didn't increase it as much as was originally requested But that all needed to have happened in April and in May not in August and September Well, then that's very concerning because according again to your fiscal Stabilization plan here for your upcoming fiscal year though It actually indicated that you're going to reduce contribution to special education by ten million dollars. So now I'm really confused. I mean, I'm just reading off what's from the chart here. So how is it that you can fund forty million dollars and then on top of that forty million dollars, now you're spending sixty million dollars more. But what you're really required to do is to assuming that it's then based on the original forty million dollars proposal to reduce the contribution to special education by 10 million. I mean, like that's what we're talking about. So we're getting really into, I appreciate this question, we're getting really into the weeds of the budgeting. Let me just distinguish between the budget and the contribution. With that in the fiscal stabilization plan of saying that we're going to, so we're required, where we got a negative certification was for that unrestricted general fund portion of our budget. That's about $700 million. Okay? Of that $700 million, about $140 million is contributed to the special education budget, which is on the restricted side. So what we are saying is we're going to need to give less money from the unrestricted side because we have some other funding on the restricted side we can give. But that's not a reduction to special education. That's a reduction to the contribution from the unrestricted general fund to the restricted general fund. So, and I think I want to reference back to what Supervisor Ronan was like specifically asking because you know You indicated that you know the the additional 60 millions to special education is on top of what you already proposed for 40 million But it's it sounds like you're not cutting from anywhere else I'm restricted or restricted funds to get to that additional 60 Correct So as we said in the in in the report that the CD advisor said in the end is $30 million we're adding not $60 million. They requested 60 we're adding 30. On top of it. On top of it. And right now we're getting that from what we call one-time funds. So for this year it's not going to impact the budget. These are additional funds we have available. So just as you heard, like the student success fund money fell to the bottom line. It wasn't spent that year. We can use it here. Not using those funding. I'm using that as an example. But so the same thing. But in the future, for 25, 26, and beyond, if we still have this additional $30 million in expenditures, we are going to need to find it from somewhere else and it will impact the budget. Right. So I think what I'm trying to get at is here is that the math isn't very clear to me and clearly like I am not. I have not been looking at this for very long and I am just trying to understand. But it sounds to me though, even if we have that additional $30 million sounds like which is what you have, could you actually also walk me through what is that funding source then? Somehow you have the additional $30 million that is one time, you only have it for now but you won't have it next time. Right, because that's going to be from the additional funding that we had that we did not either fell to the bottom line at the end of last year or other one-time funds that are available that hadn't been allocated. How much of those kind of funds do you have in terms of one-time reserve? I'm going to put it as a one-time reserve. I'm going to help you label that. Yeah, I mean, again, we were planning to deficit spend this year. So we had a significant end in fund balance of over $200 million. But when we present the un audited actuals next week, we can provide more specifics about how that is. And then what is the state requirement for Utah for minimum dollar for reserve, which I assume that they would require you to have. So they require us to have 2% of our general unrestricted expenditures. So 40 million? So not way. Yeah so on the restricted side then that's about 24 million dollars. So we need 2% of our general fund expenditures which is about 1.2 billion so 2% of that is about 24 million. 24 million. So we need 2% of our general fund expenditures, which is about 1.2 billion, so 2% of that is about 24 million. 24 million. Yeah. So that's why I say we have a significant reserve. And if I may just say, I do appreciate this line of question. This is an area where I think that we've also talked to the city about support. It's just clear transparent communication. to hide anything but it is complicated and I'll say as educator, I mean an educator tries to explain things simply but I'm also, you know, we have these systems that from the outside looking in for a parent for, you know, a community member not clear and I think providing some easy to understand transparent communication about how our budget is set up will be really helpful. I want to say and I don't mean to be, we all do a respite. Let me just say this though, actually according to the fiscal crisis and management's assistance team here, where you'll report your clearly in trouble. And I think it's very actually straightforward. The risk is high and there's a lot of problem here and then the whole chart of, you know, I think some of these things, not only the summary, but just really the entire chart here is disheartening. You know, clearly it indicated that, you know, that this district does not account for all position and cost. It indicated here that it just seems like that this is not able to maintain the minimum reserve for economic uncertainty. So, and that you don't quite have a multi-year financial projection. And I am with that said, I am glad that the city is finally making this decision to send the support to the school district. I think that civilized Ronin as well as civilized malgars, especially civilized malgars and I have those conversations in the past when we recognize that when you have to payroll before your time, when the district had to payroll system trouble that we thought it really required to to some fix. And if I'm a I know that today is really about special education I mean I do have some follow-up questions about really the payroll system but I will leave that for another time as I see the nodding for advisor's self-IE but thank you so much for answering the questions. Thank you Superintendent Wayne you just got questioned by our budget chair so she's very well versed in the budget process. And before I call on Supervisor Preston assuming that Supervisor Ronan's comments or questions or some of this too, they're the next. I think that the issue of communication is paramount and I totally agree with that. And I realize that this is not the direct subject of this hearing. But what I found most troubling, not just as a city decision maker, but as a member of the public, was the delay without really much explanation and quite by surprise of the long awaited announcement of the school closures on September 18th. And the way that was communicated, certainly to all of us, but also to parents and students who've lived with uncertainty was lacking to say the least. Can you touch on what exactly happened that led to that. I mean, particularly given that there's a massive $790 million bond that 55% of the electorate has to vote for in order for it to pass that is looming in 35 days. What happened? Yes, please. Yeah, you know, with the start of the school year, you're correct. We've been talking about this for a long time and with the start of the school year, I think there were a few factors that led us to delay sharing our plans because I said we wanted to get it right and what does that mean? I mean, so one is with the start of the school year there are a lot of questions that came out. We anticipated a lot of questions about the about school closures, but I think it became closer became real. We wanted to make sure that as questions were coming out, we would be able to answer them and address them for families and felt like, you know, even though the uncertainty of waiting a bit longer, we balanced that with the ability to be able to provide more certain information. And then secondly, we are engaging in a process that yes, we've had time to work on, but it is, when I say we want to get this right, the other piece we mean is balancing the goals we have for this with where we're trying to go as a district and being able to demonstrate how we are addressing our capacity issues, meaning like we don't really use our facilities to the extent necessary how we're going to make sure that if a student is facing a transition is leaving a closed school, how it's going to be better for them and then also to make sure how we're not, we're being fair about it and not impacting one community. And so we just needed, you know, once we were clear on those three goals for this process we need to make sure we have everything in place to demonstrate how we're meeting them so we had to hold off for a bit for that. And is there any anticipated time or date when this will be forthcoming? Yeah so we shared how we would we would share in October we know the enrollment fair is happening on October 18th so and families know, have a lot of questions as they approach that. So we'll be providing an update before the enrollment's fair, before October 18th. An update means what? Me not like the direction we're gonna be going as a district with school closers. So people know what to expect. President Peskin, I'm gonna go, thank you. Just hold on one second. I'm gonna go back to Subaru, Roni. We want to call up Maria Sue before you have to leave. I think she wants you to hear this. Yeah. Just see if you can hang for like I wanted to ask the question, but also make a statement for you to hear. Okay. So, you know, at the root of everything we're talking about today, not everything, but but a lot of what we're talking about today, not everything, but a lot of what we're talking about today is the fact that student enrollment has plummeted, right? We wouldn't be in this financial crisis if we hadn't lost so many students. Now, I think a lot of that has to do as a parent who went through this process with how long it took to reopen schools after COVID, you weren't there then, so no blame on you, but I predicted then that there was gonna be an exodus and lo and behold there was an exodus, right? But in addition to that, that there is a perception that is based in some real numbers that the school, the public school system is not succeeding in properly educating our children. The number of kids in many schools that are not at grade level in math and literacy is embarrassing for a world class city. And so the reason that I authored PropGy and that the city is going to make a massive, is making and is going to make a increasingly massive investment in the school district is because if we fix that problem, if we get those test scores up, if kids are feeling great about going to school, if they're feeling successful, if that word gets out, all the parents that fled to private schools will come back. People will move back to the city with kids if they can afford it. No, I mean, that's a major issue. Because we will be known as having an excellent public school system, and we will begin to change the really troubling trends that have happened over the past half decade to decade. And so the most important thing and the thing that's really honestly stressing me out about PropG and the Student Success Fund, which last year, the first year was 11 million, then 35 million. Next year is going to be 45 million, and then it's going to be $60 million if we're not in a massive financial. That is a huge, I mean, that's above peep, above children's fund, above all of that, is that that money is supposed to be used to get students achieving academically and healthy in their mind, body, and spirit. And already with this $8.4 million that is now going to be shifted into, I still don't understand it, bolstering infrastructure, deploy city staff to help with human resources, controller to figure out the system. That is really removed from targeted interventions to help the academic success and the social emotional wellness of children. And the precedent that that is setting is scaring the life out of me, because I'm not going to be here to yell scream. Mirna Melgar will be here. But I am just worried that yet again, we're going to waste a once in a lifetime opportunity. And I have been like a broken record on this point because it is terrifying to me that we're not going to move the needle. So that's why I'm holding a separate committee on the whole on the 29th about the math program because if I have not intervened about 10 times in this program, we would not have had the success that we had in the massive increase in math test scores of the students that were failing the most in unified school districts. So I need you to hear from me that this money is not to solve the budget crisis. It's not to solve whatever communications crisis you're having. I applaud the mayor for sending these school teams in to help. I'm for it. I'm excited about it. But the Prop G student success fund money is not for these purposes. It is not to fill positions that should be filled by a healthy school system. So that's where the entrance to my questions to Maria Suar. But I needed you to hear that before you leave because I Just don't feel confident that that's going to be the case No, thank you. I hear that and and Yes, the successes that we had at those schools Other successes we had need to become the story of SFUSD and not this and that's what I'm here to make sure happens. Colleagues, I'm sorry if there's other people on the roster that wanted to ask those subordinate question. You have a closed session, you have to leave too? Okay. I'm sorry. I, Supervisor Presson, I know you're on the roster, so please go ahead. Thank you. I will make it quick, because I think President Peskin and Supervisor Ronan's last comment actually got at a lot of what I wanted to ask about. But I did want to follow up on the question around and thank you for clarifying. And first of all, thank you for being here, Superintendent Wayne. In terms of you clarified that you expect some kind of announcement before the October 18th enrollment fair, I think you said give some direction to families. Can we just drill down a little on the timeline because my understanding is you make an announcement, but nothing's final till it goes to the board. Correct. So when will, so there'll be some kind of announcement before October 18th of the schools proposed for closure or other. When will that proposal go before the school board? And then right now our plan is to we're making it this early and this is one of the questions. Why make it so early? But one of the things our Board of Education has been crystal clear on and rightly so is that when we're making decisions like this that impact the community, we need to go out and speak to those who are impacted. So the time to the announcement to November 12th is when we would present the initial, we present the plan, I say initial plan to the Board of Education because that meeting they don't take action on by state law when considering closures and needs to be heard at one meeting and then acted on at a second meeting. So between when we announce to November 12th there's the community engagement piece that will continue and then the board will even after we share on the 12th and the board will take action on December 10th. December 10th. Yeah, okay. And then is it still with this new revised timeline? Is it still your plan that closures that at the soonest would be finalized on December 10th will still impact fall 2025 enrollment or have you considered revisiting which school year this will apply to given that? I mean that's literally, I, that's after the fairs, after the tours, right before the applications are due. I mean, this is, I think I don't need to explain to you, you know, I will say as public school parent and representing a ton of public school parents, like that's a pretty, to say that adds stress to an already stressful situation would be an understatement. So are you revisiting the fall 2025 effective date of any of your recommendations or not? Right now the plan is to continue as we've laid out. Okay, I would urge reconsideration of that. One other question just on that and I'm trying to be quick because I know you have to go. Do you, do you, you said you're delaying release of the recommendations. Do you, are those recommendations set now and you're just getting ready to release them or are you still making decisions around which schools will be recommended? So and when I was talking about getting it right in the things that we balanced, there are some of those are still, you know, some of those were still, we're still reviewing at this moment. So particularly after we create a scenario, there needs to be what's called an equity audit to understand the impact, the equity audit gives us information then we adjust the scenario. And then also we have been looking at, you know, the, as we started this school year, just the enrollment of our schools and, you know, and what, what that means for each individual school situation as well. So those are some of the factors. So no, there's not a final, when the recommendation is final when we release it. But those are some of the reasons why there still is some analysis being done. Thank you. And I want to just follow up on Supervisor Ronan's points. I will second the concerns around how the PropGee money is being spent. Some of this is more for and after you go with Director Sue, I'm sure we'll talk about this. Yes. Yes. But for you, I'm curious for with respect to unspent prop G money, what do you and the district want that spent on? Are you in agreement with using $8.4 million, however they're going to be used under this stabilization team, which remains a little unclear to me how they're going to be used under this stabilization team, which remains a little unclear to me how they're going to be used. But I just want to understand if that's something that you concur with the use of that $8.4 million in that way. I mean, what I agree with is how we've set up the partnership that gives us opportunity to discuss, right? So the use of the funds. And so what's listed there from some initial discussions, I hear and share concerns because I'm an educator. I got here to make sure kids are learning. So I feel confident that we're gonna be able to work through so that when a real firm plan is presented and if you ask me that question again, that I would say yes, this is the district's plan as much as it is the city's plan. Great and I just, the final thing I wanna say on this really concurring with Supervisor Ronin. I don't recall, but I think it was 3.5% if I'm not mistaken, of the Prop G money is like the ceiling for how much we're supposed to as a city, spend on city departments. And so I understand and frankly think it's long overdue to tap some of the resources that the city has and the controller's office in our HR and so forth for the benefit of the school district like I am all in for that. But I do think and I'm curious when we talk with Director Sue and others. I do think there are intentionally limits on how much of those funds would go toward city departments and those kind of city services and eight million bucks is way over that. So I just wanna make sure, and I think what you're hearing from myself, Sir Riserone, and I see some nodding heads is just, I think hopefully we all share the goal of getting as much of that into the innovative programs and classrooms that PropG was designed to fund and making sure that is not just going to fund a bunch of any work. And Supervisor, we're going to have Maria. She's going to be here and the President of the Board of Education's here. We've had conversations about that money specifically. We can dive into that. Go ahead. Yeah, I know. I do want to appreciate Supervisor Safa Yi and the board for this time and to share. I mean, you know, as I said, I'm an educator. I'm an educator. I happen to be a good student. And so standing up here and saying that we failed is a hard thing to do. But it's actually a necessary thing to do if we are going to build that trust back up. And I'd rather stand up here and say, we failed and here's how not only we're trying to make it better, but to know that we have the city support to make that happen, that means a lot. And so again, I appreciate the opportunity and the discussion and know we'll have many more. Thank you. Thank you. Sue Rosar Melgar. Thank you. I realize that there's lots of parents here and folks who wanna speak. I totally concur with my colleagues. I do have one big question to Miss Sue that hasn't been asked. So, I'm also a public school parent like a supervisor, Preston, my oldest baby graduated from Mission High School. My youngest baby is now in high school, a sophomore. And ever since I've been a public school parent, what I see is that we, you know, have new boards, new superintendents and that we, you know, have new boards, new superintendents and new visions, but we always have terrible systems. And no matter what we want to do, aspirationally, with achieving academic success or spending the money, if you don't have basic systems, how to pay people, how to keep track of outcomes, how to do these things, it doesn't matter. because any parent knows that if your kid gets up in the morning and hasn't made their bed and doesn't pack their lunch and doesn't do all the things that will keep him organized during the day, they're not going to succeed. And I feel like our school district is in that same place. So my question to you is with this infusion of resources from the city and money, are we working with CDE? What's the relationship between the city folks and CDE? Because to me, losing track that $20 million in special ed money is required by federal law, it's like a big thing to miss to me. And you know, different color of money and different places in the buckets and the budget have different compliance requirements. And I'm looking at the org chart right now at SFUSC and it's pretty thin. I mean, lots of educators, God bless, you know, because they educate, but thin in like sort of people who would keep compliance requirements and do accounting and do real estate and do all of these other skillsets that are required for the keeping the organizational structure you know in shape and systems in place. And so I'm hoping that this is what you're going to do with your team and how are you going to relate to the compliance folks at the state. And then that's my last question and then we should let the parents talk. Thank you. Thank you for the question, Supervisor Melgar. I think a couple of things. One, I want to reiterate that the $8.4 million is not going to any city department to fund any city staff, all of the city employees that are being deployed to this effort are being deployed on top of their current work. Myself included, Phil Ginsburg, all of us are doing this on top of our existing work. And so we're not using any city dollars to find city employees. The other thing that Supervisor Chan also brought up and I think it relates to Supervisor Melger's question is that it is really important for us to really remember that at the end of the day we do not want our school district to fall under state control. I want to say again, it is very important for us as a city to support our school district to maintain local control. What that means is that it allows our board of education who are elected by our citizens to continue to have the power to oversee and guide our school district. It means that our parents will continue to have the voice of advocacy with our school district. It means that our school district will have the autonomy to take in new programs and innovative ideas to then instill into our classrooms. So it is very important for us, and that is the primary goal of what the stabilization team is tasked to do by our mayor, is to ensure that we continue to maintain and support the school district to maintain local control. The way we do that is to make sure that the business operations, the procurement operations, the payroll systems, the fiscal systems, all of those systems that are right now, unfortunately, are run by one or two senior people. They don't have enough staff there. So we're going to hopefully help them, either identify gaps where there needs to be more staffing. And we already have commitment from the Department of Human Resources to move payroll analysts over to support them to either fast track the hiring process or to actually do more career recruitments. One thing that Dr. Wayne talked about was hiring parrots. I have a question for you. I have a question for you. I have a question for you. I have a question for you. I have a question for you. I have a question for you. I have a question for you. I have a question for you. I have a question for you. I have a question for you. I have a question for you. I have a question for you. I have a question for you. I have a question for you. help them move into the parapositions. So there are lots of things that we need to do. But the one thing that we need to keep at the forefront of this effort is to support our school district to maintain local control. Are you done, Supervisor Melgar? Supervisor and Guardio. Thank you. Superintinent Wayne is not here. I'm not sure who can answer this. Maybe if someone from the district can answer this question. Maybe our president of the Board of Education. No, he's right here. Or maybe someone, well, anyway, let me ask the question. Let's see who can answer. At least let me put the question out into the universe and maybe we'll get an answer. But I want to really first let people know my appreciation for supervisor Ronan's impassioned speech about prop G. Money needs must be used for student outcomes only. And that got me thinking, because in doing and researching for today, I came across something, we have something called PEEF, the Public Education Enrichment Fund, which is another way that the city provides money to the schools and that also must be used just for student outcomes as well. And in doing this research, I learned about an audit of PIEF by an organization called Mr. Holland's Opus Foundation. It was going to audit the district's arts and music department to see if they can improve their programs. And what I heard is that the audit shows a discrepancy between what the district says it's doing and what is actually happening in terms of activities and impact. But I haven't seen this report. I don't know if it's publicly available. Like, where is this report? Can we see it? Can we put it up on your website? Can we give it to the public? Like I think we need to see what this report says. So hopefully someone from the district can answer that question. Yeah, please, President Alexander. This is gonna be an inadequate answer. But I'm aware of that report and I can definitely ask the superintendent to make it available because I think that what you're speaking to, again, just to sort of refer to a number of these comments is the city of San Francisco has been so generous to our public school. So PEEF is one example. The Student Success Fund is another. You yourself, supervisor, authored the other prop G around algebra, again, which these are all examples, I think, of the supervisors and the community saying, like this is what we want for our public schools and we're willing to invest, we're willing to commit, we're willing to support. And I think what you've heard today is we need the help, right? And I think, and thank you so much Maria Sue, she's been just a God said frankly in terms of beginning to provide the support that the school district needs and Phil Ginsburg as well, just super grateful. Like she said, they're doing all this work on top of their regular jobs and you know this has been one of the frustrations of the Board of Education. Like I said, we are all basically volunteers. We get $500 a month in the charter, as you all know. And I think, you know, and it's challenging to provide as sort of civic volunteers, quasi-valentiers to provide the oversight that is necessary when you have a bureaucratic system that's not functioning, right? And again, I was a former principal in the CISTRAC. This is not functioning, right? And again, I was a former principal in the CISTRAC. This is not new, right? This is not the fault of any individual. This stuff has built up over a decade or more of these fiscal and operational systems that aren't working. And what it does is it means we can't get to the academics because the fiscal and operational stuff isn't operational and it isn't supporting the educators the way it should. And there's not the level of accountability that there ought to be. So this is a moment where I'm actually feeling more hope, and it may seem odd again that we're in this moment of crisis that, but for me at least as board president, I've been board president for a month. It's the first time I've seen that I've been on the board where it feels like the entire city across political lines, the mayor, the board of supervisors, the board of education, we're all saying, look, we're on the same team here. This is not about politics. This is about actually coming together to do what's right for our kids, and once and for all to take on these issues. And so we can get, we will definitely get that. I'll talk to the superintendent, but I just wanna just Phil, to the mayor, not to all of you for your commitment. Yes sir. Are you done, Sue Ruther? Okay, before I call on Sue Ruther, Ronan, I'm glad I was gonna call you back up real quick. But there's two things, and there was a difference of what you said and what the superintendent said. I'm sorry he had to leave. The budget that was approved by the CAC for special education was then sent to the district. And then you said you were not aware that those recommendations were taken out and they hadn't resigned that budget or they hadn't re-approved that budget. My understanding is that's not legal. My understanding is that they have to be the final sign off on the special education budget. And then for you to have that information taken out that somehow the law was broken in that process. Well, this is exactly why we've asked the city controller to do an independent assessment of this because- It's right there. Okay, thank you. Yes, no, I think that's why this is critically important to understand what happened. I mean, the Board of Education and my colleagues are here. They can speak to this as well. Our assumption, and this isn't just a random assumption, this is our, what is represented to us by staff, is that the budget we approve includes all the legally required positions for special education. We received the SELPA recommendation and report that certified that the legally required positions were included in the budget. That's why it was such a shock to me to discover that these positions weren't being hired for, let's say, I think this was two months after the budget was passed, because our assumption, and again, the representation that we had, we thought we were getting, was that they were included in the lecture. The reason I'm highlighting that is because our controller is here, he's being asked to investigate that and do a, I guess, a forensic audit of how the decision making was made. But my understanding is that the CAC, whatever the acronym is, I'm sorry, I'm not as versed as everyone on the school district, but I know that it's the Citizens Advisory Committee. I know they're legally required to sign off on that special education budget and present it to you. And someone somehow removed that and then gave it to you with a reduced budget. In my understanding, that's a violation of the law. And so what I'm asking the controller here is as you're doing that analysis, we need to know who made that decision and who broke the law on behalf of the school district because there needs to be accountability. I mean, it's a part of the reason why we're having this meeting here today so that it doesn't happen in the future. We have three school board members here, one that's 100% versed in special education, and that's what she's dedicated her professional career to. So I just, I wanted to get that on the record. I'm sorry I didn't get it on the record before the superintendent left. And then the second thing, and I just want to clarify for the record, because there's a lot of conversation about the student success fund, it's 8.4 million. What I don't understand is why that 8.4 million is still sitting there unspent when we're trying to really do aggressively to get the money and impact the schools that are imp, and then to say, oh, well, this money was unspent from previous years, so we have it now. There's flexibility. There's a lot of concern. And Sue Reserron and Melgar and all of us, we all of us here locked arms on that. And we're very clear. I still feel like there's a lot of uncertainty as to what that's going to be. I know I asked you this privately, but I'm going to say on the record there's conversations about bringing in outside consultants and people that are experts and in all of this work I just want to be clear that that money is not intended to be spent on consultants It's not intended to be spent on staffing, but it's 100% meant for the schools and to impact the schools that need it the most So who asked for that or who identified that money and why was that money not spent and why was it on the table in the first place? Well, that's a good question. It's an excellent question. I think again, I wish the superintendent was here to answer it. Maybe maybe director Sue and answer that and we will say I'll say from my point of view is the school were president and as a co-author of the student success fund. I am 100% committed to ensuring that that money is spent with the intention as the supervisors haven't indicated. And so that's my commitment, and I'll let directors sue, answer the other part. Thank you. Thank you for the question. In terms of the uses of the Student Success Fund towards this effort, there is a category within the Student Success fund that is designated for district innovation or district project. Meaning that there are district-wide projects that Central Office identifies. One project, for example, is the math pilot. Meaning that the central office takes the dollars because we allocate the money for the math pilot into central office takes the dollars because we allocate the money for the math pilot into central office Central office will then have to hire a coordinator for that math pilot and then make sure that the math pilot is then Is the dollars are dispersed to all the all the schools? So coordination the central office intended to help the schools that are benefiting from the students success? Right, so well not coordination or no no no no no so for example I think one of the one of the things that we talked about was needing more parrots needing more parrots one of the categories within district innovation is called the workforce pipeline How do we increase the pipeline for SFUSD staff? And so we could use some of these dollars to pay for Paris or for certification of Paris. So there are lots of flexibility but within the intent and framework of the student success fund. Okay, anyway, we can go back and forth. I'm going to hand it back over to Supervisor Ronan. The Supervisor Ronan, I don't see anyone's name on the roster but there's a lot of families and members that want to do public comment. Yeah, I understand. I just never got to ask you the questions because I was skipped over. So following up on that, I mean, I mean, you are God's end. I will repeat what President Alexander said. I am so grateful that you above and beyond your current really hard job are going over to the district and helping them because you have so many skills that they need at the district. So that part of this whole plan I absolutely love. In fact, you know, half the time, even though to Luzio and San Francisco would be a nightmare, I feel like the district means you so badly. I'll just put that out there. But having said that, it's really like, I do not like the precedent this is setting of using this $8.4 million of unspent money. And the reason it was not spent, Supervisor Safaís, because the infrastructure, it took them a while to build the infrastructure up. So it's understandable. But it took them a while to build the infrastructure up. So it's understandable. It should be rolled over to be used for the purpose that the voters voted for a prop key. And I think it's a little stretch, although I can say fine like the workforce. I mean, obviously if we don't have the paras in the classroom, that impacts the students' learning, but it's a bit of a stretch. And so if you could just, this will be my last question because I know all the parents wanna talk, but alleviate our collective extreme concern about the precedent that this is setting. On something that we're really worried about for the future on how this $8.4 million is going to be spent and how it really truly meets the mandates of PropGee. Well, first and foremost, the fact that the city is coming in and providing this type of team is unprecedented. Right? And it's, you know, I think the mayor called it an emergency. So this is all under the guise of an emergency. It's a one time short termed effort that the city's providing supports to the school district. In terms of the dollars, I think what the mayor wanted to do was to say not only do you have staff to come over and support you, but if the staff identifies any additional resources or any additional things that you need that would make, that would help us move the efforts forward, there will be resources available for that. that you need that would make, that would help us move the efforts forward. There will be resources available for that. We've already identified the need to hire parrots. We've already talked about, could we use some of these dollars to support schools and young people, children and families who are going to transition from a closing school to a welcoming school. I feel like all of these things do fall within the scope of the student's success fund. I don't know. I'm going to call into the other wall in a second. But we've talked about this for two days. Director Sue, I talked to you and met with you in advance of this meeting. I'm listening to you here now. And I understand it's all with good intentions, but I still have not heard anything that convinces me that the money that has been identified, that should have been rolled over, should be there to help the schools directly that are meant to benefit from the student success fund. I still haven't heard anything because you're there to help, feels there, all of the different resources we're helping with HR, we have the controller, I still haven't heard anything that makes me believe that we're meeting the spirit of Prop G. And so I think we should continue to have conversations about that. That's all I'm going to say. I know everyone fought and everyone has the intention of making sure this money is spent. Sue Reiser Walton. So, I'm going to be a brief broken record. But we have to make sure yes that the district doesn't go into state receivership. At the same time, PropG cannot be supplemental if we ever want to address the gaps in achievement that exist in San Francisco for our students who need us the most. I voted for PropG because of the enhanced opportunities that were supposed to be provided in the additional supports that were supposed to come into our schools to make sure, into our schools that had the populations that needed the most support. And I do agree there's a conversation for innovation, but innovation also includes looking at the budget and coming up with strategies and ways to address and balance the budget without undermining the integrity of PropG. And I won't go into a deep conversation, because I know we're gonna be coming back and having more conversations specifically about that. But if we don't put in these additional interventions and this extra support and this just turns into resources that supplement and help the district balance the budget and more of the part for the course and the same story, then we might as well say we do not want to address equity in our schools and we do not want our students to be successful and we don't want to address the achievement gap. Thank you Supervisor Walton. Thank you, Director Sue. We'll keep the conversations going. I know a school board member, Fisher, waited and they're having a closed session so I'm going to let her start public comment. And then I know we have Reverend Brown, also former member of the Board of Supervisors here in Chamber as well. Well, thank you all very much for partnering with us at the school district. I appreciate the supervisor, Saffa Yifur, hosting this. All of you for being here and all your support consistently of the district. Our head of research policy and analysis, Dr. Ritu Kona always says that we need to use our data as a spotlight and a flashlight, not a hammer. So I have a couple just to frame this conversation. I wanted to share a couple data points with everyone. So when we did talk in May for the first time about the special education local plan, as the district, one of the data points that stood out to me was, and this was based on what we approved for 223. We approved a $211 million dollar SELPA budget at that time. 10.3 million of that was projected state, or projected state special education revenue. That's 4.9%. The projected federal revenue was 14.5 million, which was 6.9%. So 88% of our special education obligations come from our local budget. So one of the ways where I think we could use your help is state and federal advocacy to actually fund special education. So I think that would be another great area where we could partner. And as supervisor Ronan, she had a, she championed a policy and analysis from the budget and legislative office back in 2022. And in that time frame from 2016 to 2022, we found that state and federal funding for special education increased by 6% and our sped obligations locally increased by 35%. So the demand is increasing, the funding is not. We have a whole lot that we need to be doing to clean up our house internally. We have state and federal mandates. We are a county office of education and a district office as Miss Marrero referenced in the SELPA conversation. That was a great presentation. Thank you, a lot of good information. These are legally binding documents, and these are services to our most marginalized students. But when we're talking about special education, we're not talking about a set of classrooms. We're talking about services. And the majority of our kids who have IEPs, individualized education plans, actually sit in Gen Ed classrooms. 75% in fact of our kids with IEPs, sit in Gen Ed classrooms. So we're talking about every classroom in every school across this district. So when we ask how many students this impacts, it impacts every single student. So how do we fix it? Well, you've heard the expression that the best defense is a strong offense. We're doing a lot of work to rebuild our curriculum, to implement programs like the math pilot that worked over at John Mears. So thank you for your support on that. And I'm really hoping as we implement our new frontline payroll system and we fix some of the other systems and do more in partnership with Dr. Sue and our city partners that will continue to use the data as a spotlight and build on these practices and we as a board and I know Dr. Wayne is gone but I feel confident speaking for a lot of our leadership that we couldn't do this without you so thank you. Thank you school board members who are Reverend Brown do you want to speak real quick and then we're going to Yeah. Got it. Supervisor Cephoye and the fellow members of the board. The more things change they stay the same. I've been in this town for 48 years, and I would remind us all, than the 70s to the early 80s. There were 25,000 black children in the school district, but because of gentrification, I've been pushed out at the so-called urban renewal. Money is for daily attendance that comes from the state, went down. We will not solve this general problem, and I am concerned about all children, until we make these matters a we thing and not exclude the lesser of those persons who look like me. We need to connect with the indigenous black institutions who've been about education and be consistent with it. So let us come out of our silos and work together as a dream team, a dream team, and when we talk about mismanagement, let us remember there have been other areas in this city where there have been allegations of mismanagement. And yet we've been hearing about shutting down, shutting down the dream keepers. Let's be consistent. We don't shut down the government because there's some wrinkles. They continue and you're iron out those wrinkles. So again, I say, let us all be partners and work together and not in isolation. Thank you. Next speaker. Good evening, Board of Supervisors. My name is Mika Shonval and I am the parent of two children in SFUSD with an IEP. My third grade dyslexic son doesn't have a resource teacher to work with and struggling to read. My other dyslexic middle school son doesn't get the power support in his class. What he needs. I'm also a district employee. I'm here to speak about why it's critical that parents, educators, and students are part of defining the scope of the special education audit. We all agree that there are well-known factors affecting special education that need to be addressed. High turnover rates among special education staff mean that our children don't get the consistent support they need. Also, insufficient training and professional development leaves staff unprepared to provide a specialized interventions our kids require. These are obvious programs that ensure the district will include in a narrow audit. But that's exactly why parents need to be involved. obvious programs that ensure the district would include in a narrow audit. But that's exactly why parents need to be involved. The district will focus on these obvious issues, create a few reports and declare progress. What's needed is an audit that goes deeper. One that includes the issue, they rather avoid. For instance, inadequate progress monitoring system are a major problem. We get reports saying our kids are making progress. But when we ask for actual data tied to IEP goals, it's often vague or non-existent. Bureauocratic delays and miscommunication mean services don't start when they're supposed to, and nothing ever seem to improve. And worse, there are egregious practices that district would never want to include in an audit. For example, parents are often gas-lighted. We are told services are delivered when they are not. Or we are overreacting when we express concerns. IP meetings can be misleading with critical decisions made before we even had a chance to weigh in. Thank you for your comments. Thank you. Next speaker, welcome. Good afternoon, Board of Supervisors. My name is Rai. I'm a resident of District 2 and I was a student in SFUSD with the IEP for just Lexian ADC. I failed repeatedly and I felt horrible. For many years I hated school. It took until third grade with outside help that my parents helped me get when I was actually able to read. I'm here today because I do not want other students and families to enter this pain that I experienced at SFUSD, which ultimately pushed me to leave the district. We were never, there were some good times, that is as you would see. But something I'll never forget is a teacher that put me in the corner with YouTube because they didn't know how to teach me or had the resources to. When other kids were learning to read. I less SFUSD when I complete fifth grade. I'm now seventh grader at La Squalla. I love school and I'm doing well academically. I'm able to play sports now since I no longer have tutoring every day. My parents and I care deeply about public education, which is why we are all here today. I just learned about the use commission. I am going to share my experiences with them. I support understanding the complex roots of the problem, which my mom told me is an audit. SFCUSD and the City of San Francisco cannot stop here. We need actual oversight and accountability. Thank you, R you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And one, 2024 graduated that did receive IEP services. And also I'm speaking on behalf of a parent that had to leave early and I heard to children are a special ed. Our special education student, caregivers and staff have been trying to function in a setting with a district that had been felon them. Removing dollars and resources from legal required services and accommodation for years. In the current San Francisco UDFI school district environment, when maintaining local control of our finances is at stake. The district cannot afford further legal and financial liability by continuing to neglect one of our most marginalized and vulnerable population. Our family deserves full transparency and clarity on funding allocation and our special education student needs access to services that provide them the quality education that is their right and that all of us should be committed to providing. And also I want to add that I do have a son who is an eighth grade and my concern about PropG. I don't I hope that the funding will be part of the PropGee, because he is thriving in algebra. He's part of the pilot program in APG Needy. He ain't like it, but he learned that he's loving it because he's doing to work. And I would like for that to continue, and I don't want any student after him not had that opportunity of this, this algebra in eighth grade. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Thanks, Speaker, welcome. Hi there. I'm Allison, the mother of Rye. I'm first going to read a comment from someone who can't be here, and then I'm briefly going to respond to a couple things I heard earlier instead of my own comments I had already prepared. So good afternoon Board of Supervisors, my name is Megan Potente, I'm a former Megan Potente, I'm a former SFUSD employee, I resigned and enrolled my son in a private school after he and thousands of other children with IEPs didn't receive the services they were entitled to under the law. I also advocated for the curriculum audit that improved the district's English language arts curriculum. So I know firsthand the power of audits, but this time we need an audit that goes deeper into the system's culture and accountability of special ed. This isn't just about curriculum, this is about ensuring the district meets its obligations to students. Each month, decoding to SEXY, California, and support for families, host a call for parents of dyslexic children. I'm a part of this call. These calls are full of parents experiencing gaslighting from the special ed department. And this has been going on for years. It's a widespread issue. I support superior race call to broaden the scope and depth of the Mary Burke audit to include parent info in the process. Parent info must be broad, extending beyond the CAC, while their work is important, I and many other parents have felt disenfranchised by their organization when we have raised concerns in the past. All concerned parents need to be a part of shaping this audit to ensure it addresses the real systemic issues that are affecting our children. I also want to comment on a couple things that I heard today. So one really important thing I want you guys to realize is that when the idea act is violated, you follow what's called due process. And most over 90% of those are settled. All the board of ed, they approve all of those settlements. So it's, and these are all ID act violations. They're aware that this is happening. And I'd like if there's one more second to comment about compensatory ed, because I feel like this is hugely important. Let me just get my own notes. One paragraph for you guys to pay attention to. OK, sorry. OK, I understand there's a lot of jargon and layers within Sped. I want to comment on something called compensatory ed or services which is legal required of the district in this case How the district currently administers compensatory ed? Thank you for your comments If you want to if you want to give us a copy of that we're happy to put it Welcome to the next speaker. Hello, my name is Galen. I'm a parent at San Francisco Community School. SFC is actually one of the schools benefiting from the Student Success Fund. I think we're account for one million of that 2.2 million that got spent last year from the SSF. We also have been hearing veiled threats that our fully enrolled small school is on this list. from the SSF. We also have been hearing veiled threats that our fully enrolled small school is on this list. I want to say that this residual 8.4 million cannot be used for funding expensive school closures. I saw that was included on the third line item that was presented was like, it was lumped in there. And we need to make sure that that's not how this money is used. We have students with IEPs that do not have para support. This special team's focus cannot be about maintaining local control. We need to be student first and not local control first. They just tried to cut federally required special ed funding, which is illegal. UASF put out a report, restructure it right in March 2024, outlining the vast overspending that happens at 555 Franklin. I'm shocked to hear that you think that their org chart looks thin. I have heard firsthand how middle and upper managers frequently hold pointless meetings, eating into actual worker time. I hope you all become familiar with it this report. And make sure that the special committee uses it as a guide when making suggestions on how to prioritize the reorganization. Because I feel like a lot of money can be saved there. And it's true, we do need specialists and not principals who have been promoted to directorships when it's not their specialty. The era of having corporate tiesed pavescales for city employees is over. Like we need public servants at 555 Franklin that are making the same as our teachers. But who are, you know, who have this information and know how to, how an organizational chart should look. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Welcome to the next speaker. Good afternoon, Board of Supervisors. My name is Supri Array, and I am a concerned SFUSD parent, and a candidate for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. My name is Supri Array and I am a concerned SFUSD parent and a candidate for the San Francisco Board of Education. More importantly, I am here in strong support of families, educators and advocates who have personal experience navigating SFUSD's special education system. Before the $20 to $30 million shortfall came to light, I had called for an audit of special education services. In fact, I'm the only candidate in this race with a public facing special education platform on my website, where I clearly outline my position. I'm just going to pause your time very quickly. There's no electioneering in the chamber. Okay. Okay. Families have been struggling with the systemic failures in special education for years, and we need urgent meaningful action. I am calling on this board to recommend allocation of a portion of the mayor's 8.4 million in discretionary funds, for not only a comprehensive audit of special education, but a full investigation of special education services. First, we need to ensure the scope and mandate of an audit are broad enough to address the full picture. This means not just a review of compliance, but an audit that seeks inputs from students, alumni, parents, and union members, those who experience the consequences of these failures firsthand. Second, we must have an independent investigation to answer the crucial questions. People are wondering who knew what and when. The unallocated 20 to 30 million is deeply concerning, but we cannot stop there. How long have these systemic issues been present? What has prevented service providers from delivering the interventions our students need? And how do we assure that nothing like this happens again? The most vulnerable families, those who are low income or less educated are disproportionately affected by staffing shortages. That's why I support the creation of a pilot program for special administrative support. We could have a case coordinator position in our hardest to staff schools. Innovated measures like this will help us recruit the most talented special education teachers to these schools and Ensure that our neediest students are not left behind. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Next speaker Good afternoon board of supervisors. I am Matthew Ruse, a former dyslexic student. The unallocated $20 million in special education funding means that one in seven students with IEPs hasn't had a case manager since the first day of school. And one in four students are missing at least one crucial service in an IEP that's 2,000 students. This has lasted for one six of the school year and many students may go without services for the entire year as staffing special education positions mid-year will be extremely challenging. I support to Priya's call to broaden the scope of depth of the Mary Burke audit to address systemic issues. The district has known about these unallocated funds and staffing deficits, but withheld this information from the public for at least six weeks. I would also like to introduce and submit for the record the last detailed audit of special education services from 2010. The audit shows that the systemic challenges we face today are not new. I also support a separate investigation led by a team of lawyers, not by a district referred consultant. In short, I support the call for both a broadened audit and a full investigation. Commissioners cannot give a meaningful direction without In short, I support the call for both a broadened audit and a full investigation. Commissioners cannot give a meaningful direction without forthright information from the special education department and in this case, they are not forthright. Thank you. Also, I'd like to submit the audit. We'll come collect that from you. Thank you. Thank you, Nick Speaker. Yes, my name is William Patterson. I've been a special education advocate for over 10 years, including as a long time member of the Community Advisory Committee for Special Education. We do need a comprehensive audit with the robust fiscal analysis of multiple recommendation scenarios. We need to look at a scenario with, you know, plan A, plan B, plan C, just like you're doing any report, right? I also want to say, I'm just like, I'm shocked, right? We have this $250 million budget in special education. We give teachers a 10% raise. Nobody sees that you're going to cause $25 million shortfall if you don't fund those positions. And so then we end up with positions that don't get filled. That's in addition to the $30 to $60 million. This is just incompetence. I'm going to go on with my public comment. The district's last contract began with the shift of spend staffing from a caseload to a workload model. However, the workload is still far too high. State law limits cas case load to 28 students for all resource specialists. But the last audit of special education in 2010 gave a recommendation of 10 students in elementary, 12 students in middle, and 14 students in high school. That was to have inclusive schools where students with higher needs would be in general education classrooms. Today, most of those students are back into warehouse classrooms and SDC setting and not being included in the general education classroom. And students with dyslexia are not receiving the services they need and interventions they need because the resource specialists are dealing with behavior problems and other high need problems. We need to look at that last report in the case those that were recommended, 10, 12, and 14. So what happens if we do that? We will find that we are millions of dollars in need. It is not something that can come out of the city's general fund. It's not something that come out of special education general fund. It may need to be a bond measure. It may need to be something. But if we want to defend our students with disabilities or serve, not even defend, just serve, and include them in the school climate. We need to look at creative ways of funding those programs so that every student, not just students with lawyers, every student has that. Thank you for your comments. Welcome to the next speaker. Hi, my name's Bernice Casey. I'm a civil servant. I've worked for the county for 20 years. I've worked for the feds and the state for about 10 So when people ask me if I'm bilingual my other language is bureaucracy and I speak it quite well I actually had to take time off of work to navigate the IEP system for my fifth grader who has dyslexia, dysgraphia ADHD and ODD and it was a very challenging event for me. My youngest child goes to Boena Vista, the best school at Summer School Unified School District, and the community is 78% social economically disadvantaged. Over 20% have an IEP that doesn't mean there aren't more and the majority of our community only speak Spanish. So guess what, they can't navigate it. You have already spent a ton of money across the street. You paid for all of this occupational therapy. My health insurance paid for his speech therapy. My health insurance that you pay for, pays for all of his services that the district doesn't provide. Three years ago, Supervisor Ronan had a hearing because the district couldn't take care of facility schools, specifically on the Southeast side, where the majority of the kids don't look like me, kind of interesting. She had to spend money from the city and county to have DPW go out and do a hearing. So I understand you want to spend money across the street, but that superintendent demoted Jean Robinson, the Selpa director. It appears that there was no Selpa director over this time where the money went missing. I don't know how long Regina Piper's been there, but those are the questions. You don't just get a stand up and say, I'm going to do more, I'm going to do better. Look at the hearings, look at the Board of Education meetings. That's what he's been saying. And it hasn't changed. I don't trust him, and you shouldn't. Thank you, Bernice. Next speaker. Hi, I'm Jeff Lucas, the resident of District 7. The San Francisco Unified School District has a lot of work to do. As you know, full well, the Board of Education supervises the district. So I'm confused as to why the Board of Supervisors is holding a hearing on special education funding within the district. I appreciate that you represent the City and County of San Francisco that contributes hundreds of millions of dollars each year to the district, as well as many services including the Department of Children and Youth Families and SF Reckham Park. I appreciate that families come to you because they have lots of concerns. I appreciate that you want updates from the district. I question the need to summon the superintendent to your venue on short notice. Special education staffing is not likely to be resolved here. Everything presented today belongs in a school board meeting and the keepers of the board agenda were here today. President Matt Alexander and Superintendent Wayne. Calling the superintendent to answer your questions is very controlling and micromanaging of you. And the schools are not part of your jurisdiction. I'd like to see you stick to city business. I understand the hearing on October 29th is related to a City Funded Program and you want to follow up and monitor that. I understand that. I appreciate that. That makes sense. And I recommend that you guys go to board meetings and raise some of your questions there. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Next speaker please. Good afternoon supervisors. My name is Efrain Barrera and I'm the Latino of Task Force Director and a pro parent of two teens in the school district. First I want to commend Supervisor Safai for calling this hearing. As the supervisor Ronan pointed out, the purpose of the Student Success Fund is to provide additional resources to SFUSD to accomplish great level success in core academic subjects and improve social emotional wellness for all district students. Additionally, chartered section 16.131 requires DCYF in the district to clearly define goals and measurable outcomes for each grant. As such, the student success fund needs to develop a plan to address special populations that are failing in particular newcomers, special ed, on house and foster youth. No such plans have been developed or shared with community. As a parent of two children with special needs, it is unconscionable that inadequate financial management on part of the district has led to staffing crisis and a lack of special teachers and instructional aids. They're by negatively impacting one of the most vulnerable student groups while violating their rights to a free and appropriate public education. Lastly, the district needs to release their list of school closures now, along with a comprehensive plan that addresses new covers and families that do not speak English. To put things in perspective, there are over 6,000 students with special needs across the district. With a 20 to 25% per school site, is the district prepared to provide over 600 transitional IEPs to the students that will be impacted as a result of the school closures. I'll leave you with that. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Next speaker please. Good afternoon, Board of Supervisors. My name is Laura Badella. And as my friend, I'm very sad. I'm just reminding you one more time. The student's success fund is to accomplish great levels of success and core academic subjects and improve social emotional wellness for all district students. It turns me apart to hear that we are looking to redirect these funds away from students and towards creating a plan that may require more plans and is not a guarantee that SFU will adopt this plan. Our students and school communities cannot afford to wait. We repeatedly hear that our schools need resources now. Our special education programs need help now. And the students' assessment offers a way to provide these urgently needed resources directly to students and their school communities. As a mother of two SFAC students and an advocate many more, a deeply concerned about transferring any more money to SFUSD without clear information on the true financial crisis. Additionally, I have yet to hear how the school's stabilization team will incorporate the voices of our students and families. We are tired of waiting. The Student Success Fund was created to support our students. It was approved by voters for this purpose. That's not misused these funds with insufficient information. Thank you. Thank you for your purpose. That's not misused these funds with insufficient information. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Next speaker please. Hi there, soups. My name is Audrey Suley. I'm a retired math teacher from SFUSD. I'm here today because I want to speak about the need for an audit. And if you do it it needs to be comprehensive, deep and independent. If you let the school district do it, there'll be a lot of obfuscation. You've got to have people who are not district employees. So it was nice to hear that there's this panel that has been created. And I've kind of changed what I want to tell you after I've listened to a lot of the conversation. I've witnessed a lot of systemic problems as a teacher, you know, with 42 kids in a class, and eight kids with IEPs. It just feels like you cannot get to the kids. It's like a band-aid all the time. You're filling out progress reports and you are kind of gaslighting even though you don't really want to be doing that as a teacher. The best kernel that I would like to throw out for that panel and how to spend money is co-teaching. When you have special education staff that actually work with the classroom teachers to help plan curriculum so that you can proactively deliver it, it's extremely helpful. One thing I noticed often working in ninth grade is that students couldn't decode basic math terminology because they're not getting literacy interventions at the lower grades. That is also an area that I think you really need to focus on. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Next speaker. Good afternoon. My name is Allison. I'm a parent of a high school or within IEP. I'm going to thank Supervisor Sawvay for calling this hearing and all of you who have asked those really hard questions about the student success fund usage, which I also have deep concerns over. I want to echo that comment about co-teaching. That is one of the primary services that my son receives and the years that he hasn't gotten it. It's just a world of difference when he hasn't gotten that. But I actually wanted to give Supervisor Ingardio a, what I think is a better answer to than what you got about PF audits as a former member of the Community Advisory Committee for that fund. The school district does an audit of PIF every year. It's required in the PIF legislation that is available on the school district website. But the PIF legislation allows for the city to do its own audit, independent of the school district, and to my knowledge in the 20 years of that fund, the city has never used its power to do that. And any member who has been on, anybody who has ever been on the advisory committee can tell you that fund is misused, has been misused by every superintendent. So I am here to encourage you to encourage the controller to take advantage of the power that already exists. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Welcome to the next speaker. Good afternoon. You have leaders leaving the room that oversee these departments before the people have spoken. They're still here in this room and the people that oversee them aren't here to listen. That's concerning to me alone. My name's Cheryl Jackson, but the little ones, no one is Miss Jackson. I have served over 250 schools throughout the Bay Area. And so I'm able to talk here today about also distinguish the amount of funding that needs to happen in certain schools, districts, and in certain areas in the community. Of course, paraprofessional, subcoverage, and being an activist is incredibly important. And here today, I think it's important that we advocate to ensure that that funding is available to them. We should double the amount that is being asked here today. We should increase their pay like they live in California. And quite frankly, I think it's incredibly important that you make sure that there's outreach to those that they can understand that there's actual positions available to them and that there's access there. I also think that you can control the amount of employees that are there by increasing the staff. We also need the pair of case managers, the nurses, the wraparound services in certain schools that don't have them, nor the infrastructure there that's supposed to be available when something goes wrong. schools that don't have them, nor the infrastructure there that's supposed to be available when something goes wrong. You also need funding for different computers and digital literacy programs, so that speaks to the prop G. You also need wraparound services such as your afterschool tutoring in hands-on for Paris to help those kids, because sometimes it's not enough during the class time periods. The physical activity programs, the science programs and STEM programs that they would like to be involved in but don't have the access nor the proper resources to. Thank you for your comments. We do apologize if we're cutting anyone off we are setting the timer for two minutes. Welcome. Good afternoon supervisors Supervisors. My name is Virginia Chung. I'm a current parent. Thank you to you and to the mayor's team for your intervention. I share your frustrations. It's been very concerning to me that the district fiscal department goal of balancing the budget doesn't align with the responsibility of our public schools to educate children. We can't allow the district and the state to blindly make cuts and leave children waiting for teachers. We have a moral obligation to serve every student, particularly in special education. Students with high needs should be our highest priority and should have a clear transition plan as we consider school closures. I'm concerned that the same issues will arise and we will make budget cuts without full understanding of the implications and a plan for implementation. I'm concerned that at this rate children will be left without a school. We must conduct a full fiscal and program analysis and audit of school closures and special education. We must commit to our promises to our students as defined by the student success fund, fully fund special education, and fully fund any transitions of impacted students. If we don't deal with these issues through the district, it will become a problem for a different city department. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Welcome to the next speaker. Welcome everyone. My name is Rex Ridgeway, I like to use the overhead. And sir, can you speak directly into that microphone when you're ready? Okay. I'm sorry. How's that? Perfect. Thank you. Okay. So my name is Rex Ridgeway. And I want to talk about something that relates to all of this. I bet not one person in this room knows that the district has started in 2015 spark. It's a 501 C3 and everybody talks about how much money all these billionaires have and all this money that should come to the school. What they have been coming since 2015 spark, I'm trying to get the air you go, log in has All again has received $120 million from Alaska Airlines, Uber, Google, Salesforce. So when they say all these billionaires, these companies are not giving us the money, they are, is going to spark. Now the reason I'm bringing this up is because Spark has seven initiatives. The initiatives are quickly together for schools, ready, set, read, African-American achievement initiative, career pathways, education, educator pipeline, mental health initiative, and STEM. And when the COVID hit, Spark gave the district $5 million of Spark relief. Now I think there's a five o'clock fire, five o'clock fire with this spare thing, okay? Since if Spark, which it is, was set up to help and direct money from corporate donors to our schools, how come Spark can't take a look at taking some of this money, which is corporate donors to our schools. Superintendent Matt Wayne is on the board of Sparks and again I think we need to talk to the animators. I'm a big fan of Sparks. I'm not saying I'm saying people don't even know it exists. 120 million dollars since 2015. Okay and we should look at that and if you guys don't do it, I'll start to letter because they need to get involved because they have funds that are from corporations for our school district. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Thanks, Kerr. Good evening, board of supervisors. My name is O'Reilly Emoni. I'm a resident of District 6. Some of you may know me as an employee of United Educators of San Francisco. I want to make sure that I'm clear that these comments do not reflect in any way a position from UESF. There's a clear democratic process for that, and I do not intend to overstep that in any way. Having said that, I couldn't in good conscience go to sleep tonight without making these comments. There's been a reference to a Citizens Advisory Committee, a Community Advisor Committee that oversees bed. There's a chair to that committee. She is not here. Why is she not here? If she was told not to be here, and I know Ms. Kelly personally, she is a great woman. And if she was told not to be here, that at the very least is unethical. And that is the type of culture that continues to permeate in SFUSD and we're never going to get to a place, a better place, until we remove this bad culture. And yes, while we cannot blame one individual, there has to be accountability. And that accountability has to start from the top. If there was direction for her not to be here, which is one, they can't do that. And two, it probably is illegal to do something of that nature. We should look into that. So I'll stop there. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Welcome to the next speaker. Hi everybody. My name is Leslie comments. Welcome to the next speaker. Hi everybody. My name is Leslie Hu. I'm the secretary of the United Educators of San Francisco. I'm starting my 18th year as an educator. UESF has worked tirelessly to help improve the operational systems within SFUSD. We have essentially allocated the equivalent to three full-time staff for the last three years to ensure educators are getting chired, getting paid and solving other myriad of problems. We meet weekly and for a while, they're daily with SFUSD HR labor relations and payroll. We've been at the forefront and we've frequently been discussion always working together often heated to ensure that schools are getting the staff that are needed. In fact, we have multiple articles in our contract that bolster supporting these activities. But UESF can't do this work, that the district needs to do to improving these processes and protocols. I'm also one of the primary authors of the Student Success Fund and worked on the campaign like hell to get this piece of legislation passed. The legislation was written with extreme thought and intention with the specificity that focuses on these funds going straight to school sites. We know that the students, educators, and families in those school communities know what is needed to actually do school right in order for young people to grow and thrive. And this legislation was written specifically to bypass central office because we wanted to eliminate the bureaucracy. And frankly, there was and still a tremendous lack of trust in this entity supporting this work. It's frustrating for me to see that there are press releases and news articles saying there are over $8 million of unallocated funds used for these purposes. That's an incomplete sentence. It's $8 million of unallocated funds going to school sites. It is ironic that this legislation that was so thoughtfully crafted to avoid the bureaucracy of the Central Office is now being said by say the leaders that the voters specifically voted to go straight to schools is now being used to fix this functional central office. I urge the board. Thank you for your comments. The increased fear of public violence. Hello. I have 17 years of college. I have a genius IQ supposedly, and I live and thread of my life on a daily basis. I'm being tortured savagely. I was beat up by two young teenagers, 15 years old, black on the buses after. I'm positive. This is not general public. Five broken bones. I am disabled severely. This is about the school district. This is not general public comment. Could I please have some time to talk? I have brain damage. I have severe broken bones. And I have no place to sleep safely tonight. Because when I call the police they make fun of me. The chief of police, I mean the fire department beat me and hurt me. I can't sleep. I've been savagely sent away from my home and my safety that I worked hard to get. I am a human being that doesn't belong to being tortured and robbed for 40 years in San Francisco. I reached out to the board of supervisors. He said, my things will be returned. He only came to get votes at the building where there has been savage hate crimes for seven years. And I told him so. I am begging you for help. I need help. I can't speak out publicly about the abuse and the savagery that's been committed against me without threat of dying and being tortured some more. This is a savage city if you go at the bottom. If you listen to the people, you will try to help instead of just self-interest and never, ever hearing our cries. The board, the health department sends you to places of savagery with no sleep, no help, nobody listening, no housing is safe. You're just taking who took the children's bread and gave it to the dogs, making so many people's life so hard. Who took the old people's bread and gave it to the dogs, making everybody's life so hard? It's savage here and people need to start listening to people who care about the changes that should be made so that we can have occupancy. This is the best occupancy practically in the world. It should be in every ER instead of them robbing you. Thank you for your comments. I probably won't be alive next time. Mr. Deffey, it's good to see that Darrell is not doing well. I'm not I was not I've never been a good student, unlike our superintendent. I expect my public comment will be even more formulaic than Reverend Brown's, unless Draman, but a few general points. Of course, we don't want the state to take over our school district, but my uncle, when I was about four years old, he put me on his lap and he said, words for life, above all son, try to avoid prison. I mean, we can do better, we should be doing better than worrying about where the state takes over our school district or not. That's, of course it is a, it is basically, it's a Titanic that's already hit an iceberg and it's leaning to one side already. On the other hand, it was with the generally elected school board that put us in this bind in the first place, so something's got to change. The school board has no, you have no particular requirements to be on the school board for any of the positions including financial skills or the ability to be adept at eighth grade algebra. You know, that could be an issue. Of course we have a two tier education system which makes it difficult with the better skilled students from better backgrounds going to private school. And the public school is left with whatsoever else. And the state funding requires that we perennially don't have enough, we can't throw money at it. That won't, they won't allow for that. That's probably a good place to leave it. It's a problem. Thank you, Otto, for your comments. Next speaker? Should I finish this? I don't know. Or are you, I think, it's pretty OK? It's trying something. OK, that's easy to understand. Absolute incompetence. The problem is that it affects the kids' health. So obviously, the system, obviously. Yes, it is broken. Now that's why you are under arrest. You understand? Who told the kids to wear masks? What do you expect coming from the kids? The IQ is going down, so sooner or later, all kids are going to be disabled, as said as well, before, you know it. It is not allowed to inject anything in anybody's body, more than the basics, so-called vaccines. So the kids now are totally... It's not about money, it's about what you teach the kids. How long is going to take you to recognize this so basic fact. You start by teaching the kids how to be happy. You focus on beauty. Then everybody's incompetent. Now you are reading a script systematically, a screen, a stupid screen. I saw it. You saw it. Everybody's doing that. No character, no ideas. You have no more ideas it seems. You are lost in the system. You need to get out to bail yourself out of being under arrest. There is no escape, nowhere to hide. The skies know it. I wouldn't be here. If it wasn't to help, I'm only here to help. That's it, to serve. You teach the kids first that they don't think of themselves first, but the other. That's how you start a new system of education. We're going to do it. Step by step. But it's becoming seriously urgent. Thank you, Mr. President. But it's becoming seriously urgent. Thank you, Mr. President. Well, comment on this item is closed. Supervisor Sapp, IE closing comments. Great. Thank you. I'll just be very brief. Thank you to all the people that came to present today. Thank you, Victoria. Thank you, Director Sue. Thank you to the president of the Board of Education and our superintendent. I think it's really clear that there's still more questions that need to be answered. I spoke with Supervisor Ronan and I know she's going to add onto her committee request to speak more about the $8.4 million of the student success fund. I think we've got a little bit more of a roadmap and some understanding of the special education. I think that there were rules that were broken. I think it's pretty clear when it comes to the Citizen Advisory Committee. It's very unfortunate that we're in this situation right now. The one thing that I also heard that was really shocking to hear from the superintendent is that he's in his third year being superintendent. I mean, that's enough time. That's enough time to have a grasp of the district, its issues, and all of the different functions. And so right now, thousands of kids and families are suffering in special education. Director Sue, I think we're gonna follow up conversations. I think we're gonna more of a conversations. I think we're going to more of a hearing. I think you've heard overwhelmingly that the student's success fund for many people feels like there was very much thought and purpose put into it. And I still don't believe that we have the answers that we're looking for and direction for that. I understand why there might have been a conversation about looking for funds, but at the same time, it doesn't make sense that the money was not rolled over understand why there might have been a conversation about looking for funds, but at the same time, it doesn't make sense that the money was not rolled over and it's not being put toward its direct purpose. So we'll have follow-up conversations on that. And so thank you, colleagues, for having this meeting here today. Anything was really important to get it out in the open. Thank you, Mr. President, for co-sponsoring this with me and I handed back to you. Thank you, Supervisor Sapph i.E. Would you like this hearing to be filed? Yes, I'm going to make a motion to file this hearing. Okay, this matter has been heard and filed. Madam Clerk, would you please read items 25 and 26 together? And 25 is the public hearing of the Board of Supervisors to convene a committee of the whole today, October 1st, 2024. For a public hearing to consider the subject matter of item 26, which is the ordinance authorizing the Department of Public Health to amend an existing grant to plan parenthood Northern California. By increasing the not to exceed amount by 171,000 for a, not to exceed amount of 571,000 to fund security personnel to support access to family planning and other sexual and reproductive health care services with no changes to the grand term through March 31st, 2025. Supervisor Stephanie. Thank you, President Peskin. Colleagues, thank you for your attention to this matter. It is urgent, and that's why I've called for committee of the whole. As we all know, clinics that provide reproductive healthcare services have long been targets of harassment, intimidation, and violence. This is not just a local issue, but a national crisis that has only intensified with the upcoming election, thrusting abortion care further into the national conversation. Anti-reproductive rights groups have become more emboldened and clinics nationwide are included, which is in my district and district two, are increasingly reliant on volunteer escorts and trained security personnel to protect both patients and the dedicated clinicians providing care. While we often take comfort in the broad protections California provides for reproductive rights, recent reporting from the Chronicle offers a sobering reminder of our vulnerabilities. A woman actively miscarrying twins was turned away from receiving life saving care in Eureka. Illustrating that despite our state's protections, vulnerabilities still exist. And this is precisely why we must do more and we must do it now. Plan parenthood Northern California, our region's flagship clinic is facing unprecedented levels of protest activity. And I hear about it almost every day. I get the pictures. We do everything we can to get the police involved to work with the clinics as it's happening. And I tell you when it's increasing, it is increasing. The recent 40 days for life campaign, which began on September 25, has further escalated the situation, dramatically increasing the need for heightened security. Between July 1st and September 26th alone, there were 28 documented security incidents, with 18% of them occurring within the first two days of the 40 days for life protest. Since September 28th, at least three more incidents have occurred. This escalating activity puts both patients and healthcare providers at significant risk. Efforts to obstruct and harass individuals seeking reproductive healthcare do more than delay or prevent necessary care. They undermine public health, safety, and welfare, and they were in fringe on our residents' constitutional right to privacy. Given this escalating threat environment, the need for immediate action is clear. Planned Parenthood must have adequate security to safeguard both patients and staff, especially during this heightened period of protest. The item before you will provide an additional 171,000 to cover these unanticipated security needs. This will cover the costs of one security personnel who will be present during all hours of operation. Two security will be onsite during the 40 days for live protests through November 3rd. The department is sourcing the funds from a future grant that was slated to be awarded in April of next year and allocated by the mayor's office. Every day without additional security leaves the clinic vulnerable to disruption and violence, and we cannot afford to wait. And I wanna thank my co-sponsors, supervisors, Mandelman and Preston for standing with me on this issue. I really hope to have the support of the entire board, and I want to also acknowledge that we have with us today Ruth Nunez, Senior Health Center, Director at Planned Parenthood, Drew Murrell from our Department of Public Health, the Chief Financial Officer there. And of course we have Kimberly Ellis, our amazing director of the Department on the status of women and they are all here to give just short comments. And I think I'll call Drew up first. Thank you supervisors, Drew Morrell, Chief Financial Officer for Department of Public Health. Thank you for the opportunity to discuss this matter for the board. Approved in 2023, ordinance 51-23, authorize the San Francisco Department of Public Health toward a sole source grant to Planned Parenthood of Northern California for security purposes. In order to support access to family planning and other sexual and reproductive health care services. The grant agreement with Planned Parenthood currently has a not to exceed amount of $400,000 and the term is April 1, 2023 through March 30, 2025. The proposed ordinance before you is to authorize DPH to amend the existing grant to Planned Parenthood of Northern California, increasing the not to exceed amount by $171,000, for a total not to exceed of $571,000 to fund security personnel to support access to family planning and other sexual and reproductive health care services and no changes to the grant term of April 1, 2023 through March 31st, 2025. Planned Parenthood of Northern California reports they have had an unprecedented level of protest activity at their San Francisco Health Center, starting earlier this year. As a result of the increased security activity, current security budget was exhaustive by July 2024. In addition, there have been nationwide 40 days of life protest planned at Planned Parenthood sites, including in San Francisco, as mentioned by Supervisor Stefani. The protest started last Wednesday, September 25th and continue through November 3rd, 2024 in phase one and then we'll resume in the spring in phase two. Flame Parenthood of Northern California has shared that during their July 1, 2024 through September 26, 2024 period, their San Francisco Health Care Center already recorded 28 separate security incidents, 18% of which occurred September 25th and 26th, the first two days of the fall phase of the 40 days of life protests. For comparison, in fiscal years 22, 23, 24, they saw an average of 20 security incidents reported in the same time period. Therefore, planood of Northern California is requesting an additional $171,000 to cover these unanticipated expenses in security personnel. Planned Parenthood of Northern California funding proposal includes $219,000 and $375 for one security personnel onsite during all hours of operation and an additional $60,291 for two security personnel onsite during the two phased 40 days of life protests. This totals $279,666 to shy up to $280,000. In plain parenthood of Northern California, it is partially funding this with $1080,000. And Planned Parenthood of Northern California is partially funding this with $108,000 from their own operating budget, which brings the funding request to $171,000. Regarding reporting, per the legislation, DPH submits an annual written report to the board reviewing the security personnel selected by Planned Parenthood under the grant, including but not limited to the security personnel, as well as a summary of security incidents occurring at the San Francisco site. We submitted the first report as part of our budget and trailing legislation in May 2024, and the second report will be available 24 months after the start date of the grant. So April 20, 25. SFDPH also recognizes that there is an increased need for budget monitoring for the grant agreement and plan to expand beyond what was required in the original legislation to include monthly or quarterly spending monitors to make sure that we are tracking the spending closely of plan parenthood. Thank you and we are here to answer any questions you may have. Thank you. Supervisor Steffan, shall I open up public comment? Actually, I would like to hear from Director Ellis. Oh, sure. Good evening, supervisors, Kimberly Ellis, director of your department on the status of women. I first want to start off by thanking this body for the funds that you all provided to our department to conduct a comprehensive landscape analysis of access to reproductive health care including abortion. That report was just published. I believe each of your offices received a copy, if not, I have some extra copies here. But what we found was that the reproductive health care system in the 9 Bay Area counties is has withstood the increase need for support and is also under strain. And one of the six recommendations that came out of this report was a need for increased funding for security and for privacy and for legal protections. I am here this evening to voice strong support for the increase in funding for Planned Parenthood but also to offer to you that yes this is about the need for increased funds for security. But ultimately what this is about is about the anti-choice extremist pushing the envelope, testing our metal to see where San Francisco will stand as it relates to increased hostility, aggression, and intimidation toward women. This is very, very specific about what this is about. And so I want to encourage and voice support for increase in funds for this. All eyes are on San Francisco in this moment, not just because the top of the ticket hails from the city, but because of what we are doing as a city at the local level to push back against an increasingly violent environment toward women and especially women who exercise their choice with respect to their body and their bodily autonomy. So again, thank you for the work you do and voicing the strongest support for this increase in funds. Thank you. Thank you, Director Ellison, for all that you do. And then Ruth Nunez, would you like to comment from Planned Parenthood, this senior Health Center Director, Planned Parenthood? Good evening, supervisors. My name is Ruth Nunez. I'm the Senior Center Director for the San Francisco Planned Parenthood flagship. As my colleagues have talked about, there is an assault currently. To a lot of the Planned Parenthood, it's not only here in San group, but across the nation. But what I am experiencing here as I run the flagship is continuing harassment, continuing intimidation of our patients, making sure that they are being in the way of health services that are very important for the individuals who have come in through our clinic. We see about 18,000 individuals coming in into our health servers, not just for abortions, for cervical cancer, for breast screenings, for other reproductive services. Their equally being is intimidating, as well intimidating in my staff. For example, just this week, I just had to call a police on Monday on Tuesday specifically. Somebody came in intimidating our staff, brandishing a gun. Today, I had to call a police because there was a spicious package, a bag left in the front of the building. These kinds of funds are important to the continuous services of what San Francisco's need and also in the Bay Area. Your support for this grant is very much needed and we really appreciate your support in continuing to just be with Planned Parenthood. Thank you. Thank you so much President Pasadon. Those are all the speakers. Is there any public comment on this committee of the whole please come forward on this item? Yes, on this item, don't worry about that. There is an extremely similar force that has been going on as you are perfectly aware involving Shidrun. Remember, women and Shidrun first. Nobody knows it. So, I think this problem is you can't extract it. We have to dismantle the whole concept. Shidrun are being trafficked, you know it, and it's not good for you, for everybody. Right? No matter what's your sexual orientation, because here in the city, it seems everybody is obsessed by sex. I mean, honestly, we look at it clearly. Okay, so now what do we do? I don't know what to do about that, but it's part of the concept of changing everything. Yes, San Francisco, yes, it's absolutely key that San Francisco shows the example. It's a worldwide problem and it's not only the nation, you know it. So by the way, country France is pretty bad shape but that's try trafficking etc etc. So think hard enough please to try to find a way or you can address this problem with your competence if you still have some left, anyway, you need to have them back, yeah? Competence, see? BEEP. OK. Hello, Board of Supervisors. Madam Clerk, I'm Alondra Esco Garcia, and I'm here in my personal capacity as the president of the San Francisco Women's Political Committee. I urge this body to support the emergency grant agreement to bolster plant burn hoods security services in light of the growing anti abortion protests. There's been a dramatic increase in protests and security events at the SF clinic in the past few weeks and plant burn hood needs the support to make sure that patients can safely access the care that they have ever right to seek. Just a few years ago before I joined the city family, I used Planned Parenthood to access health care since I was a young child to my college years at SF State. Without this grant, patients like me, young women, will be deterred from accessing comprehensive reproductive health care. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Yeah, this will be brief. I just think that possibly you could increase it to the $800,000. I know it says not to exceed the $571. It's a funny number to me. I think that you should increase it just to ensure that it includes some kind of women's mental health services for the triggers or any kind of things that might go on to the victims themselves. Thank you. Yeah, it's good to hear from frontline people who are on the cusp of this thing. I actually would quibble a little bit to San Francisco, all eyes are in San Francisco. Thankfully, all eyes have turned to some county in Ohio where the immigrants are apparently eating people's pets. So we're a little bit that San Francisco, all eyes are in San Francisco. Thankfully, all eyes have turned to some county in Ohio where the immigrants are apparently eating people's pets. So we're a little bit off. And then there's some international things that people are focused on. But yeah, I go into a clinic, Tom Wadell, for a long time, part of the public health system that had a armed sheriff's deputy for a while. I don't know why we can't provide that for other. I know everybody wants money. Everybody wants services, but I think this would be a good one. All right. Public comment is closed and is there a motion to excuse supervisor SAFE made by supervisor Roan second by supervisor Walton will take that without objection and on the item a roll call, please. On item 25, on item 26, supervisor. Supervisor Dorsey, you want to say some? Yeah, I'd like to be at it as a co-sponsor and express my appreciation to supervisor Stephanie for her leadership and also DPH and Planned Parenthood. And everybody who came out for this. Roll call. On item 26 Supervisor Dorsey, Dorsey I Supervisor and Guardio, Inguardio I Supervisor Mandelman, Mandelman I Supervisor Melgar, Melgar I Supervisor Peskin, Peskin I Supervisor Preston, Preston I Supervisor Ronin, Ronin I Supervisor Stephanie, Stephanie Ion. Preston, aye, supervisor Ronan. Ronan, aye, supervisor Stephanie. Stephanie, aye, supervisor Walton. Walton, aye, and supervisor Chan. Chan, aye, there are 10, aye. The ordinance is passed on first reading. Madam Clerk, could you please read the immemoria? Yes, on behalf of Supervisor Safa Yi for the late Mr. John Amos. We are adjourned. you