San Francisco Government SmartTranscripts:

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Here.

[Ms. Lenoff (Board Secretary/Clerk)]: Commissioner Fisher? Here. Commissioner Gupta?

[Speaker 2.0]: Here.

[Ms. Lenoff (Board Secretary/Clerk)]: Vice President Huling? Here. Commissioner Ray? Here. Commissioner Weissman-Ward? Here. And President Kim? That's it. Roll call.

[Jaime Huling (Vice President)]: Thank you. Do we have any at this time, do we need to do the At this time before the board goes into closed session, I call for any speakers to the closed session items listed in the agenda. There will be a total of five minutes for public comment. Are there any speakers for public comment? And none online.

[Ruben Trujillo (Board Office Staff – Public Comment Coordinator)]: At this time, we don't have any speakers, vice president Huling.

[Jaime Huling (Vice President)]: Thank you. I now recess this meeting to closed session at 05:07PM.

[Alida Fisher (Commissioner)]: SFGov TV, San Francisco government television.

[SFGovTV Announcer]: SFGov TV, San Francisco government television.

[SFGovTV Announcer]: SFGov TV, San Francisco government television.

[SFGovTV Announcer]: SFGov TV, San Francisco government television,

[Alida Fisher (Commissioner)]: SFGov TV, San Francisco government television.

[SFGovTV Announcer]: SFGov TV, San Francisco government television.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: 12/16/2025. We will begin with item c, public comment. Our public comment period lasts for one hour today until we'll give some rounded up to 06:45PM. We look forward to hearing from the public before we conduct our board business. Our goal is to conduct board business in an efficient, effective, and accessible manner during reasonable hours. And we aim to respect staff, family, and community time by ensuring move to board business immediately after our comment period. Each participant may speak for up to one minute. Staff will thank the participant at the one minute mark. At one minute and five seconds, I've asked Mr. Chuillo to please turn off the music turn off the mic and transition to the next speaker. I ask members of the public to please respect that one minute limit so that we can hear from as many speakers as possible. I encourage speakers who are speaking on the same item to collaborate and combine their comments so the board can hear all viewpoints during our limited time. Please also note that the board accepts written public comments via email at boardofficefusd dot edu. We will hear first from students in person, the members of the general public in person, beginning with agenda items and moving to non agenda items. Regardless of whether in person public comment is complete, we will save fifteen minutes at the end for remote public comment, taking commenters in the same order as in person. To members of the public, on your right, you'll see signs that outline expectations for public comment and meeting conduct. We ask that all members of the public model the kind of tone, language, and behavior that we hope to see from our young people, respecting different viewpoints and allowing for all members of the public to participate. As a reminder, board rules in California law do not allow us to respond to comments or attempt to answer questions during public comment time. If appropriate, the superintendent will ask that staff follow-up with speakers. Mister Trujillo.

[Ruben Trujillo (Board Office Staff – Public Comment Coordinator)]: Thank you, president Kim. We have 27 students in person. As I call your name Whoo. As I call your name, please line up. Andrea Sofia Benitez. Andrea Sofia Benitez. My apologies. Joselyn. Meletni, Julissa, Angelica Jones.

[SFGovTV Announcer]: Okay. My name is Andrea Sofia. Good evening. I'm a student in the eighth grade at the newcomer program in Visitation Valley Middle School. And I'm here before you to ask you to respectfully as a district not eliminate the elective classes for students in the newcomer program. I am currently taking a music elective class and it's had such a positive impact on my academic development and me being able to work with instruments, participating in presentations and working as a team. It's also helped me significantly to improve my English language abilities since it's one of the few classes where I can speak with general education students. This is not just a simple class that we learn English as a second language in, but in all of our classes. And we've been able to show our abilities day after day, Eliminating these elective classes based on the status of learning of a single language is an unjust decision. I ask you to please consider the value in education, emotional and social well-being in these elective classes that continue helping us to move forward. Thank you so much for your time and attention.

[Speaker 8.0]: My name is wait. Can I go now? Oh, my name is Jocelyn, and I'm a student at Viz Valley Middle School. I am against the proposed staffing model, especially against especially about cutting electives because students should be able to learn and take elective classes, even students who are learning English. Electives are important because they help students like me discover who they are through classes like art, ethnic studies, and music. These classes give students a way to express themselves at schools and feel included. When students enjoy what they are learning about, they do better in school and feel more motivated. Taking elective classes away would make school less fun, less meaningful for many students, which is why I think elective classes should be protected and not cut. I am a student in miss Lauren's music class, I think you should come and check it out.

[Speaker 9.0]: My name is and I'm a student from Viz Valley Middle School. I am against the staffing model the district is trying to put in place. I think elective classes are really important because they help students learn more about who they are and what they enjoy. When students get to choose electives like ethnic studies, music, art, and other classes, it makes more it makes school more interesting and meaningful. Electives help students like me feel connected and excited about learning. Taking electives shouldn't be taken away because they are a big part of what make are a big part of what makes school a place where students can grow and feel like they belong. So, please don't take our electives away. Thank you.

[Speaker 10.0]: My name is Jalissa. I'm a student at VIST Valley Middle School. I'm against the proposed staffing model because I think all students should have elective classes, including my peers who are still learning and mastering English. I was once of

[Speaker 11.0]: those students who had to

[Speaker 10.0]: take an EOD class, but thankfully because we had seven periods, I was still able to have one elective. If we changed to six periods, my friends and peers who are still in EOD or newcomers who won't be able to have an elective. Electives are important for all students to find their passion in life. They help students feel included, confident, and excited to come to school. Taking electives away would make school less fair for students who already have extra challenges. And, I believe everyone deserves the chance to explore their interests. Also, our school, elective classes are the one place where newcomers and gen ed students come together to share space, learn from one another, helping to build community at our school, big business. So, please do not cut and take away our electives, classes, and teachers. Thank you.

[Speaker 12.0]: Hello all. I hope this message finds you well. My name is Angelina Jones. For the past three ish years, I have attended Willie Brown Middle School. I have heard about your recent budget cuts and attempts to remove certain staff and programs like childs, elective teachers, social workers, counselors, etcetera from San Francisco schools. And not only I, but many other students alike feel like this is very unfair. Schools should be a safe and fun space where kids actually enjoy the process of learning. And the removal of said things can and will disrupt that. My school values our STEAM program so much. In fact, it is one of our greatest values. As students, a promise was made to us and our resources should, under no circumstances, be taken away unnecessarily. What happens if there's conflicts with nobody to solve them? What happens when a kid feels unsafe or unhappy in their home environment and they need someone to talk to? Not only will this affect children, but also the staff they're being let go. Some people really depend on these jobs to provide for their families. What happens to them? I spent all of my educational years in the SFUSD sorry. I spent all of my educational years in SFUSD starting at Lakeshore and these, like, opportunities are important.

[Ruben Trujillo (Board Office Staff – Public Comment Coordinator)]: Please line up as I call your name. Danielle, Monroy, Alanteo, Marcus Hutch, Makayla Loggins, Reese Yin.

[Speaker 13.0]: Am I allowed to go now? Alright. Hello. My name is Danielle Monroe. I have been enrolled in SFUSC since first grade, graduated from Bret Hart, and have spent three years at Willie Brown Middle School. Additionally, I am the student body president of my school. I have recently heard of the budget cuts, specifically at my school. I'm going to be talking about electives and why they are needed at my school. I hear the proposed plan is to take from a seventh period day to a sixth period day. This would likely mean we'd lose teachers. Those teachers would most likely be the elective teachers. When I first arrived at Willie Brown, I was unsure of what I wanted to do with my future. The reason I was able to find out what makes me happy and what truly makes me me was because of the elective program here. I have taken robotics for three years and it's completely changed my life for the better. I now know that I want to be a mechanical engineer. From what I've heard, the budget cuts include therapists being removed. I've had therapy for a total of two years. Therapy in my eyes is an absolute necessity. Therapy has been there when I thought that nobody was. Cutting that fund would make a massive impact on the students. Many students in SFU have had or have severe mental illnesses.

[Ruben Trujillo (Board Office Staff – Public Comment Coordinator)]: Will that concludes your time.

[Speaker 13.0]: Alright. Thank you.

[Speaker 14.0]: Please where you go. Oh. Greetings. My name is Marcus Hajj. I'm a current student attending Middle School. Like oh, wait. Sorry. Like other students, I also heard about this discussed arrangement. I feel like these attempted actions are quite unpleasant and very disagreeable, I will list my opinion as I end the sentence. Growing up, I was always enrolled in the SFUSD district, graduating from Glen Park Elementary to now almost graduating Willie Brown Middle School. For all my three ish years attending Willie Brown, I have taken three years of art, two years of visual and one year of textile. Electives meant a lot to me over these years. Electives gives me and other kids the ability to create and explore from other perspectives. Electives are also a way for people to interact and try out new things and to create hobbies. Without this, how do you think it's going to affect kids next year? Will they ever have the same freedom as we do? Will they be able to explore themselves and get into certain activities? These are some important questions that you guys need to consider before you propose to this deal. Along with electives, wellness plays a big oh, is that my time?

[Speaker 9.0]: Hi, my name is Michaela Loggins, I'm an eighth grader at Willie Brown Junior Middle School. During my time at this school, I have taken every elective my school has to offer. Robotics, peer resources, computer science, art, music, and health. These classes are not extras. These classes give students purpose and a reason to stay engaged. They support different learning styles and help students discover who they are. In peer resources, we learn conflict resolution, leadership skills, problem solving, and stress management. Students often feel more comfortable talking to trained peers about issues such as stress, bullying, or friendship problems. This helps prevent isolation and promote mental well-being. In robotics and computer science, we learn career preparation and critical thinking. This enables students to gain early experience in STEM fields and build skills they will use in school life and in future careers. Music and arts

[Speaker 15.0]: Hi. My name is Reese Yan. I'm a student from APG Middle School and APG and Nannie Middle School, and I'm here to speak up about saving wellness. Wellness has helped me throughout all three years, and I talk about wellness during avid school tours because I really, really want kids in elementary school going into middle school to know that there's always a place you can go to talk to someone, like our social worker, miss Dean. When my friend and APG student Alex died, I felt that the only place I could turn to was my wellness center. Even though it was really busy, there's always space made for me. I also love going to wellness group where I get to talk about everything and anything that's bothering me. I always feel comfortable in my group space because everything is confidential. I also always go to wellness to vent and talk about trauma at school with our child, miss Danny. When I'm taking a break, wellness has helped me so much, like giving me a space safe space to vent or when I have a sore throat, I can go and get tea and snacks. I want to have I want to have kids be able to go and have the same middle school experience as me and know that someone is always there for them. Wellness is always being used and in use. Thank you for your time.

[Speaker 2.0]: Hello. Good evening.

[Speaker 16.0]: My name is Al Antello. I'm a senior at June Jordan School for Equity. The proposed staffing model will cut 56 full time classroom teachers and 45 social workers. It would cut campus security in half and eliminate other essential positions. These staff are not extra. These are the adults students rely on every day to feel safe, supported, and able to learn. When these rules disappear, teachers are forced to do more with less, burnout increases, and push the school back into survival mode. If the board believes these cuts are necessary, then you should be willing to come to our schools and explain directly to our students why they're losing the adults they trust and then tell them if these cuts are worth it.

[Speaker 17.0]: If you are not willing

[Speaker 16.0]: to do that, then you should be voting no on this staffing model. At June Vote at School for Equity, our social worker, miss Erin, has been with our school since almost since it almost opened. She is kind funny and has personally supported me during moments that could have derailed my education. She is not replaceable. Miss Erin provides at June Jordan is the same care stability and support that students across this district get from their social workers every day. That's why we are calling for a five year moratorium on school closures. Our schools are still recovering from RAI one point o. Schools cannot improve while constantly bracing for loss. Tonight I'm asking you to choose stability equity in students pause school closures, reject the staffing model, invest in the people who make our schools work. Our schools deserve a fair chance, we are not backing down. Thank you.

[Ruben Trujillo (Board Office Staff – Public Comment Coordinator)]: Please line up as I call your name. Sabrina Lee, Islam Almehin, Jamila Wang, Lionel Sardon, Alonso Diaz.

[Speaker 18.0]: Hi, my name is Sabrina and I'm from AP Virginia Middle School. I want to talk about my own experiences today while going into wellness. I have anxiety and depression, and I love to talk about things with my social worker, miss Dean. And I also play lots of sports where I get lots of injuries, so I go to wellness too to see nurse Judy, our nurse who helps me tend with my injuries every single day. Also, one of my questions is, like, what am I supposed to do without wellness and, like, how am I supposed to, like where am I supposed to go when I, like, break an arm? Also, when security guards are, like, nowhere here, like, how am I supposed to feel safe at school? Like, the security guards are, like, part of our community and also, like, they're also, imagine having your own kid go to school knowing that there's no security guards and then they're not even safe. Also, just let that sink in for a moment.

[Speaker 2.0]: Thank you

[Speaker 18.0]: for your time.

[Speaker 17.0]: Hello.

[Speaker 2.0]: My name is Issamah Mahed and I'm from AP Junior Middle School. I came here to talk about how wellness has impacted my life. When I first came to APG Middle School, I had a hard time transitioning from elementary school to middle school. During my sixth grade year, I was struggling with my classes and I wanted someone to be there with me. I turned towards the NoMoana Center, miss Dean and or SUTI. This helped me because I was struggling with my classes and overall sixth grade experience. Without their support, I wouldn't be as confident as I am right now. This year, want to step out of my comfort zone and develop my leadership experience with the help from my child, miss Danny. I get to be a part of snack club and brain switch to mind. Without these opportunities, I would not have made the friends I have today or get to teach others about peer pressure, nutrition, and about mental health. I could not imagine all SFUCD SFUSD students having the support from SHOWs, social workers, nurses, and wellness centers. Thank you for your time.

[Speaker 19.0]: Hello. My name is Tamira Wong. I'm an eighth grader at APG Nene Middle School. I'm here today to talk about why wellness is so important. I know it's been a bit since most of you have been in school, but I've been growing up with this extreme pressure to be mature and to be perfect and productive and focused. And that is an overstimulating amount of stress. I avoid a lot. Like when school got harder in sixth grade, I avoided it as much as I could. I would pull the little hair dryer against the thermometer and such, and I would make excuses resulting in even more stress and then even more avoidance as it always goes. That cycle would continue until I happened to find a wonderful community in wellness. Like when I struggled with self harm and unavoidable drama in our school, our social worker, Miss Dean, would be the one to help me through that. She would be the one to come for me when I needed it. So, as I got to know all of them more, my attendance increased, my grades got up, and I personally got happier. And now as I apply for high school and deal with all life has for me, they are my backbone. Thank you for the time.

[Speaker 20.0]: Hello. My name is Lionel, and I'm a student from AP Genuine Middle School. I came here to speak about why we need wellness centers within our schools across the district. They build community and help my peers to continue working hard and stay devoted to the future they wish to have. Well, it's also uplift students who have felt judged, disrespected, and are criticized by others. Roughly 10% of students from middle schools to high schools in San Francisco have considered attempting at suicide. And in May 2025, it was reported that two hundred and forty four people died from suicide in California. I have seen my own classmates walk up to the staff and ask to take a break from academics, to take a break from all the pressure and expectations they face from not only teachers, but from friends and family. You're all about mental health and awareness, yet suddenly it's a it's ignored and pushed aside. So taking away wellness centers, cows, and social workers is like taking away a piece of someone, and you don't realize the risk of harming your students. Who knows what could happen to them? Suicide risk can increase, numbers can increase, anything can happen and you're really thinking about that risk. What do you care more about? The student or the person inside that shell? Thank you.

[Speaker 21.0]: Hi. My name is Alonza Diaz. As a student from APG Middle School, the wellness center is a vital resource for every student. It not only provides first aid help for anything from a scrape to a bloody nose, it's also an important anchoring point in our school's community. The wellness center impacts everyone in our school community through events that are essential for creating a strong community, bringing together students from different grades as well as families. Our channel, miss Danny, has organized events like high school night, inclusive schools week, and resource fairs. These events create a fun and connected atmosphere that everyone can be a part of. Another extremely important service that wellness provides is a free confidential therapy with our social worker Ms. Dean and other therapists. I know from personal experience that middle school comes with a lot of drama and it can always feel like too much. It's also reassuring to talk to a trusted adult who's trained in helping kids rather than just talking about hard topics with their friends which can be uncomfortable. By taking away wellness centers in San Francisco middle schools, you are taking away a safe space for all students to fall back on when they're in a rough spot. You're also breaking apart strong bonds in the community that support our school experiences across the city. Thank you.

[Ruben Trujillo (Board Office Staff – Public Comment Coordinator)]: Please lighten up as I call your name. A AC Villaluna, Justin Chen, Langston M, Max Vance, Frida or Freddie, Johannes Stender? No one. Let me call them again. ACV Aluna, Justin Chen, Langston M, Max Vance, and I think it's Freddie.

[Justin Chen (Lowell HS student)]: Good evening district leaders. My name is Justin Chen. I am an SFUSD student at Lowell High School. I am here to represent SFUSD middle schools and the Chen Foundation to deliver a quick statement regarding the middle school matter of changing the school day from a seven period day to a six period day. As a student who has experienced both schedules I believe it makes the school day harder to focus because without transitions to different classes the classes become longer with seven periods available for students. Students can take their electives, learn more and have fun. Longer class periods without transitions can feel overwhelming and reduces engagement. I hope the board of education won't remove a period from the middle school schedules. Thank you for your time. Thank you.

[Alida Fisher (Commissioner)]: Good

[Speaker 23.0]: evening SFUSD board of education and cabinet members. My name is Max Vance, and I'm a fourth grader at New Traditions Elementary School and a member of the student council. I'm here to share our thanks for saving our school show social worker, miss Lanisha. See she helps students when we are having problems at school or at home, and she truly understands us. She leads the rainbow club and the crochet club, teaches us how our brain works, and helps our school, be a safe and welcoming place. Miss Lanisha makes a big difference in our lives, and we respectfully ask that you support keeping social workers in other schools as well. On behalf of the student council, I also wanna ask middle school students to able to to be able to keep two electives. We don't wanna have to choose between learning a language, playing in a band, or trying something new. Thank you for listening to student voices. We hope you will consider our request, I invite you to our student council meeting time on Tuesdays at 01:30. Thank you.

[Speaker 24.0]: Hey everyone, my name is Langston Montgomery, back in my second home. I'm a senior at Washington High School, former student delegate, and now president of the Student Advisory Council. So about a month ago, the Student Advisory Council had a meeting with board president Kim and with vice president Huling. And what we heard over this hour and fifteen minute long meeting was counselors. The lines that are thirty minutes long or more around all of our high schools with students concerns on their scheduling, on college, and every other issue you have through counselor. And now we've already dealt with devastating cuts and now we're going to see more devastating cuts come in for our school counselors. This position is solely focused on the well-being of our students and cutting them further after devastating cuts last year is not student centered, it's not focused on teachers, and it's certainly not a student outcomes model. So I really hope that this issue becomes fixed because right now our students and our counselors are struggling and right now you're telling them that no help is coming.

[Speaker 25.0]: Hello. My name is Frida, and I go to James Lick Middle School. If we take away the security guards, kids are more likely to be on their phones during class or be skipping class entirely. The security guards are not just security guards. They are our coaches and our friends. Many kids form trusting relationships with the security guards. The security guards help support kids and encourage students to go to class. At James Lake Middle School, the security guards do much more than watch our hallways. They coach our sports teams and lead cubs and help find support and make them feel comfortable and safe in class. If you cut our security guards, it will not only make us feel less safe, it will make take away our coaches and our friends. Thank you.

[Ruben Trujillo (Board Office Staff – Public Comment Coordinator)]: Please line up as I call your name. I think this is Mabel, Nina Johnston, Megan, Angelo Godisano, Alejandro Godisano.

[Speaker 26.0]: Good evening board members. My name is Mabel Brennan and I am an eighth grader at James Lake Middle School and I come from the debate team. Our district is facing historic financial challenges. SFUSD is balancing a budget by planning more than 113,000,000 in reduction for 2025. These cuts are already hitting the core of our student support. The latest proposals would eliminate counselors, classroom teachers, assistant principals, and hundreds of other assist, staff. In one plan, one staffing plan, 45 of 99 student school social workers could be cut alongside 56 teachers and 15 counselors severely reducing the support students rely on for academic and emotional success. I'm especially concerned about cuts to AP and other advanced coursework. Advanced placement classes are not only elective options or more than elective options. Research shows that 85% of college reports that AP experience positively influences admission decisions and AP coursework increases the likelihood students will perform well and complete college degrees. Removing or scaling back AP classes disadvantages SFUSD students when competing to get into colleges. AP classes help level the playing field for first generation and underrepresented students by giving them access to advanced coursework and sometimes college credit before they even step on campus.

[Ruben Trujillo (Board Office Staff – Public Comment Coordinator)]: You for your comment. That concludes your

[Speaker 27.0]: Thank you.

[Ruben Trujillo (Board Office Staff – Public Comment Coordinator)]: President Kim, that concludes student comment. Oh, I'm sorry. No, it doesn't.

[Speaker 2.0]: My name is Nina. I am in fourth grade at Leonard Orf Lynn Elementary School. I am here to support the social workers who have always supported us. Our social worker, miss Alisa, is the one who holds our school together. Wellness centers and social workers help all around the school, making sure everyone is included and has a place where they know they're safe. A peaceful mind is a strong mind, and letting go of the social workers will be devastating for all the students. There is still time to fix your wrongs now when students need it. All students deserve to be equal. Just because some families have less or more money does not mean that they need social workers more than others. We all need social workers. Thank you. Hello. My name is Angela Rizano. I'm from BVHM School. And I was wondering why are you guys doing this because we need teachers and staff because it's chaos in there and it take if you're one of the secretary, it takes a lot of guts to get in there. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Alejandra Gorizano and I go to BBHM School. I ask you not to cut positions in my school or any other school because the more the less people we have, the the less students feel comfortable and safe at school and less they succeed in life and school life. Hi.

[Speaker 28.0]: I want you to cut our school bus. It's because, like, are you guys expecting us to drive, like, 12 miles just to get to our school? You know, like, if you're thinking, then you will, like, lose a lot of money because you'll lose a lot of kids and everything because then they'll have to move schools.

[Speaker 17.0]: Bye. Okay

[Ruben Trujillo (Board Office Staff – Public Comment Coordinator)]: president Kim. Now that concludes student comment. Oh, well, call all the names. Yeah.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: If students have submitted cards, they should come forward to the podium. Alright.

[Ruben Trujillo (Board Office Staff – Public Comment Coordinator)]: As you speak, please give us your name, okay, before you Good

[Justin Chen (Lowell HS student)]: evening. My name is Bloom Oksider. I'm a senior at Academy High School here to talk about school closures and funding cuts. To cut as many teachers and social workers as this plan proposes is to leave students like myself without vital support. If it were not for my teachers, security guards and wellness staff, I would not be standing here today alive and well enough to advocate for my community.

[Bloom Oksider (Academy HS student)]: In a world where our federal government is doing everything in its power to tear apart families and communities, each and every one of you should understand that no dollar amount justifies doing the same to our students. These budget cuts will kill students. I am asking you to choose their lives and stop these cuts. Thank you for

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: your time.

[Speaker 29.0]: Hello. Well wishes. My name is Raven Jenkins. I am a former academy SF at McIntyre student. For five years, I had a family at academy before I was transferred against my will between lifelong friends, teachers that enjoyed what they taught, and counselors that uplifted me when I needed it I understand that many of you do not have experience in schools and classrooms, and not unlike all of you, many of the people that decided what was best for me did not know me in this place either as a student or as a person, and thus underestimated how important academy was to my learning experience. Without the community that I had here, I would not be able to stand in front of you all today to reconsider closing down San Francisco schools, especially academy. My story is the pain that you all will be inflicting to hundreds of kids who will be left without anywhere any other safe place to go, and dozens of students, teachers, staff who will leave, left to wonder if you take your life their livelihoods away from

[Speaker 30.0]: them if you go forward with closing

[Speaker 29.0]: these schools. An important choice lies in front of you. Please do not tear these young strangers' souls apart like my family did mine. No student needs to make do like I had to. Thank you and good night.

[Speaker 31.0]: Hello. My name is Tenzin Namse and I'm an eighth grade student at James Lick Middle School. Hearing about the proposed cuts that would affect the arts, AP classes, counselors and more shocked me but in particular the security staff being affected makes me realize the severity of this. In my years at James Lick, a school in a safe neighborhood, I've gone through three lock ins. I never felt safe in any of them, even in my school with a full security staff. Imagine what that would be like with a half full security staff. This cut would decrease security in the wake of a school shooting at Burton High, which has caused many to suggest heightened security. But school shootings and lock ins aren't the only worry. Fights are common and escalate quickly, which can end badly without security staff nearby. If we consider education a top priority, then we can't endanger students or make them feel unsafe. In the end, the trade offs outdo the benefits of this. And I know that there aren't many ways to plug this deficit, but this particular solution is way too detrimental to students. Thank you.

[Speaker 2.0]: What I'm going to say today is pretty short and it's very short. What I'm going say today is don't do it. That's it. That's really it. Hi. My name is Silas and I'm a student at James Luke Middle School. I'm here today to urge you to reconsider the proposed staffing changes that directly affect middle school students. If middle schools go from having seven periods in a day to having six periods, students will not be able to take as many electives as they do now. Additionally, students in the math support, ELD, newcomer, or Spanish immersion programs will not be able to take any electives. As a student in the Spanish immersion program, I think that no one should be denied an elective just because they speak two languages or they have a disability. Electives like art, band, dance, and drama teach students real life skills and how to express themselves. Although one solution is to have a zero period before school starts, how will this save money if you still need teachers to teach those classes? The proposed fiscal stabilization plan should not include reducing the number of periods in a day. Don't sacrifice middle school students education to solve the district's district's problems. Thank you. Hi. I'm Mina. And I'm Aliana. We're sixth graders at APG Middle School. We love our school, the teachers, staff. Our teachers deserve a fair contract.

[Speaker 10.0]: We need them at school.

[Speaker 2.0]: The cuts also affect security and counselors at our school. Our schools experience a recent tragedy and a security incident. We could not have gotten through these serious events at school community without our wellness staff and our security staff. We have learned that our wellness staff has had over 1,800 visits in just three and a half months. What happens to students in need when the staff isn't there to help them? Kids being safe at school, both physically and mentally, should be at the top

[Student Delegate Cruz]: of the school board's priority.

[Speaker 2.0]: Learning cannot happen without it. As two 12 year olds, we should not have to stand before a school board asking that you keep us safe and that you care about the mental health of kids.

[Speaker 26.0]: Please don't make these cuts.

[Speaker 2.0]: Thank you for your time.

[Speaker 15.0]: Hi. I'm Sienna Ennis. I'm Margo. And I'm Lou. We're here to support the t tens at Denman. They are our security guards and they're more important, I mean, sorry. And more importantly, they give us fist bumps so they care for us. They're our coaches to our sports teams.

[Student Delegate Cruz]: Also, please don't cut our counselors, wellness centers, school leaders, teachers. Everyone deserves to have all opportunities at school.

[Speaker 18.0]: Stabilize the budget without cutting middle school staff. Thank you.

[Speaker 28.0]: Hello. I'm Estoyia Flores Coleen and I'm an eighth grader at BBHM. To say I'm disappointed is the least. BBHM is a close community. Everyone knows everyone. And by taking away the support systems, you are turning our school into ashes. We are now in a new campus that is in McLaren Park. We're isolated. We don't know where we are half the time. With fears from high school to ICE, my school counselors are the support system. You are tearing my community apart. Your job is to keep me safe. Your job is to keep my classmates set safe. So look at me in the eye and tell me this is what you're doing, what you are taking away, the person who holded me when I was about to break down. Look me into the eye and tell me you're doing the best for me, for my classmates, for my friends, for my teachers, for my guardians. Please look me in the eye and tell me that.

[SFGovTV Announcer]: Good evening. My name is Rosa. I'm 11 years old and I'm in the sixth grade at Willie Brown. I'm a student in special education and since I was in the second grade, I stopped doing physical therapy even though I still needed it. I've had some serious accidents at school that have where I have not received the support of physical therapy. When I was at Glen Park School, I felt so hard that I still have a knot in my head and it hurts a lot. If I hadn't had therapy taken away from me, I would have improved so much and I would have felt so much more secure at school. And like me, there are many other kids who have lost services due to the cuts that you're planning.

[Speaker 33.0]: Hi. I'm True. And today, I'm going to be talking about the our health and awareness and why you shouldn't get rid of it. To begin, our health team is really nice, and they always are there for us when we need it. It's really important that you don't get rid of it, our our health and wellness center, because when we are in serious accidents and we need help, they're always there for us and showing support for us. This is really important for students like us in the community that need help.

[Speaker 9.0]: Hello. My name is Anna. I'm an eighth grader at Willie Brown Middle School. I'm here today to discuss about the budget cuts which should drastically affect my education. What I'm gonna talk about is removing our health and wellness programs. It is not okay because health and wellness programs help with mental health issues and with students and talking about it their problems and talking about their problems and a way to fix it. It is also a relaxing place to take a break. It is important, and it should not be removed. Thank you.

[Speaker 34.0]: Hello, my name is Yanin Garcia. I go to Wilbur L. Jr. Middle School. I am in eighth grade. You guys cutting both health and wellness health and wellness center is wrong. Every single student in there has some type of issue, either anxiety from doing all the work that we have to do or just having anger issues, which is not fair. And you guys cutting that out is not right. Every single student needs help in a special way. Thank you for your time.

[Speaker 35.0]: Come on. Perfect.

[Speaker 36.0]: Hi. I'm Amelia Cook and this is Laura Helen's and we're seventh graders at James Dunne Middle School. I think we shouldn't lose an elective. One way these budget cuts will negatively affect students is it will cut funding for electives. In our school, if we lose this money, one elective will be cut. Electives like art, bands, health, computer science, California history, and geography. Electives let students explore a variety of subjects and figure out what they want to do when they grow up. In sixth grade, we had an elective called Wheel. This elective was really four electives: computer science, art, health, and DMA. We had each of these electives for a quarter letting us try out different things without the commitment of a semester or a year long elective. I had the wheel when it was over. I learned I loved DMA and wanted it for a semester next year. This is what electives can do for us in the big picture. By trying different things in small amounts in a safe space like school, we can learn what we want to spend our time on later in life. Electives can also offer an extra boost in areas where students are struggling. One elective in our school is geography. In this elective, you can learn about countries and people all around the world. Another elective that will be cut is band and orchestra. Playing an instrument can give you better memories, stimulate cognitive growth, and boost an understanding of patterns that can greatly benefit you in math by interpreting notes by having a variety of electives that can give students a boost in certain areas where we can give them better school experience. You shouldn't cut electives from school. Are necessary

[Ruben Trujillo (Board Office Staff – Public Comment Coordinator)]: Thank you for your planning. That concludes Thank you for your comment. That concludes your question.

[SFGovTV Announcer]: My name is Valentina Galicia and I'm in the first grade at Cleveland School. Please don't cut funds for my school. Remember that for evil to triumph, good men must do nothing.

[Speaker 2.0]: Hi. My name is Luna.

[Speaker 17.0]: Please

[Speaker 2.0]: don't love my school, and don't take out my teacher because I need her to learn.

[Speaker 30.0]: Good evening, board members. My name is Doug. I come from public housing, and I think it's wrong that y'all trying to take, feel me, the wellness center and all that therapy stuff because you feel me? Like, coming out of public housing, like, I I went through a lot of stuff, and I had therapy right there, and they helped me out. You know? And I come from downtown high school, in case y'all ain't know.

[Speaker 37.0]: Good evening board members. My name is Ryan and I'm a youth making a change member at Coleman. At a moment when families are facing heightened fear due to increased threats of ICE activity, violence, and lack of resources, schools must be havens of safety and support. Instead, many families and youth are questioning whether the district is doing enough to create safe welcoming environments for us. Currently, schools like mine are struggling to do so due to all of the cuts we have taken in the past. Budget cuts that reduce school staffing, mental health support and equity programs only deepen our desire to leave this district. Ensuring a stable transparent and student centered budget is not optional. It is essential to restoring confidence so families and youth feel safe sending their students to school. Let's stop talking about school closures and budget cuts to our sites especially when such cuts are unnecessary. In the past five years, there was only been in reality one year with an actual deficit. Instead, please get creative and fix our enrollment system, adjust your central staff and get your vision together.

[Speaker 38.0]: Good evening board members. My name is with Coleman. I'm here today because it seems like we're missing Okay. I'm just going to say what I'm going to say. I think it's wrong what you guys are doing. Like, I think a lot of people need to support people kids in special education, immigrant children in classrooms. We're losing a lot of support for the kids who do need it and yeah. Sorry.

[Speaker 39.0]: Good evening all board members. My name is Darlin and I'm here with Wimack and with Coleman. I'm here today because my education is under attack at John O'Connell. We lost our nurse in after school program. I listed them as all the things that have been taken away from me in the last two years. I've been at O'Connell, and I take more than one minute here. Here we are again one more year and take more cuts from you guys. And schools are been getting considered nearly half of the sites for social workers could cut. And with all due respect, it is not fair that you five voted yes to put 1,000 or a 100,000,000 inside our release.

[Speaker 40.0]: Good afternoon board members. My name is Katherine. I'm a youth making a change member at Coleman. As many folks have mentioned, it is highly stressful to go to school in this

[Supryia Ray (Commissioner)]: district.

[Speaker 40.0]: We do not know whether our schools are closing or our teachers are

[SFGovTV Announcer]: well supported

[Speaker 40.0]: or have enough security to protect us from the craziness happening in our country. San Francisco should be leading. Instead, we are sitting low and serving as a stepping stone for the for the rich to start their career. I am sad to hear that we have over 400 k to pay our superintendent, but we don't have enough money to have our schools fully staffed. I know that there is money because we have not been in real budget crisis all these years. And if some

[Speaker 11.0]: Good evening board members. My name is Carla Peralta and I'm a student at Wallenberg. I'm concerned on how cuts in funding and teacher shortages are going to affect my learning as well as my peers' learning. I go to a small school and I have already seen effects from these issues. For example, at school, one of the classes might doesn't have a teacher, not and not even a sub. Miss Harris, our principal, has to go and teach these students when, obviously, as a principal, she has other responsibilities she needs to attend to. Also, a lot of my peers and I are worried about losing our wellness center next school year. I know many people who enjoy wellness because it serves as a safe space where they can talk to a trusted adult. I know that for my school, Gabby, our wellness coordinator, always caters to students' needs and also makes sure that we leave wellness feeling better than when we entered. And that is true for many other schools as well. Removing wellness centers would cause a lot of damage. No cuts to counselors and wellness centers. No cuts to our public schools.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Thank you students for taking the time to be here and sharing your thoughts. Given the number of folks who are remaining in person I believe we have nearly a 100 comment cards we will instead of going to online public comment, we'll continue the rest of the time with in person public comment. At 07:45, I believe today is Frank Lara from UESF will be speaking to close out our public comment portion before we move on to board business.

[Ruben Trujillo (Board Office Staff – Public Comment Coordinator)]: Thank you President Kim. Please line up as I call your name. Katrina Cubillo. If you if this is a student you don't need to come back. Again, Katrina Cubillo, Maria Angie Moreno, Ray Mateo, Juan Mateo, Mira Fizz.

[Alida Fisher (Commissioner)]: Before we get started, considering we only have fifteen minutes, it might make sense for folks to group themselves when they come up to make sure that we hear from as many people as possible.

[Speaker 17.0]: Good evening, everybody. My name is Maria Angie Moreno. I work centrally, and I support the child's and, youth programming. There's so much that was said tonight by our students, which is why I'm here. I'm here every day for students, for youth leadership, for youth development, for them to have that voice to be able to speak for themselves. So there's very little new things that I can say that they haven't said already. All I wanna remind you all is that we're here for students to center them and to make sure that we're changing their lives positively. They are the future of tomorrow, and we need to think about the next seven generations and not just what's filling our pockets today. So can we please think about students and, like that young little girl said, evil triumphs when good men do nothing. Let's not be those people. Thank you.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: If members of the public can step just a little bit away from the mic, the translation unit just needs some

[Justin Chen (Lowell HS student)]: Got it. You.

[Speaker 42.0]: Hello, my name is Myra. I'm a central social worker and a parent of SFUSD. I'm an alumni as well. I can't repeat anything that the students said and say any better. They said everything. We need to center our students' needs. Last week, my colleagues were up here and shared the work that wellness and social workers do and the community health outreach workers. Kevin Gogan, who helped build up programming, said that wellness saves lives. Our work is vital. According to the data from the 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, we have almost eight percent of SFUSD students who made one or more suicide attempts in the twelve months before the survey was taken. For our transgender students, that number is almost thirty two percent. And our LGBTQ plus students, that number is almost nineteen percent. You need to let that sink in and understand what that really means. If you eliminate these social work positions, where is that work going? Who's doing that? Who went through the education and training to do the risk assessment? Did any of you do that? Who did that? We did that. Okay, so one of the core principles of social work is to do no harm. Sorry. So we cannot watch our schools be actively under resourced and our wellness programs dismantled. We need our T10s, need our middle school health teachers, we need our CHOs, and we need our social workers.

[Ruben Trujillo (Board Office Staff – Public Comment Coordinator)]: Thank you for

[Speaker 17.0]: your time, ma'am.

[Ruben Trujillo (Board Office Staff – Public Comment Coordinator)]: Concludes your time.

[Speaker 43.0]: Good evening, board of education. My name is Rayna Teo. It's nice to see you again. I just wanna remind you that these proposed cuts violate the board of education's guardrails for the superintendent. According to guardrail number one, effective decision making made to decisions like this fiscal stabilization plan must be developed through meaningful consultation with the parents, guardians, students, staff who will be impacted by those decisions. And as I've seen tonight and as you've seen tonight, that is not happening. And so until that is addressed, please reconsider all of the proposed budget cuts. And lastly, thank you for removing the strong schools resolution from the agenda today. I echo the demand for a school closure moratorium of five years as this allows the weight of the shoulders that was placed by SFUSD leadership on the students and families so that errors such as the RAI process won't be repeated. Thank you.

[Speaker 44.0]: Good evening. My name is Juana. I'm a SFUSD alumni and a member of the Small Schools Coalition. I wanna shout out the hundreds of people who are outside and who were here early this evening for a rally that united students, parents, educators, admin, grassroots organizations, and UESF to reject the budget cuts and staffing model. I'm also here to deliver 30 letters and art pieces written by sixth to eighth graders at Vis Valley Middle who are art students, health students, and ELD students. These times call for being visionary and that means investing in public education because these are more than just classrooms and more than just frontline staff. These are community anchors with vital resources in our neighborhoods. I hope you listen to the students and all of their public comment tonight in their call to reject the staffing model. These are the adults who prevent crisis and are the very the people who build safety relationships and support academic stability. We cannot balance the budget at the expense of the students. Remember that these cuts will have a long impacts which are far more expensive than maintaining the support positions that would be cut. We need a moratorium on closures and even if it's not on the agenda tonight, we'll be ready to fight and we will be back.

[Ruben Trujillo (Board Office Staff – Public Comment Coordinator)]: Please line up as I call your name. Again, if you're a student, you do not need to come up again. Allison Dean, Christopher Pepper, Luis Weissman, Gabby Gomez, Kara French.

[Christopher Pepper (Teacher on Special Assignment, Health Education)]: Hello. I'm Christopher Pepper. I'm a teacher on special assignment with health education. On 01/01/2016, almost a decade ago, the California Healthy Youth Act went into effect. This is a revolutionary law that requires every school in the state to offer comprehensive sexuality education once in middle school and once in high school. I'm proud that San Francisco's middle and high school health classes are taught by credentialed health education teachers and our district's program has been a model for schools all across the state. Our health teachers understand how to sensitively cover all of the required content and when you hear about comprehensive sexuality education, it's really comprehensive what you're expected to teach. So our teachers teach about condoms, birth control, STIs, pregnancy prevention, human trafficking, intimate partner violence, menstruation, childbirth, adoption, abortion and much more. The way I understand the proposal for what you want to do with middle school health education is to have it kind of slid into the side of PE classes. That is not acceptable. We need to have really solid health education classes taught by Thank

[Ruben Trujillo (Board Office Staff – Public Comment Coordinator)]: you for comment. That concludes your time.

[Allison Dean (School Social Worker, AP Giannini MS)]: Hello. My name is Allison Dean. I'm the school social worker and wellness coordinator at AP Giannini Middle School. Doctor Sue, I met you in October when you came to AP Giannini to support our school with the tragedy of our student's murder. You were there when we discussed how to best support our 1,200 students and our 100 plus staff. The APG and Sunset communities are still reeling from that tragedy today. Myself, our chow, the counselors, security, clerks, we all showed up for and continue to show up for our students every day. If not us, then who? If there was no wellness center, who would refer students and families to therapy? Who would do risk assessments or make safety plans? Who would call for help when children are in crisis? Who would bring in therapy groups, sex and health education, social skills groups, community services? Who would make home visits when students are avoiding school? Who would provide those families with resources they so desperately need so their children can attend school? You've heard from students at our school and across the district that their wellness centers provide them with safe spaces, most importantly, with a sense of belonging. Do not do this. It will be detrimental to SFUSD students across the city.

[Speaker 35.0]: Good afternoon, members. My name is Gabby, and I'm a community health outreach worker, a community member, and an SFUSD alumni. Childs and school wellness centers are essential to create safe, healthy, and equitable learning environments. Childs are doing the groundwork every day, building trusted relationships with our students, families, identifying needs early, and connecting communities to critical health, mental health, and prevention services. Their cultural responses on the ground support allow students to remain engaged and succeed academically. Continued investment in childs and wellness centers is an investment in student well-being, academic success, and stronger school communities. Thank you.

[Speaker 27.0]: Hi, good evening. My name is Luz and I'm a parent of a high school student in the district. I am also with parents for public schools. I am here to urge you to vote no on the devastating cuts proposed by district staff. These decisions are not just numbers on a page, but they have real consequences for our children's safety, well-being, and future. Wellness staff, security staff, school buses, social workers, counselors, assistant principals, and other support staff are the people our children see and rely on every single day. They are the ones keeping our schools running, supporting our students through crisis, and making sure our kids get home safe. These supports are not extras, are lifelines. School cuts and closing essential services is cruel. It sends a devastating message to children that they are expandable. Our kids deserve stability, care, and meaningful investment. Please vote no on this cut and stand with the students and family of San Francisco and communities and families. Please also join us at with the San Francisco Educational Alliance as we also fight against these proposed cuts. Thank you.

[Allison Dean (School Social Worker, AP Giannini MS)]: Hello, my name is Kiara. I am an SFUSD parent, an alumni and community member. I'm here because I care deeply about this district and the children it serves. When we talk about budget cuts, I need this board to understand that they don't land evenly. In black and brown communities, these cuts mean fewer counselors, fewer nurses, fewer special education supports in overcrowded classrooms.

[Kiara (SFUSD Parent/Alumni)]: That means the children is losing trusted adults and families are being asked to carry burdens the system should be holding. We are already seeing special education services delayed, language supports reduced, and school sites stretched so thin that discipline replaces support. These are not abstract losses. They shape how a child feels safe at school and whether they believe they belong. For many black and brown families, school is the most stable place our children have and budget decisions should protect that stability and not take it away.

[Ruben Trujillo (Board Office Staff – Public Comment Coordinator)]: Please lighten up as I call your name. If you're a student, do not need to come up again. Alex, Schman, I think. Diana Mueller. Alexia, I think, a. Jennifer Caldwell.

[Speaker 47.0]: Hi. My name is Alexia. I'm a parent at SFC of three kids. First, I wanted to bring up a couple of process topics tonight because I felt like it was very difficult to put in a comment request. And also, you shortened the comment time on a day like today where there's so much to say, and I don't think that's fair. So I think that should be changed. And I wanted to bring up two main points tonight. I mean, first, there was a lot of talk last week about that 110,000,000 that got stashed away that supposedly is money that is, you know, not daily money that has been saved. This is this money belongs to all the students you saw tonight. It does not belong to a reserve. It's money that you didn't spend on all the teachers that you didn't hire for all the students who didn't have a math teacher at SFC, for instance, for a year, for all the other students who didn't have all the teachers or counselors for years. So you don't get to put that money aside. You need to spend it on the students.

[Speaker 48.0]: Hi, my name is Alex Schmouse. I'm a special education instructional aid at Francisco Middle School. I'm also the committee on political education director for United Educators of San Francisco. I'm here like everyone else it seems to speak against the staffing cuts and schedule changes being proposed by district management and the budgetary practices advanced by deputy Superintendent of Business Services and School Operations Chris Mount Benitez. You all do not have to follow the direction that he is leading you in on the budget. You have a choice. You all are considering elimination of low wage security aids weeks after the first school shooting in San Francisco in a decade. These are low wage workers. They do not cost that much money, unfortunately. You have the money to spend on them. The district has four years over estimated expenditures and under estimated revenues. You have manufactured a deficit.

[Speaker 49.0]: Hi. My name is Diana. I am a mom of four SFUSD graduates, a UESF member, and seventeen year veteran special education para in this district. I currently work at Burton High School. Superintendent Sue, board commissioners, as you know, our Burton community is grieving. In these first two weeks of December, we have experienced a school shooting where one of our students was hit and then separately another student's untimely death. On December 2, the same day as the school shooting, doctor Sue, you emailed staff saying, we encourage families to remind students that if they need support or someone to talk to, they can reach out to their school's wellness center, social worker, counselor, teacher, principal, or any other trusted adult on campus. How will these students access these trusted adults when they are among the very positions you choose to cut? This is not student centered. This tears down the guardrails. These you should use today's dollars to for today's students. Thank you.

[Speaker 50.0]: My name is Jen Caldwell and I'm the school social worker at Daniel Webster Elementary. I want to be very clear about what is actually being cut when a school social worker is removed from a campus. At Daniel Webster, I run the Wellness Center which has already had 565 student drop in visits so far this year. I facilitate evidence based counseling groups and conduct risk assessments for students who may be at risk of harming themselves. I lead the coordinated care team, write behavioral mental health 504s, and assist with bullying and harassment and Title IX investigations. I facilitate student success team meetings, coordinate school wide social emotional learning, run the Rainbow Club, consult daily with teachers and families, support behavior de escalation, and respond to crises in real time. I also supervise interns who provide on-site therapy and support our mentoring program along with lunch and yard duty because our job description states other duties as assigned. These are not extras. These are essential services. Would you want your child attending a school without these supports? The students and families who showed up today in this room and outside would say otherwise. Fund social workers full time at every SFUSD school.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: At this time I invite United Educators of San Francisco Vice President, Frank Lara, and United Administrators of San Francisco President, Anna Klefter, to provide comment.

[Anna Clafter (President, United Administrators of San Francisco)]: Good evening. I'm Anna Clafter. I'm a high school principal and the president of United Administrators of San Francisco. I emailed a letter signed by our board of directors to the board of education, and I'm just gonna read a couple highlights because no one can put it like the kids did earlier. We, the leadership of United Administrators of San Francisco, are writing to oppose the district's staffing model as written, and to ask the district to consider a more student focused process that takes into account the different needs of our school sites. Decisions to broadly cut key school personnel and adjust periods at school sites did not involve school leader import input nor any meaningful community input process. These cuts are harmful and will undermine our efforts to achieve our academic and enrollment goals as a district. The rationale for these cuts does not make sense. And these proposed cuts violate the Board of Education's guardrail for the superintendent, which requires meaningful consultation with the parent, guardian, student staff who will be impacted by these decisions. According to guidance from the Council of Great City Schools, if a budget or fiscal plan does not prioritize accomplishment of the district's goals while remaining in the boundaries created by the guardrails, then the board has the responsibility to vote no and send staff back to the drawing board for revisions. Thank you.

[Frank Lara (Vice President, United Educators of San Francisco)]: Evening commissioners, I was asked to turn in these statements by our students at Visitation Valley and Wash. So, I'm going to put that there. And also, want to I want to be respectful to our crowd, particularly the youth. I don't think I've ever witnessed that many young people coming out to defend their own education. As an educator myself, I think it's important that the young people know their power. We're living at a time in this city where everything feels manufactured, where everything is presented as clean-cut and uninterrupted. And, all of a sudden, right, compared to the city where the billionaire has bought off the elections and bought off democracy, luckily we are still a public institution. This is still public education. So, these folks have to answer to you. And, when they talk about cuts, it isn't a generalized thing. When you offer a vision that says fiscal stabilization, that is not a vision. Right? That's just toast. That's bland. You as a family don't want to hear over and over fiscal stabilization while they cut your social worker. Fiscalization while they cut your counselor. Fiscal stabilization while they offered no actual innovative programming happening across the district. So I say that build if you're still outside organizing, organize. Because every time we take a step back, they find an opportunity to continue the same culture and same narrative given the fact that we're in the richest city, in the richest state, in the richest country. So make sure you continue organizing and again UESF stands and mind giving the the speech today for the 6,000 members of our unit and we're urging the board to vote no on this proposal and we stand with our community that spoke here today. And, the following statement that I'll read and sorry to bore all of you with it but I hope you take some of the talking points. This is the unified statement by the executive board of our union, right? There's a 45 member fully representative of our groups and our UBCs. So, again, UESF strongly imposes the school district's proposed staffing allocation and schedule changes that would eliminate essential positions including t tens, security guards, counselors, social workers, and other critical staff. Today, it was announced that social workers will not be cut. We are making progress. We are making momentum. And that's thanks to you. The structural deficit has been put in place by management practices that year after year overestimate expenditures and underestimate revenue. After five years of this practice, they have accumulated a surplus. We, as a union, know they are not serious about addressing fiscal stability because we are still not talking about the fact that SFUSD loses more students than it enrolls. Last year, and they have not fixed the terrible enrollment process, they have not actually worked with schools to expand programming that keeps families. The fact that we, last year, announced in spring that we had a thousand families coming into TK programs and now we're being told that the projected budget actually doesn't include them because we lost more families than that. Okay? Hold on to that. That's the money. That's families want to come. This doom loop narrative that is being projected that somehow kids aren't being produced, right? Every time they open up a program, families flood it. The problem is it's not supported, it's led by substitute teachers which I remember I started trying the best, but it's not being prioritized in our programming. Additionally, how can you go and say you're going to cut $110,000,000 and then say you're also going to put that in reserves? Right? This narrative from FICMAT, these state institutions that sell us the doom loop that say you should put things in savings. We are not a savings account. Right? We are not a bank. We're a public institution that you invest today's dollars in today's students. I'll say this, the cuts to our wellness staff I'm almost done. The cuts to the wellness staff and security staff, to our social workers, to our counselors are unacceptable. The set aside of $111,000,000 to reserve is equally problematic. It was recently announced that we have moved over to a qualified status. And I think you should all know why this is important. We have stated during every contract struggle as a union since COVID, We were told that they claimed they had no money for raises and pointed to concerns about state takeover as the reasons why our members should be satisfied with status quo. And our union, along with state expertise, We have people who do this job across the state. So when we tell you we know their finances better than they do, we know their finances better than they do. Okay? And when they got when they got moved and now we're in qualified status, it proves that our demand for a better managed district was justified. It is not our raises. It is not our pay that is causing this deficit or this structural quote unquote state takeover. It was always about management's capacity and decisions. So just in wrapping up, United Educator San Francisco will not sit idly by as this district management attempts to balance its budget by undermining education. Our members are graduates of SFUSD. We have children in SFUSD. We call SFUSD our district. It is our efforts that have forced the district to be better. And as folks are coming on this break, our members who are here today, our members who are at home, our members who will see this, get some rest. January is gonna be a busy month. We will announce at tomorrow's assembly the second strike vote. That second strike vote would happen in mid January. We tell you this because the last time this happened was in 2005. We continue to want to negotiate a fair contract. We continue to be open to get to that fair contract. But as you see tonight, if they're not listening to families, they won't listen to educators and the thing that will change that is power is coming. The last time these our educators had a strike was in 1979. This doesn't happen. We don't take the decision lightly. So we ask you get some rest. We ask our families to build on this momentum, support your educators, and come back ready in January.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Thank you to members of the public, especially our students for coming here today to provide comments. We're very proud of you and thank you for speaking up. As a reminder, board rules in California law do not allow us to respond to comments or answer questions. And if members of the com public can please move out quietly if you are going to stay with us. Please find a seat.

[Speaker 17.0]: No more shots. No more shots. More shots.

[Ms. Lenoff (Board Secretary/Clerk)]: Is there another way for me to get my comment heard by the public or what? Alright. You guys need to give us more time. You

[Speaker 35.0]: were late by four minutes. Okay.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: The superintendent and her team are tasked with providing a draft of each agenda twelve days in advance for board members to review. Once that draft agenda is made public on our website, board members have a commitment have made a commitment to submit clarifying and tactical questions, and staff have made a commitment to respond to those questions in advance of each board meeting. This q and a doc is linked into each board agenda on board docs today in item e three, and we invite the members of the public to review those questions and answers alongside our discussion today. Additionally, to create more space focused on student outcomes, we'll be moving most of our items to consent calendar and identifying our only our highest priority items to discuss. Members of the public, if you can please lower the volume. Thank you. In Friday's release of the final agenda, commissioners and members of the public may have noticed that certain items have shifted. I have separated out the staffing model and the fiscal stabilization plan. The board does not direct staff nor do we develop have a formal role in developing or approving the staffing model. This is the work of staff and the superintendent. Today, it is agendized, however, as a discussion item, not as an action item. We do, however, have a fiduciary responsibility and legal authority to approve the fiscal stabilization plan, which is why you see that agendized as a standalone action item. Board members are reminded not to restate questions answered by staff in advance, but to instead bring forward strategic questions that allow us to better understand our progress towards our goals and the underlying strategies so that we can be better informed in our decision making and partner with the superintendent as we hold her accountable. Moving to item D, report from closed session. In the matter of San Francisco County Superior Court case number c g c dash two four Dash six one six three seven zero, the board by a vote of seven ayes, ayes and zero nays, the board gives direction to the general counsel. The SFUSC board of education is committed to effective school board governance that centers student learning. Based on community input, the board has adopted our vision, values, goals, and guardrails. In order to increase the portion of board meeting time we spend on student outcomes, every other regular meeting is a monitoring workshop. Our approach to governance also calls on the board to empower the superintendent to take full ownership of the strategies used to reach those goals within the guardrail set by the board. As we implement our governance framework, the board will continue to adopt new systems, routines, policies aimed at improving student outcomes. We encourage the public to follow this work on our website at sfusd.edu/governance as we commit to finding new and improved ways to more meaningfully engage with staff, students, families. Item E, opening items, land acknowledgment. We, the San Francisco Board of Education, acknowledge that we are on the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramatush Ohlone who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula. As the indigenous stewards of this land and in accordance with their traditions, the Ramatush Ohlone have never ceded, lost, nor forgotten their responsibilities as 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 homeland. We wish to pay our respects by acknowledging the ancestors, elders, and relatives of the Ramatish community and by affirming their Savanna rights as First People. Without objection, I would like to also call an item three as I call on item some I also call an item I3 out of order alongside item E four, the student delegate report, to allow student delegates to make their appointments today. Any objections? Seeing none, I call on the student delegates Cruz and Mon to share a report if you

[Ruben Trujillo (Board Office Staff – Public Comment Coordinator)]: have one.

[Student Delegate Cruz]: Hi. I'm student delegate Cruz, and today I'm gonna be appointing Justin Wu Chang from Lowell High School through the PFCAT. Also, we don't have a report on SAC because we haven't had a meeting since last time. Student delegate Moon, she gave the last report. Yeah. Thank you.

[Student Delegate Mon]: Also wanna highlight that Justin was here tonight to give public comment, so he is very involved in this whole thing. And I believe, I'm not sure when, but SAC did appoint someone, I believe, in, like, my freshman year. So I believe, like, three years ago, Lauren Lee. And I just wanna give her a huge shout out because she's now the chair, like, co chair of the PCAC. So I thought that was really cool and just wanted to applaud her for that.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Thank you. Again, if members of the public can take your conversations outside so we can move forward with board business, we would really appreciate that. Thank you. Superintendent's report, Doctor. Sue.

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: Thank you President Kim. Before I start my report, I do want to just take a moment to acknowledge and thank all the students who came out and shared their thoughts, their concerns, their advocacy, their desires for a better school district. I hope that we as the adults in the system will also reflect the same level of passion, commitment, and desire for excellence in all the things that we do. And I for sure want that as well. So I took a lot of notes. I hear you. I know that these cuts are hard. And I know that we need to work together to make sure that we together build a very strong school district not only for our students today but for our students for many more years to come. On that note, before I start as well, I have another section here, but I want to say, because I think some of our students are still out there. I want to be clear, part of the staffing model that was shared particularly for social workers stated that we needed to make a technical adjustment to our allocations for social worker. And that was because we needed to use special type of funding to fund social workers. Unfortunately, we were not able at that time to share how we were going to pay for the remaining numbers of social workers which we know are really important for our students. As many of you and actually many of our students shared, there were a lot of very painful events within the last couple of months. And I was at the school. I was with parents. I was with young people. I was with our students. And I was with our social workers. So I am happy to share that we have been with the additional time over the last several weeks have identified restricted sources to be able to fill the gaps that were for the allocation of our social workers. That doesn't mean and for sure we're not taking it from things that from the restricted sources that many people have mentioned already. But what it does mean is that our budget is still developing. We are still working every single day to make sure that we have a budget that reflects the desires and the needs of our students. So I just want everyone to know we are working on trying to turn every single rock to find those restricted sources to then allocate to make sure that we meet the needs of our students. Thanks Ruben. But we have a lot to go. There are many more things that we need to do to support our students. But I want to be clear that that was something that I wanted to say first because I know that this was really important for our students. Okay, so moving into my presentation. I have a short one because I presented last week already. I want to remind everyone of our enrollment season. Applications are open for our twenty six-twenty seven school year. Families, please please please submit your application in the main round. They are all due January 30 so that you can then be able to receive your student assignment by March 16. Please visit our website sfusd.edu slash apply for more information. And for anyone applying for next school year, please remember, oops sorry, just please remember that the main round ends January 30 and that you can apply online, you can walk into our enrollment center over there. Next slide please. I can't believe that winter break is almost here. For SFUSD families, please know that we, our schools will be closed from December 22 to January 2 and that they will reopen on Monday, January 5. SFUSD offices will be closed for in person services and support during this time. However, you can email us and call us if you need support. And with winter break, please know that Student Nutrition Services will not be serving meals at any of our sites. Especially during the holidays, we know that that might be difficult for some of our families. So we encourage families and students to please visit some of our partner agencies such as the Human Services Agency, the San Francisco Food Bank and other and all of our nonprofit agencies have meal programs and meal options that they are opening up during winter breaks during the time when we are not open. And then finally, I want to close my presentation today with an immemorium for a long time and cherished member of SFUSD's community who passed away last week, Mr. Alan Lovisan. Mr. Allen began his career with SFUSD as a TK-twelve day to day substitute teacher on 01/11/2000. Over the course of twenty five years of service in SFUSD public schools, Mr. Allen served in multiple roles including as an early education substitute teacher, a special education para substitute, and early education para educator substitute. In addition to school year assignments, he worked consistently as both a substitute teacher and substitute para during all summer school sessions for the past twenty five years. Most recently since 2022, Mr. Allen served as the dedicated core substitute at Cleveland Elementary School. His colleagues and students remember Mr. Allen as an integral member of the school community who showed up every day to support students and staff. Mr. Allen willingly helped whenever needed and often went above and beyond for our schools. Please join me in taking a moment of silence in honor of Mr. Allen's memory. And with that, President Kim concludes my presentation.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Thank you, Doctor. Sue. Moving to item F1, draft school year twenty twenty six-twenty seven staffing model. This is a discussion item. No action will be taken tonight on this item. I call on Doctor. Su or her designee to read this into the record. Thank

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: you, President Kim. I'm going to invite our senior team to join me, Deputy Superintendent Chris Mount Vinitas, our CFO, our Associate Superintendent of Ed Services to join me at the dais here because I want to make sure that everyone understands how complicated and hard it was to put together the staffing model. And that there is a desire for a intentional alignment between our budget and how we as a school district want to move towards student outcomes. Next slide please. Thank you. So the draft, the draft staffing model is the way that we want to show how we're going to move towards resourcing our schools. It is not a way to show how we want to cut and dismantle and break our schools. We are using a formula to make sure that we balance our number of students that we have in our school district with unfortunately the resources that we have as well while prioritizing student outcomes. We want to make sure that our staffing model anchors our vision, values, goals and guardrails by aligning the budget priorities with our student outcome goals. We met with a lot of our community through town halls, through dozens of conversations with parents, with educators, with community leaders, with students. And we heard consistently, we need to keep our students at the center of all decisions. Student learning was highest priority. Student support was also important and we need to make sure that our students felt safe and heard. We needed to make sure that whatever budget we were going to present had to align to that.

[Elliott Duchon (State Fiscal Advisor/External Oversight)]: Next.

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: So, to remind everyone, SFUSD has a $1,300,000,000 budget with a structural deficit. Many folks have already mentioned before earlier and of course our Deputy Superintendent of Business Services have shared. What that means is that we are projecting to expend way more than what we are taking in in revenues. But that doesn't mean that we are breaking our system. It means that we need to work harder at aligning the practices that we have and making sure that we have appropriate projections and are using our resources wisely. We did a lot last year. We worked really hard with our communities to make sure that we focused our budget and our strategies around student outcomes. We made sure that we completed that first year of budget reductions while keeping our students at the center. We did cut $114,000,000 from our system. We also had to say goodbye to a lot of individuals, a lot of people. But we did it while continuing to honor the focus and the goal of of moving towards our student outcomes. What we need to do now, we need to continue to prioritize our students. We need to continue to show our commitment to our educators by working with our labor partners, by making sure that we get to an agreement that supports our educators as well as not compromise our fiscal stability. And we have to do that by engaging our community. And I want to pause here by saying we haven't done a good job at that. I should have done more. I should have gone out more and communicated more with our community. We should have had more meetings and we should not have rested on the 20 meetings because that was clearly not enough. We should have gotten more and I commit to doing more and we will continue to have more conversations. We will continue to vet through all of these options. Next slide please. As a quick reminder, SFUSD has a vision, values, goals and guardrails framework. This is part of our student outcomes focused governance framework where it calls out the visions and the values of our community. Our board sets the goals that this school district will move towards as well as the guardrails where it will that provides the structure to align us and to focus us on the work of the district. But what does that really mean? What does it mean to have a student's outcomes focused governance framework? What does it mean to have visions, values, goals, and guardrails? How do all of these things interact with each other and connect with our budget? This is my attempt to demonstrate that cohesion. I want to thank Commissioner Alexander for chairing the Ad Hoc Committee on performance monitoring. Over the last two committee meetings, I legit and I keep sitting I sit next to him and I keep telling him, I am blown away about the power of the VVGGs and how we need to do a better job at implementing it. Our district made the decision to move towards the students outcomes focused governance framework in 2022 and we've been trying to implement it. And I'm very much committed to implementing it this year. But what that means is that we take the board's vision, values, goals, guardrails and I as the superintendent need to work with my team to figure out how we will implement that. And through our executive cabinet, they will set with me our policies and design the strategies on implementing the values, the VVTGs. And this is an iterative process where it does line up with how are we going to design a vision, values, goals, and guardrails framework that will move the needle for our students and align with the resources that we have. Again, this is my best attempt at trying to show that cycle of alignment and coordination. Next slide please. Many of you have seen this slide before. It shows the total budget of the district, dollars 1,300,000,000.0. I'm going to attempt to do this, but I'm going to look to our budget folks here. The main takeaway here is that the majority of our budget goes towards our students, goes towards instruction, instruction related services, student services. There's a small portion that goes towards operations. And that's how we should look, that's how we should be. Now the question is what portion of this goes towards all of those areas within the goals and guardrails? Next slide please. I want to start moving towards a place where when we talk about moving our goals and guardrails, we are talking about how are we investing in them as well. The local control funding formula, the LCFF, is the state's way of allocating resources to districts. It is our job as a district to try to balance and align these two. So, here's my attempt at doing that. Our LCAP goal one of student achievement in literacy, math, college, and career readiness aligns with our goals one, two, and three as well as guardrail three. Currently the total investment for this strategy is $233,800,000 You will see it go all the way down. Our LCAP goal of serving the whole child aligns with our guardrail too. We are allocating 56,400,000 towards that. LCAP goal three strategic partnerships align with guardrails one and five. We are allocating $16,900,000 towards there. Goal four anti racist culture and equitable support aligns with all of our goals and all of our guardrails and that is 8,200,000 Our LCAP goal five of operational coherence aligns with guardrail four of resource allocation which is $21,400,000 As we continue to build better budgeting systems, we will be able to get even more nuanced into showing how we are allocating each of our dollars towards each of the interim goals and interim guardrails. Next slide. So as I shared earlier, our staffing model. Our staffing model was designed to demonstrate our worst case scenario of staffing towards a budget. If we did not have enough budget, what were the minimal things that we could afford to do? And I'm sorry I did not share that appropriately. I didn't tell people that that's what the staffing model that I sent and posted. That it was worst case scenario. It wasn't best case scenario. In my conversation with our educators, we committed our administrators. We committed to working with them throughout the entire month of January to negotiate, to align, to be flexible so that their total bottom line allocation will reflect what their school community needed. And so, I want to make sure that everyone knows we are resourcing schools. We are providing schools with the obligations of having a principal, having a clerk, of course having teachers. But we also recognize that schools need more. Schools need to have those support staff as well. And that is why over the last several weeks we were able to identify restricted sources which just means they're not, not, not the regular dollars that we get for teachers. These are dollars that are restricted for specific things like social workers and social work activities. So we were finally able to identify those funds and now we're able to allocate those funds to close the gap. I commit to our community that we will continue to do that. We will continue to look for restricted resources to make sure that we have the funds to have social workers, T10s, instructional coaches, assistant principals, and paraeducators. But please note these are restricted sources. They're limited funds. And so we're going to have to constantly do this every year. So, where are we in the budget process? Last year, last year, last week, feels like a year, last week we shared the first interim. And yes, we were excited about it because we demonstrated in the first interim that we were doing the right things about staying on task with our fiscal diet. We were learning how to flex a new fiscal allocation muscle that kept us within the limits of our budget allocation. And we were very excited about that. I'm very excited about that. Because again, last year we made really hard decisions. And today, we will be sharing with you a fiscal stabilization plan which again will demonstrate worst case scenario of a fiscal budget. It does not mean that is the cut plan. There's no cut plan here. We are just demonstrating the worst case scenario of the budget. In January, we will be sending all of our site leaders their budget allocation and we will be working with all of our site leaders to ensure that again their budgets reflect what their communities want. On January 10, we will be hosting School Site Council Summit where all of our families will come together to talk about the budget to make sure that the budget reflects what they want for their schools in their schools. We will continue on this process. Our educators and our administrators will come in and meet with our leaders here to make sure that we are hashing it all out and we'll then share a final budget at the January. In March, we will come back and share our second interim budget with the board and then continue to June where we will share the final budget with the Board. I'm going to pause here and ask if any of our team members here have any questions. Okay. And, oh, well, that's it. That's my presentation. But I just thank the Board for your patience and again fully acknowledge that we should have been clearer in sharing the staffing model. We should have had more engagement in what this meant for our community. And I commit to continuing to do that. Thank you.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: I will open it up for comments and questions from commissioners. Commissioner Weissman-Ward.

[Lisa Weissman-Ward (Commissioner)]: Thank you. And I appreciate this is a discussion item. It's not one that we're voting on. And I guess a follow-up question for you, Doctor. Su. In terms of the thank you for recognizing that sort of the quantity and quality of conversations with community was insufficient. And so I guess my question is what will it look like that what will be different in terms of how these conversations will continue and what can community expect in terms of these dialogues?

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: Well, again, we will share with our school leaders their budget in early January. And we hope that our school leaders will continue to engage with our parents throughout the month of January. During that time, I will continue to have engagements. And we will maybe should have more engagements. I haven't fully formed what that would look like. I'm not sure if you want to speak to that.

[Speaker 57.0]: Yes. Thank you, Commissioner Weissman-Ward for your question. You know, the power of local control is really having school communities have autonomy and self determination of the resources they're allocated to school sites so that they can make effective decisions for their school communities. Because we know there is not a cookie cutter way for serving the diverse needs of our diverse school communities in San Francisco. So, part of what we heard when we went out to do the budget engagement this time around was that they are, know, school communities at school site councils are eager for us to come out there, engage with them, listen to them, understand what their priorities are. That is going to be aligning the work that we're doing in winter and spring to continue engaging, listening and being in dialogue with school communities. I think also the second piece here is really reducing the barrier of entry. We had designed a fall budget engagement campaign aimed at building budget fluency and literacy among the community. Our hope is that with what we have begun to do in the fall to continue building off of the work that we are doing to align our budgeting process and budget development process with our VVGG cascade throughout the organization. And also I think just to name that we're starting very early. This is the nascent stage of our budget development process. And so this dialogue and conversation absolutely necessary. It is absolutely difficult. And we are gearing up for once we come back from winter break.

[Lisa Weissman-Ward (Commissioner)]: Thanks. I think one of the, maybe that sort of the disconnects is that when we see actual projected changes, One would and again, I understand this discussion item, when there's an actual description of positions and projected changes, if community if it feels like, well, is our starting place and now we're going to talk about it with community, I think it's a reasonable sort of feeling that, well, this is already done because here it is on a slide or in document as opposed to we have these projected changes and we're going to tell you this came from these conversations. And this is, obviously not everyone's going to agree and I understand that. But the ability to articulate, the reason why we say, you know, projected reduction of 56 FTE is because of these conversations and this is how it maps onto what we're thinking about student outcomes. I think that's what we need to hear. Otherwise, it's like well this is a starting place and you're sort of going up a hill to sort of be proven why this isn't appropriate.

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: Yes. And fully acknowledge that the way we drafted I'm looking at the staffing model here. The way we drafted the staffing model, again, it says draft. And it's you're right that it doesn't convey that there is an opportunity to engage. And I do apologize that. I think the one area where we did note in the social work section that we were allocating a very particular type of restricted sources for social work And then we put a note that said that we were still looking for additional restricted sources to cover the gap. But again, you're right that it did not demonstrate that there was a desire to engage along those conversations. And we need to do better.

[Lisa Weissman-Ward (Commissioner)]: Just one more thing. I think a desire to engage, but also that these numbers came from engagement to begin with. Think that's the other point. Like that we, you know, looking this number came from, you know, talking to administrators and thinking about like what would yes, we want as many APs as possible, but knowing that there are some constraints there, what feels like a reasonable number? And that's how we got this. And I think sort of that these numbers came from engagement from the beginning, but then also that we can continue to iterate and talk. So I think it's like that before, during, and then closing the loop. If there's a disagreement, we hear you and this is why we're not agreeing to x, y, and z.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Hi.

[Student Delegate Mon]: Yeah, I also really wanted to just give a huge shout out to all the young people that came out today. I also understand because a lot of them were high school students and it is finals week and 8PM on a Tuesday night. So props to you guys. I had a couple of questions on

[Ms. Lenoff (Board Secretary/Clerk)]: Okay.

[Student Delegate Mon]: I think my first question is, Superintendent Sue, you mentioned when you were going over the slides that it's a worst case scenario. And I was wondering how likely is the worst case scenario to happen? And what does that process look like?

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: I'm going to start and then I'll hand it over to our Deputy Supry of Business Services. Just want to remind everyone we're only in December. So school just started that's why we have our first interim which is the first checkup of how we are doing in budgeting within the framework, within our guardrails, right? And so because we are actually doing a really good job at budgeting within the allocation, we're not anywhere near worst case scenario right now. But I will say there are three big unknowns at this moment in time because again we're only in December. There are three really big unknowns. First unknown, we do not know what the Governor's budget is going to look like. That is going to come in January. Number two, we do not know what our student enrollment is going to look like and that will come at the January. And number three, we still do not know what our final labor contracts will look like. And hopefully that will come in the next few months. So because of that, I am saying right now at this moment in time we are nowhere near worst case scenario. But because we are currently under state oversight, We have to demonstrate and show the state if there was a worst case scenario, if these things happened, how will you address it? I'm going to hand it over to our Deputy Superintendent to add anymore.

[Chris Mount-Benitez (Deputy Superintendent, Business Services & School Operations)]: Yeah. You hit everything, Doctor. Su. So the only thing that I would say is, yeah, it's an iterative process. At this point, we have to still plan for all those variables and hope they come in better than we anticipate. And and they aren't even considered in the current documents as far as being actualized because we don't know what's gonna happen. Right? So right now, it's just all based on assumptions and and the guidance that we get from the state.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Vice President Huling?

[Jaime Huling (Vice President)]: So I think one thing that is difficult about these conversations is because we reference the vision, values, goals, guardrails a lot without explicitly saying and reminding our community what they are and why and what that means in practice around budgeting. So our three student outcome goals are third grade literacy, eighth grade math, and college and career readiness. And ultimately that means that we're trying to safeguard our investments in academic outcomes for students on those things to my understanding. But as a board member I should not be in the position of defending a staffing model as to what investments are being protected and what cuts are being weighed. And to me I think there's just been a lack of communication, two way communication with our communities around saying things that we've heard on the board like we are investing in instructional coaches to help make sure that the new third grade literacy or the new, you know, literacy curriculum that we've invested in, a new math curriculum that we've invested in are being taught with fidelity, that students are reaping the full benefits of that. We're actually seeing benefits to student outcomes, to student achievement, and we want to keep that going. And so we're going to make trade offs in other areas. And the lack of communication around that to me makes it really, really difficult for our communities to understand where we're choosing. And so I'd like to ask, for example, Theresa Ship to talk about why certain choices were made here to keep certain staff and not others and what the student outcomes data is that backs those trade offs. Absolutely. Thank you Vice President Huling. In particular

[Theresa Shipp (Associate Superintendent, Educational Services)]: I think you described the instructional coach position exactly the way it should be described, right? So through our ad hoc work and through our work with the VVGGs, we know that we really do need to focus in on instruction and bringing meaningful instruction to our students. We also know that with a rollout of a new curriculum, two new curriculums in some instances, that's a huge lift. And we also know that in order to do that effectively, our teachers deserve coaching. Our teachers deserve that support. And our students deserve the teachers who are getting that support. The instructional coach, we have really built into our implementation, our metrics. We've used we're measuring our walk through tools with our instructional coaches. All of these different metrics we're using because we are truly our theory of action is that our instructional coaches will bring positive impacts for academics for our students. And if that is the vehicle we are all signing on for through our VVGGs and through our work with the Ad Hoc and through our beliefs with the VVGGs, then that is where we need to invest our money. We need to make sure that our budget shows what our beliefs are for our students for their academic outcomes. And so that is the perfect example of the instructional coach.

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: VP Huling, actually can we put up the slides again? Marin. So in my slide deck for this item in the appendix what you'll see is well, we haven't done it. We will do this is to really show the investments. It's slide twelve, thirteen. Oh, there you go. I'm sorry I'm looking over there. This is going to, we're going to slowly move towards this model so that we can really clearly show everyone how we are allocating our resources to move the needle on each one of these interim goals as well as interim guardrails because this is the alignment that our students deserve. If we as a governance team say we want to move third grade literacy rates and these are the things that will help us move third grade literacy rates, then we need to know how much it costs and we need to know how much money we are either adding or protecting. And so the next exercise after this is for us to start populating each of the costs, the current costs, and the projections for next year so that we can have clearer understanding of what it truly costs to move the needle for each one of these metrics because it will cost money. It actually will force us to make really focused and sometimes difficult decisions. Because we're going to say we really want to move literacy rates for our African American and Pacific Islander kindergarteners. And if we say that, then how much would that cost? And what are we going to not do because of that? That's the exercise that we will have to do.

[Theresa Shipp (Associate Superintendent, Educational Services)]: Absolutely. And I just wanted to add to that, Doctor. Su. So Doctor. Su's talking about alignment and making sure that our VVGGs are really guiding all of our different decisions. And there's a through line there, right? So we heard some feedback when we were looking at instructional coaches in the model, because we'll stick to that topic. We heard feedback from the school sites that they found it to be challenging to hire the instructional coach. They felt like the communication had been that they couldn't hire an instructional coach until 95% of our classrooms were full. And I don't want to steal Amy's thunder from HR, but she is highlighting in the supplemental hiring guide that no, we are doubling down on our belief in the instructional coaches. And instructional coaches can be hired on the same hiring timeline before that 95% is reached. And that is because we don't want that to be a challenge for schools. We don't want schools to say, well, we would like to change it in for x, y, and z. Use that money amount because of the challenge of we're never going to be able to fill the position. So we're saying no. We believe in this. And we understand your challenge. And we understand your feedback. So thank you for that. So working with human resources, which is that alignment part, making sure that we're all on the same page and making sure that if this is truly our implementation and truly our metrics, that we are making it possible for school sites to be successful in that.

[Jaime Huling (Vice President)]: Thank you. The other thing I wanted to ask about is from Superintendent Sue's presentation, what we heard in the listening sessions. And I know all of us as commissioners were able to attend probably about half a dozen apiece. And one of those things that we heard was the need for improved communication and sensitivity to impact on school communities. And one thing I'm concerned about, about the school staffing model is that it does appear to be a bit one size fits all. And we know we have really diverse schools with really diverse needs. And where is the flexibility for schools to make choices about what works best for them while serving our student outcome goals. I've heard from some schools, for example, that the instructional coach being substituted for an RTIF actually led them to lower achievement in literacy, which isn't what we saw on a district wide level, but we want to maximize for each school's achievement

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: and needs. That yes. And we heard that consistently. Give the educators and the administrators the flexibility to really allocate to meet their school community because each of our schools are unique and the needs of our students are very unique. Which is why we have at this point scheduled out all of the one on one meetings of our site leaders with business, HR and Ed Services. So every one of our administrators will have an opportunity to sit down with our central office leaders and walk through their budget and demonstrate and ask or negotiate or explain what they need and why they need it. And we get to have that conversation and dialogue with our school leaders so that we can land at a place that truly meets the needs of our community. Because again, it cannot be one size fit all. We have to have these one on one conversations. And we will do that in the month of January. All 125 meetings.

[Ms. Lenoff (Board Secretary/Clerk)]: Good evening.

[Supryia Ray (Commissioner)]: Thank you all. Really appreciate the work that's been put in because I know it was significant. And also, there has been a tremendous amount of community feedback and concern surrounding things in part, as I think folks have alluded to, because of how they were presented. And in the sense that there really wasn't or isn't an opportunity for a community input and feedback. So I hope that we will be sure to provide it and make it clear that we are doing so. There's a few things that I wanted to check on and sort of comment on the staff excuse me, the Q and A, the Commissioner Q and A. With regard to questions around affected schools, for instance, which schools are affected by particular changes, what the overall impact is on various schools, the answers that were provided indicate that the district can't provide that type of information until we have more information about enrollment and allocations. Or that with regard to impact assessments, there's sort of a very general answer about engaging with site leaders. But I think these are things that everybody has at the heart of their concerns about their schools. What is going be the impact on our school? Have people thought about mitigating those impacts and so forth? And I'd like to ask what our plan is to address those sort of fundamental issues for everybody.

[Chris Mount-Benitez (Deputy Superintendent, Business Services & School Operations)]: Thank you, Commissioner. I believe we talked about this yesterday as well. So I can take the first part. So the allocations are not complete until we actually have projected enrollment information because the staffing allocations are based on the number of students that are enrolling. And we're two months into the enrollment period. It ends in January. We'll be working over the break to develop the allocations based on the latest information that's in the enrollment system as well as basically the supplemental projection of what we believe is going to occur through the rest of January. But allocations will still be preliminary because we will need the ability to change them if there's any surprise in the enrollment process. So for example, if a school gains 20 more TKers than we anticipate, then we would have to reallocate resources to provide the services for those students. So we'll be working through that process through the winter break. We will have allocations out in early January. At that time, we can share them. But until they're done, we just don't have anything to share. As far as how they compare to the past, I think that there are a number of issues that I've shared with the public as well as commissioners, and that is the quality of data and the transparency of data in the past has not been high. So we will share what we've done this year. The only item that we have from last year are the actual allocation letters as individual PDFs. That's what we have at this time, because no one seems to have kept the master allocation schedule or methodology in a source document. So we will share last year's PDFs as well as next year's preliminary allocation PDFs for folks that want to look. But we have to get the work done before we have it for people to look at. As far as the impacts, I'm I'm not certain about that one.

[Supryia Ray (Commissioner)]: Does anyone want to address impacts? What analysis, for instance, the district has or can do to determine what the impacts are beyond just the cost savings from taking particular action. So what those impacts are of proposed reductions. And essentially, what are we going to provide to folks to be able to mitigate those impacts or allow folks to do at school sites?

[Chris Mount-Benitez (Deputy Superintendent, Business Services & School Operations)]: So I think you might need to add more clarification. So an allocation methodology, the impact would be based on enrollment. So if enrollment goes down, it might mean that there's one fewer teacher or two fewer teachers if enrollment goes down that amount. That's all the allocation methodology does. I think what you're asking about may be more related to the FSP. I'm not sure what the impact that you're asking about here is.

[Supryia Ray (Commissioner)]: I'm asking more about things like, fortunately, we know that we now have ability to retain social workers, which is fantastic. But if schools need to end up cutting 50% of their security, which is a massive concern for almost everyone at their school sites, especially given the incidents, the number of incidents we've seen this year, what, if anything, will the school be able to do about that?

[Alida Fisher (Commissioner)]: Yes.

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: Again, the staffing model that we shared and posted online right now is the worst case scenario. Hopefully we don't have to get there. Hopefully we don't have to be there. But having conversations with our administrators to figure out what are the impacts if we were to reduce you know, worst case scenario 50% of their T10s, their security aid, security guards, what would that impact look like? What I have done is also asked our city partners, our CPO nonprofit agencies if there was an opportunity for some of our CBOs to come in and provide additional supports. And so I think that there is an opportunity for us to in some ways open up our arms and say please come and help us. And a lot of our CBOs and our nonprofit partners are saying yes, we can provide support. Not to say that we are taking over or supplanting any jobs or any roles, but it's to provide additional supports. Again, we won't know final numbers until we have greater clarity on some of those open remaining uncertainties right now.

[Supryia Ray (Commissioner)]: Okay. Thank you. I also hope that we will be able to have strategies beyond just partnering with CBOs because while that's certainly great, I would like there to be as many opportunities as possible for school sites to be proactive and the district to be proactive in mitigating impacts.

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: Yes, and thank you for reminding me. It also means that we have to go out and look at other restricted sources, restricted funds so that we can either go and look at grants or other opportunities that are out there. But those are additional things and additional resources that we would be able to bring in.

[Supryia Ray (Commissioner)]: Thank you. I think the last thing that I wanted to ask about today is again about the proposed shift to a six period day, which I think caused a tremendous amount of consternation and confusion among people. I still feel unclear on what that proposed shift entails and whether it impacts middle schools, high schools, or both. I don't think documentation has been consistent about what that is intended to cover

[Theresa Shipp (Associate Superintendent, Educational Services)]: Thank and you, Commissioner Ray. I appreciate that question. I'm going to separate it into two kind of conversations, if that's okay with you, because they are very different, the high school conversation and the middle grades conversation. So I'll start with high school first. So currently we fund our high schools at a seven period staffing day model, right? That model, but we also have to follow the UESF contract. The contract says teachers can only teach five classes, not in then we take away APs or department head preps. I'm not going get into all of that, but let's use the basics, right? So when we expanded from a six period day to a seven period day, teachers still remained teaching the five classes, which means we had to add more teachers to cover the courses, right? We know that our ninth and tenth graders are absolutely accessing seven periods a day. Currently, percent, only 16% of our twelfth graders have A G courses for seven periods a day. Now, some of you think, oh my goodness, what are our twelfth graders doing, right? It's because we have a lot of other opportunities. We have dual enrollment. We have Mission Bay Hub. We have workforce development. We have internships. We have all of these different classes, but yet we're funding for a seven period day, right? So if we say we're going to fund for a six period day, but I'm the principal of the school and I know that maybe my juniors, which are only at 47% of students taking A through G seven period classes, right? So if I know my eleventh is only 47%, my twelfth is only about 16%, I know that I probably don't need to really cover my afternoon classes as much because my students are going to City College or my students are going to an internship or a job or whatever they may be going to. So I'm really going to pack my classes in the morning, which means even though I'm funded for a six period day, I can still offer a seven period day through manipulation of the master schedule to my ninth and tenth graders who are accessing those classes. So it's really a funding model and bringing it differently to the master schedule.

[Chris Mount-Benitez (Deputy Superintendent, Business Services & School Operations)]: Yeah,

[Speaker 35.0]: go for it.

[Chris Mount-Benitez (Deputy Superintendent, Business Services & School Operations)]: I'm hearing the terminology in real time and just want to clarify. Funding for a six period day, meaning funding the staffing allocation for a six period day, not mean that a school site can't offer a seven or eight period day. So three of us up here are former high school teachers and principals. That's the common model in California. So you receive your number of staffing because of the base five classes plus a prep. But that doesn't mean you can't have a zero period, where some teachers like to start earlier and end their day earlier. That also doesn't mean that you can't do and I mean an academic zero period, not just sort of a homeroom or an advisory, but an actual academic period. It also doesn't mean that you can't do one that's after and maybe somebody starts later and ends later based on the schools. So we have those models here. They existed when we funded on the six base allocation. They can continue to function afterwards. So I just want to decouple the idea of allocation versus telling people that they're limited to a particular schedule. That's not the case. So middle schools and high schools were doing seven and eight period days here prior to moving from the six to the base seven, and they can do so after as well. Now, the program impact, yes, that's where Theresa is adjusting. But just providing base six versus base seven does not change that flexibility.

[Theresa Shipp (Associate Superintendent, Educational Services)]: I just want to also further clarify, because we know with our VVGGs, we want to make sure that we are reaching our college career goals. We are really making sure that A through G eligibility is there for all of our students. I'm also pulling each high school master schedule individually and really looking. So we have one high school who's over 65% of their current twelfth graders are enrolled in a seven period day, and that's because they have a really strong CTE pathway. So we need to look at the CTE funding there and make sure that we are still allowing those opportunities, right? But if we also have another high school that has less than 10% of their seniors in seven periods, again that's because they're accessing dual enrollment and all these other opportunities, so we need to look at that funding model and really figure out how we're supporting that model also.

[Supryia Ray (Commissioner)]: Sorry, also for middle schools?

[Theresa Shipp (Associate Superintendent, Educational Services)]: Yes, I was going to go there. Thought you were going ask another question, so I wanted to. Okay. So for middle schools, again, what we did was and I think it was incredibly well intentioned to make a seven period day, but we didn't expand the actual day at all. We added a class into the same amount of time for our students which actually the impact led to less core instructional time. So the CDE recommends three hundred minutes a week for our students in English Language Arts. In a seven period day, unless they have an acceleration period, which I pulled the master schedules and we don't have many sites offering that, we are not meeting our minimum recommended minutes for our instructional core. And again, going back to our VVGGs, we know that we really need to be driven by our values, our vision values, goals, guardrails. And if we're not offering the recommended minutes for our instructional core, then how are we going to be doing this impact? Again, I want to clarify that we do have several middle schools currently that don't have a seven period day. They have a six period day, and the way they are still continuing to offer a seven period for their students is they've staggered the teacher schedule. So they have a teacher starting at zero period, so maybe the PE teacher starts at zero period because we know everyone needs to go into PE. So PE starts at zero period, students are accessing it there. Then another teacher stays through seventh period. They start at second period, right? So we have that flexibility but it's still funding it on a six period day and allowing for our students to get their recommended minutes in the instructional core. Again, it's a flexibility model, but the funding model would still be a six period day.

[Chris Mount-Benitez (Deputy Superintendent, Business Services & School Operations)]: One more interjection. Sorry, people need to be clear. Everything that Teresa just said is correct. However, it's not recommended. It's required. And as your compliance person, we are required to offer those instructional minutes. Okay. But we are hitting the total number of Yes. Okay.

[Theresa Shipp (Associate Superintendent, Educational Services)]: So let me just clarify what Chris just said. I

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: was about ready to.

[Theresa Shipp (Associate Superintendent, Educational Services)]: No, no, no. We have a total required instructional minute, which we absolutely hit. That is a requirement. They will pill all of our funding. We hit that. What we don't hit is the recommended individual core instructional minutes. And that's because we have a seven period day without actually expanding the day. We added another class in there, which is wonderful, but we didn't actually change the start or end. The way we can do that is through a staggered day. For the teachers, the students may not see any difference, but we can stagger it for the teachers.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Thank you for that clarification. Student delegates, know it's 09:00. Student delegate Cruz, is there anything you want to add before you head off?

[Student Delegate Cruz]: Yeah, I wanted to ask something about, so I got confused by a lot of point of views. I felt like a lot of public comment was talking about social workers and those resources at schools. How did that even come into consideration as, we can say, the funding of a budget? Because I felt like for it to potentially be a worst case scenario, I felt like it shouldn't be considered at all because I feel like if we wanna keep those margins of having our SFUSD students stay in school, let's not remove what keeps them in it. I felt like that for me was like, what are we what like, what is the plan? Because we can't preach safety of schools and students' mental health if we're our actions aren't aligning to it. I felt like it was something that shouldn't be considered at all or brought up at all. So I just wanted to add that because that kind of, like, hit me to a certain extent because I know a lot of students who benefit from that. So let's, like, keep that nodding consideration, find different alternatives, and let our public your comments be clear to the public. I felt like that's really essential because we are discussing a lot of confusions, but it's also the message you guys are trying to give aren't clear enough. So how do you want parents or students to understand what you guys are trying to say when you guys aren't making it clear enough? So that was just my comment. Overall, thank you.

[Student Delegate Mon]: Just wanted to add something before I leave. Yeah, similarly, very want to echo that. Because I know when I was listening to the public comment, I heard a lot of students from APG, which is a middle school that I went to. And they were talking about the wellness center and everything. And I really resonated with that, as well as the Willie Brown Middle School because I go to Lowell, we have a program where we tutor kids from Willie Brown, and my friends are part of it. And I go visit every Wednesday. And I just, again, wanted to add about how the youth are so amazing tonight. And from what you mentioned about the seven period to six period thing, what I'm understanding is that there is a shift, but there is no real shift that the students will experience. And therefore, concerns around the electives that a lot of students were talking about tonight? Like, will their electives be affected because of this change? Or does it not matter?

[Theresa Shipp (Associate Superintendent, Educational Services)]: Yeah, I appreciate that question. Thank you. And I appreciate the feedback from both of you. It's always really important to hear that, and it really does resonate. So thank you. The shift and I'm going to smile when I tell you this the classes will be longer. You will be spending more time concentrating in on your instructional core. And so although at your school, if you decide to take the zero period or the seventh period, however you'd structure it, or you're in dual enrollment, I'm not sure, but your core classes will be longer. The minutes will be longer. You will spend more time in school.

[Student Delegate Mon]: And so the elective classes in the middle schools, would they be affected?

[Theresa Shipp (Associate Superintendent, Educational Services)]: So it would be all according to the master schedule, right? So if you're in a language program and that is your decision, right, let's say you're going to take Spanish immersion class, that would be your elective during the periods one through six. But you can stay for a zero period and access something else, or stay for a seventh period and access something else there.

[Chris Mount-Benitez (Deputy Superintendent, Business Services & School Operations)]: Could you I think it would be helpful as high school folks I know there's three of us here but also for all schools. Talk about how local control impacts that, because we're talking about scheduling. So the local control we allow in San Francisco is traditionally that we allow that control locally.

[Theresa Shipp (Associate Superintendent, Educational Services)]: Absolutely. We don't have I do want me?

[Matt Alexander (Commissioner)]: No, you know me.

[Theresa Shipp (Associate Superintendent, Educational Services)]: Because you also have experience building master schedules. I didn't know if you wanted to jump in. Exactly. So Bell schedules, your school site will decide on that. Your school site will decide on if it's a rolling block, if it is what do they call it? Flash Monday, where you go to every single class and then you go to the block the next day. All of those different aspects are decided through normally a UBC, your union, your union building committee, your SSC, your faculty, and your administration.

[Student Delegate Mon]: Thank you so much for Thank answering all the

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: you. Thank you, student delegates.

[Speaker 2.0]: Yeah, good night.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Have a good evening.

[Theresa Shipp (Associate Superintendent, Educational Services)]: Good night. Thank you.

[Alida Fisher (Commissioner)]: Commissioner Alexander, thank you. Happy holidays.

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: Good holidays. Good luck with finals. Yeah.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Commissioner Alexander?

[Matt Alexander (Commissioner)]: Yeah, I was gonna Thank you, Associate Superintendent Chip. I was gonna say, I was gonna actually make a request that all of us former principals not be the ones to be having this conversation. Think I would like to request that some actual current principals come and have this conversation because I've well, and I and I I'm joking a little, but I but I'm actually quite serious because I've gotten a mountain of feedback in the last couple weeks from principals. I have relations with a lot of principals as a former principal in the district. That's all negative. Like, haven't had a single principal that supports this plan. So so I guess it's a little it feels confusing, I think, to hear this kind of idea. Well, we can fund our schools at six periods and they can really have seven. I I don't actually think that's true, but maybe. I mean, I could get that there's like some creative things that could be done, but I would love to hear from our principals. And particularly around guardrail four, right? We talk a lot about guardrail one and I appreciate that conversation. But Guardrail four says that our allocations to schools must be, quote, baseline sufficient to operate all schools while addressing inequitable inputs and creating more equity and excellence in student outcomes. So I've had principals come and say, you know, had outreach from middle school principals who said the impact on schools serving low income students was of the staffing model was much greater. Like some schools were losing 15 staff and others were losing one staff and it was schools serving low income students that were losing 15 for example. So it felt like that this and another principal said to me it's just not possible to run a school at this staffing level. Another one said these are just quotes it honestly feels like the staffing model proposed was made by people who have never actually worked in a school. These were SFUSD principals that reached out to me. I had teachers reach out talking about the impact on EL students of taking away the seven period day. Oh, another teacher said the seven period day is what allows for our common planning time. If you hire instructional coaches but don't have the seven period day, we're not going to have time to meet with the instructional coach. So the instructional coach is going be sitting in the staff room with nothing to do. So, oh, and the seven period day was put in place as a strategy to achieve our academic goals two years ago according to one teacher who reached out to me. So why are we pulling the rug out from under it without a real data based analysis? Decimating our schools would only drive families away, another teacher said. So again, these were just comments that were unsolicited that I received that seemed to indicate that guardrail four was not actually being met. And so I'm just curious, do we have any principals to actually support this staffing model? Do we have any teachers that support it? Do we have any families that support it? Is this like I guess I don't even understand where this is coming from.

[Theresa Shipp (Associate Superintendent, Educational Services)]: Yeah. Again, so I too have had many, many different conversations with various educational partners, making sure that we truly are working in partnership, that we really are there. And I think there's a couple of things. Number one, what I'm hearing from you is that we've not done a good job communicating, which we've talked about. Right? And we absolutely need to do a better job there. Normally, presentations and communications come out at the school site council summit meeting. We are trying to do everything so much earlier and really be transparent every step of the way. And so I appreciate that feedback. I have committed absolutely to meeting with every single principal if they would like to, to really go over their allocation, look at their master schedule, look at impacts to students. If it is, what is the actual impact to a student? And let's go there. That's not a problem at all.

[Matt Alexander (Commissioner)]: Yeah, but I think I guess my question, I appreciate the one on one meetings, again, I think it's more of a systemic question as to how did this how was this plan developed and does it how do what is our evidence that it actually is quote baseline sufficient to operate all schools while addressing inequitable inputs and creating more equity and excellence in student outcomes. I So was just giving those examples of feedback from practitioners in our district. I haven't had a single person say that they thought it met that standard. So I guess if you all are asserting that it meets that standard, I guess I'm saying kind of what's the evidence. Does that make

[Theresa Shipp (Associate Superintendent, Educational Services)]: Yes, absolutely, Commissioner Alexander. And I think no one wants cuts, right? So I think that's the first thing. No one wants to be a leader during a time where we have to be making these cuts. So I just want to state that. No one comes here every day and thinks, I want to change some things up today, right? But what we do want to do is make sure that we are making positive impacts for students. So if we do have to cut, basis for that? And how can we make sure that we are continuing to do the VVGGs? So when you look at instructional minutes and we're not meeting our recommended instructional minutes, that is a very hard conversation to have. What does that look like? If we're sitting here and we're saying that, you know, eighth grade math is our goal and we're not meeting our basic instructional minutes for middle school math, I have some major concerns.

[Matt Alexander (Commissioner)]: But that's a different conversation than whether or not we're going to make reductions. So those are two different conversations. So if you're saying, what's our strategy to meet our goals? And you want to increase math instructional time, that actually probably requires additional resources. We're talking here about making reductions and I'm saying how do we and the reductions are not required. Mean we voted the board voted last week to put $111,000,000 in a reserve. The approximate total of the school based cuts in items three and four on the fiscal stabilization fund is $26,000,000 We could decide to take $26,000,000 a year over the next three years and not make any of these cuts. So you all as staff are recommending the superintendent is recommending these cuts. And so I'm just asking, how does that since we do have a choice, it's not like we're bankrupt because we actually have we've been building up this surplus. So how does it align with guardrail four that it's baseline sufficient to operate all schools while addressing inequitable inputs and creating more equity and excellence in student outcomes?

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: And just to recognize that, sorry, the timer wasn't running.

[Matt Alexander (Commissioner)]: Know. Really love that, actually. Thank you. That's just my I'm not going to ask anything. That's my I

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: was running the clock. Thank you.

[Chris Mount-Benitez (Deputy Superintendent, Business Services & School Operations)]: That's why he didn't stop.

[Matt Alexander (Commissioner)]: I actually I feel bad.

[Ruben Trujillo (Board Office Staff – Public Comment Coordinator)]: I actually

[Matt Alexander (Commissioner)]: did notice that.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Honesty

[Chris Mount-Benitez (Deputy Superintendent, Business Services & School Operations)]: is Take advantage. Take advantage. Two things. And I'm not going to be able to answer all of your question. But I do want to point out that the allocation methodology is based locally on what we've done in the past, primarily as codified in our various collective bargaining agreements, which are lower as far as meaning that it's more staff or lower student to staff ratio than any of the state recommendations. So we are exceeding that. And so we used as a baseline what we've always used as a baseline, which is providing all of the staff that our CBAs call for as well as additional. And I would tell the board from the perspective and I have some more folks now, including from other districts, we're used to doing staffing throughout the state. Because of our local resources, we actually allocate far more because we have those local resources than most districts enjoy. So it is far and above any minimum state recognized, and it is meeting and exceeding, in almost all cases our CBA. So that's the baseline that the district that's what the allocation methodology is. And so now how does that meet or exceed the guardrail that you're citing? I mean, if we want to change the CVA or say that we need more and I also want to remind folks, this is not a cut conversation. I heard the word come up three times in that exchange. That's the problem that we've been experiencing, is we keep using the wrong language for the wrong items. Cuts don't happen for a school district until no later than March 15, as the board is all aware. So this is just a staffing allocation for next year. It is not a cutting conversation. The only deltas you see here are if funding has expired or enrollment's projected down. And I will note for the board that enrollment has been going down for four years, and we have not really adjusted the model. So we've been allocating more than the model called for. So I just want to be clear on those Movies. Points, not to address the specifics.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: But that's the basis of the

[Matt Alexander (Commissioner)]: No, I appreciate that. And I think it's a fair opinion that our staffing maybe, as you're suggesting, it's generous. But I'm not sure the public agrees. I think that, I guess, just again, the equity point, again, if the staffing model results in cutting 15 staff from one middle school they're going to experience that as a cut.

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: Just want

[Matt Alexander (Commissioner)]: to say that.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: So Commissioner Fisher.

[Alida Fisher (Commissioner)]: This has been a very robust conversation and I do want to thank our very new business and budget service office staff. I mean like we've

[Supryia Ray (Commissioner)]: come a long

[Alida Fisher (Commissioner)]: way, baby. You know, I mean with the we've got a new bunch of new systems. They're giving us a whole bunch of date. I wasn't calling anyone baby. That was the just, like, for you know, it's it's 09:30. That was the we've come a long way, baby, is what it was supposed to be. Anyway. Okay. I just for the you know, some just, need to clarify. Much better fiscal practices. There's a lot of great things happening. Thank you. And I mean, and we're having more detailed conversations this year than we could last year. So really, just thank you all. I want to follow-up on Commissioner Ray's conversation where you were asking about impact, right? And I want to reframe it as unintended consequences. And we'll use the T10 model as an example. So, if we do not and recognize we're just talking about baseline. There are other funding streams from which T10s could come and these are very valuable members of our communities. For this perspective right here, if we do not have that T10 and it essentially would feel like a cut to the team, whatever we want to call it, to the school staff, it feels, in the school community, it feels like a cut. Then all of a sudden we've got kids roaming in the halls, kids hiding in bathrooms, like, and we don't have kids. It doesn't matter if we add more instructional minutes to get to the point of actually meeting the state recommendations. The kids aren't going to be in those. It's like, so this is where like have we done the tradeoffs of understanding the unintended consequences of these cuts and the real impacts they're going to have at the school sites? So that's question one. And the same thing with buses. Like, how much is that $5,000,000 cut to busing going to actually cost us in reduced attendance and ADA dollars, right? Like some of these we need to know this data before we say yes to some of these things because the consequences are real. And just going back to transparency, right, and I really Doctor. Sue, I'm going to quote you from a couple of weeks, a couple of months ago, progress happens at the rate of trust, right? And and you just said a couple of minutes ago, we found funds and we were able to allocate them to social workers. I think you are a master at coming up with money and finding, looking under every couch cushion in basements that we didn't know we had. But I think that's also part of the struggle is thank you for finding the money and where the heck did it come from, right? And I think this is what we all need to understand because until we get to the point of trusting the processes, that's why we have meetings like we do tonight. I have six seconds left.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: No, no, know. Sorry. This is not me trying to correct you. I just wanted to remind us, right now the conversation is about the staffing model. I was going to do one whip round of the staffing model and then introduce the FSP just because I know that we have a lot of questions about the FSP as well. I just wanted to acknowledge because the GE Transportation is not in the staffing model.

[Alida Fisher (Commissioner)]: No, Okay. Thank you for that correction. So then my final comment will be around the six period day, frankly, is discriminatory. We have, especially in middle school, we have students who are in study skills classes and English language development classes who won't have access to an elective, and that is discrimination. That is unacceptable and it is part of why we went to the seven period day and a lot of groups fought for it. And we can say that yes, we'll add a zero period, but it's not local control when the school and the families are dependent on central office funded transportation as a related service. And unless we're willing to adjust all the bus schedules to give all the kids access to those extra periods, it's discrimination.

[Chris Mount-Benitez (Deputy Superintendent, Business Services & School Operations)]: Yep, because we transition into multiple documents with that. So a couple of things, remember, and the board's been told this before, and the board needs to keep in mind. So the purpose of that FSP is to identify things that the board does have control over. So for example, taking the idea of transportation. It was in your FSP last year. I was asked to keep it in this year because it was pushed to further discussion. Remember when I cost an item for the board, right? I'm costing the item but without having to put my own bias because I'm your fiduciary. I've also shared with the board, I hate that idea. I believe I said the same thing about social workers. But again, I'm not supposed to cost things about my bias. I am supposed to give you the cost and what the savings or the additional cost would be. That's my responsibility. Right? And that is the part of the FSP. The FSP calls out categories that the board has authority over. So I keep reminding the board of this. The board in this district, because we are so heavily reliant on restricted funding, has very little portions, very few portions of our staffing model in our district that they can actually change. So let's use the social worker conversation there for a second. So the reason of returning to the base allocation of social workers was that we were previously using our Title I funds. It's our largest portion of federal funding that we receive as a district. And we were struggling annually to expend our Title I funds because as Title I has and you can see this history in the district, by the way. It's interesting to look at. As Title I has come up with an innovative idea to fund that they provide to Title I schools, it becomes popular enough that the district moves gradually over time to provide it to all schools. And that trips the supplement versus supplant trigger in Title I and then makes those things that were previously Title I unfunded by Title I. That is actually most recently the actual story of our social workers. And then Title I struggles to spend their money. And it puts us in the situation of potentially having to return money that I desperately want to spend for our students locally, not return it. I know that we all agree on that concept. I'm not saying anybody doesn't. However, to get back to making sure that we are supplementing, we need to carve that out for Title I. And then we have to read the Title I regs carefully to see if there are other funding sources that we can use that don't trigger that supplant function. So I could do, in the time that we had, I could say, yes, we can get back to Title I providing social workers. But it needs a little bit more time for me to go through all of the different terms of all of our different restricted funding to see which of those items would potentially not trigger the supplant and not be able to use that money effectively for the school district. So I've done that. I've identified a source. I will not, by the way, share it because I have to follow the constraints of that funding source and get permission from that oversight committee before I actually put that in the budget. But that takes time. It takes effort. It takes research. And actually, it was conversations with your new CFO and I that we figured out how to do that effectively. But that takes time. And so we have solved it. I told Doctor. Su that I figured it out. I don't even think it's been a week yet. And now we have to go to the oversight committee with Teresa because she has some folks in that group too and make sure that they're Okay with that use of funds because it is a restricted resource. So that's the process that we have to go through in order to get that flexibility. And I will tell you now, I'm really good at finding solutions for you, but it doesn't mean I'm going to find a solution for every single thing that we're looking for. So the board just needs to keep that in mind.

[Alida Fisher (Commissioner)]: Thank you for I really appreciate that context. And this level of transparency is absolutely what the public is craving. It's exactly what our principals are craving. It's exactly what our families are craving. It's what we need. And so I guess the question is, how do we find out where else to have that other than here in the boardroom at 09:30 at night?

[Speaker 29.0]: Right?

[Alida Fisher (Commissioner)]: So I think that's a follow-up question not to be answered today. But definitely appreciate that. So, thank you.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Commissioner Gupta?

[Parag Gupta (Commissioner)]: So I'll be quick because a lot of my colleagues have shared a lot of my own sentiments. First of all, do appreciate all the students that came out. I will make a shameless plug and say please do come out to the public engagement meeting that we will have on January 8 because we need student input on how the board does public engagement so that we can make sure it's as great as possible. Two, I do want to recognize the progress that has been made. If folks remember where we were last year, I remember in March our sites, our school site councils were freaking out, understandably so because we did not have budgets yet. When we did come out with it the staffing model was incredibly confusing. It was unclear what people could could not use money for And so the fact that we're right now at this point where hopefully by January we'll have something for school sites would be a dream. I remember when I was school site chair I would be happy if I got something by the beginning of So I do appreciate that we are going to have these conversations earlier. I will say that what I'm hearing over and over is something that I feel like teachers tell my daughter all the time, which is show the work. It just it feels like you know if we're saying things like staffing is generous in our school district I would love to see it. Know let's show the public. Let's show the board how we compare compared to our fellow school districts. ELA, I can happily be convinced with the argument for six periods if it means that we'll have greater instructional minutes for ELA and math. I mean, I would respectfully disagree with my colleague in that to me it's discriminatory to stand by when our focal populations have some of our lowest scores. So if there is something that improves that, I would love to see it. But I have not seen that work. I have not seen the evidence demonstrated. Then finally, how is what we're talking about reflective in the conversations? I think it goes back to what Vice President Huling was sharing in terms of how I think it was Vice President Huling. How are we seeing what has been the input of our administrators or our teachers in what we see here? And how is that practicality of what we're asking represented. The last thing in my twenty seconds that I'll ask is I see there are site discretionary funds. And I'm curious if there's any guidance in terms of what that can or cannot be used towards for our school site councils and our sites.

[Chris Mount-Benitez (Deputy Superintendent, Business Services & School Operations)]: Yes. So the principals requested in my time with them with Doctor. Su that they have more flexibility. So what we've done is we've lifted the restrictions. So there's a couple of different types of money discretionary that goes out to sites. There's unrestricted general fund as well as restricted money that goes out. And that does not count all of the individual grants that a school site might have or PTA or PTO money. But what we've done is we've said we will lift the restrictions on that to give the max on all of those to give the maximum flexibility possible to the school sites. We're actually also now engaged just because people reach out and I say, hey, that's cool. I'll help. Is actually, Niru's gonna help on this. She just doesn't know it yet. But but how do we get the funds from our various community partners, such as PTAs and PTOs, considering their budget cycle so that the money is there to be used as soon as the first day of school, or that contracts need to be pre booked so that things are ready to go day one. And so it's evidently been a long time pain point for the district. It's not difficult to figure out, by the way. We just need to sit down and do it. And so we're doing those interactions as well. So we're working on multiple fronts. I know it feels like a lot or slow, and it can be. It's a lot of work. Niru just found out one of her new tasks. She's super excited. But we are taking those things, and we're creating systems so that people can do that year over year over year. So we are providing that flexibility.

[Amy Bear (Associate Superintendent, Human Resources)]: Can I add something? I like your enthusiasm, but lifted the restrictions sounded a little too joyous for me. So I just wanted to be clear that the supplemental hiring guide, the much beloved supplemental hiring guide, be back again this year. And it will provide instructions to sites and departments about what they can use their restricted dollars on, what the timeline is. And again, we'll be prioritizing classroom teacher staffing. So we will be allowing more flexibility in hiring once we reach the 95% threshold for classroom teachers.

[Chris Mount-Benitez (Deputy Superintendent, Business Services & School Operations)]: Thank you for dampening my enthusiasm. What I meant by that was that last year we told them that they could not use some of their funding sources for staff. And we actually did it so strictly that some of the grants and restricted money we have out there, we lost because we didn't allow them to spend it in a timely manner. And I'm not good at losing money. So

[Parag Gupta (Commissioner)]: Sorry. One last clarification on that. So have we reached do we know yet? Have we reached the 95% threshold?

[Amy Bear (Associate Superintendent, Human Resources)]: Yeah, we started the year at 95%, and so our goal was 92%. So for next year, we will adjust the goal from 92% to 95%.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: I will hopefully be brief in my comments because I think most of my questions are actually more geared towards the fiscal stabilization plan. I think many of my colleagues have already said much of what I was wanting to share. I'll just first I cannot underscore enough how different of a position we are in today than we were this time last year. And I want to thank you and your team and everyone in the district. It is a significant milestone for us to be able to speak this early on about budgets and staffing plans and staffing models. So thank you for your tireless work and I know that you are also relatively new here, half of you, so thank you. I think my two biggest areas are one, like what is the plan and two, where do folks go to understand it. And I think that's going to be a reoccurring theme of my pushes here both on this item and the next. I appreciate the outlining of VVGGs and grounding it in the VVGGs. That is the role of the board and setting those VVGGs. The interim goals and guardrails aligned to that is the role of the superintendent and her team and so those have been articulated last spring and slash early fall. What I still don't understand and and I know that this is coming based on the what was just flashed up most recently with the screen is just what the strategies are and the resources that are needed to fund those strategies that go to fulfilling our interim goals and guardrails that eventually been like support our VVGGs. I think there's an order of operations here that I'm confused by mostly of how do we know then what we are funding in our staffing model if we haven't yet gone through that exercise. And I think that's my concern. I just don't know how we're coming out with a staffing model if we actually haven't gone through those cycles and actually shared that with the public to know where our resources are going to support which interim goals and guardrails that ultimately support our goals and guardrails. And yet we're talking about a staffing model and a stabilization plan. So I think there's a there's a there's a question around what is Sure. I hear that it's coming. I think there's a question of when is it coming so that we can understand that and then there's an order of operations question around that. The second is pretty straightforward and I have the same question for the board as I have for the general public is where do we go to understand it? I mean, it's very clear that you all have thought a lot about this, that you all are meeting a lot about this and I think we get so much outreach from folks asking questions about it and I still don't I'm not quite sure where to point them to and say, I hear your question, I hear your frustration, this is all really hard, go here. And so I think that I'm struggling with reconciling that. And so I think those are the two things I will bring a very similar sentiment into this next item as as well but and I don't know if there's any sort of comments or reflections on that but I just wanted to say that.

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: Well, I can start. I think the reality is that we need to learn how to build this muscle of integrating our vision, values, goals and guardrails into our budget planning process. This is the first year that we are attempting to do this. Again, this district started our SOFG process in 2022. And I was looking through our old documents and we went as far as developing the interim goals and interim guardrails, but we didn't actually get to the last part which is starting the budget allocation process. And again, I thank Commissioner Alexander for doing and for President Kim for having the ad hocs on performance, progress monitoring because it allowed me to really think through and think about how we start doing that. And so yes, you're right. We haven't done it but we are going to start doing it. And yes, we're going to be a little bit off schedule and backwards. But we're going to try our best to make sure that we do map it because we do know that we want to ensure we have high quality instruction in our classrooms. We want to make sure that our teachers have the resources and tools they need to be successful. We know that instructional coaches are yielding the results that we want to see. We know that the transition to a new curriculum is yielding the results that we want to see. We know that having focused one on one tutoring are doing that. So these are things that we know and these are things that we want to make sure that we continue to allocate towards. I understand that it is still a little bit not aligned but we're going to continue to try to do it.

[Chris Mount-Benitez (Deputy Superintendent, Business Services & School Operations)]: Just to help clarify, financially, how are you going to track it? So this is not unusual for a school district. First of all, your tracking is typically done through the model of the LCAP. And so I've discussed with the superintendent the VVGG's concept I'm very familiar with from Council of Great City Schools. But the LCAP is what we're used to tracking budgetarily. And so if there's alignment there, you have brilliant people in curriculum and instruction that manage the LCAP. And if they are clear on what the goals and activities are, then we can pick those items out of the budget, and we can report on how much they're budgeted for and how much they're spent annually as a portion of the overall budget allocation. And we can get down to really, really close numbers of what's budgeted, if not exact. That's a standard practice for districts. So that's the alignment that could happen that would enable us to do that better for the board and for the superintendent.

[Speaker 57.0]: And if I may add on to that, I really appreciate that question, President Kim. And as you can see, that work around aligning our VVGGs with the LCAP has already occurred. In the LCAP that was presented to and adopted by the Board this past June in the year that we are in. I wanted to also take the opportunity to thank Ajay for supporting us in this process of truing up and aligning these efforts. This is work that is ongoing and also just an appreciation for the progress monitoring ad hoc committee. It really is about being able to instill culture of accountability throughout the entire school district where we are cascading our initiatives, our inputs and outputs against resources, but also against the most important investments that we're making as a school district, our personnel, our people to be able to follow through and deliver on student outcomes. And so it really is a work in progress. There is a lot that we have to do in the upcoming weeks. But I wanted to take this opportunity to just also express our appreciation to AJ as well.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Thank you. I know that this next item will carry forward in some of the elements that we just discussed. And so I will move on to the next item, item 2,500 twelve-165SP1 fiscal year twenty five-twenty six fiscal stabilization plan. Can I have a motion and a second?

[Alida Fisher (Commissioner)]: I move that we approve 2,500 twelve-sixteen SP1 fiscal year twenty twenty five-twenty twenty six fiscal stabilization plan.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Do we have a second? Everyone's scared to

[Speaker 17.0]: ask me. Second.

[Ms. Lenoff (Board Secretary/Clerk)]: We do, Brock. Second.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: It has been properly moved and seconded that the board approve item 251,216 SP1 fiscal year twenty five-twenty six fiscal stabilization plan and call the superintendent and her staff to introduce this item.

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: Thank you, President Kim. We have a short presentation as well. Oh, is it up? Sorry. I keep looking over there, that's why. No, it's fine. It's fine. Now it's up over there. It's Okay. So actually the first couple of slides are actually similar to my section. So I'm going to we can go through it very quickly. And I'm going to hand it over to our amazing business and services ops team. Oh, okay, I will take this one. Yes, yes, yes. Again, SFUSD has a $1,300,000,000 budget and we need to make sure that we, the discussion we just had, tell the story of how we're allocating towards supporting our students. And just as a reminder for everyone, these are the goals that we're trying to move towards. Third grade literacy, eighth grade math, college career readiness all supported by serving the whole child. Next slide please. And now I will hand it over to our amazing budget team, Business Services team.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Can you turn on your mic,

[Matt Alexander (Commissioner)]: please?

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Your mic. Sorry.

[Chris Mount-Benitez (Deputy Superintendent, Business Services & School Operations)]: My coordination of fingers and buttons and computers. I'm behind a little So we can go through these fairly quickly. These have been part of our standard reports. I'm not going to linger on them very long. This is just our sources as a percentage of our various funding sources. Next slide, please. And then, of course, our LCFF allocation, which is the basis for our unrestricted general fund per student, assuming 100% attendance. And then, of course, the next slide, our student enrollment trends. This is the most salient slide. You see this in a lot of presentations, not just mine. We are the ones that I think most recently updated this, but you'll see it in a lot of the different departments. This just shows the issue over time. We continue to have fewer and fewer students over roughly the same number of schools, which is part of the struggle as far as spreading resource as we continue to have fewer and fewer students and supporting all of the staff. Next slide just is the bar graph again about over time revenues versus expenses versus fund balance. Of course, the only salient bar in here is the middle one that says twenty fourtwenty five. That's the last year of actuals we have. That's last year. And you can see that the red bar, because they're actualized from that point moving towards the left x axis, that little bit of orange you're seeing there is the amount that we overspent this past year. The projection is how much we're currently still budgeting over the revenues received, knowing that, of course, we don't fully expend those. But we do have to address it before the orange runs out. Next slide is state budget certification. We just went over this at the last presentation with the boarding community. Of course, we are currently at negative. At first interim, we self certified as qualified. We are waiting for concurrence from CDE before that's a genuine certification. Of course, the board's goal, guardrail four, is getting back to that positive certification. For twenty five-twenty six, next slide, this is the slide the superintendent already reminded folks of, where do we spend the money? This represents 86% directly in the schools and in the classrooms. The portions that are not directly in schools and classrooms are the green, orange, and the two little slices at the bottom with the description of what those are. We've presented these at all of our community sessions and in multiple board interactions, so I'm not going to, again, linger. The multi year projection next slide. This is the multi year projection that was presented at the first interim last week with all of the assumptions and items that we mentioned to the board. And the next slide, which is the restricted multi year projection. And then it gets down to slide 13, which is the draft fiscal stabilization plan for the first interim for fiscal year 'twenty six. So typically and this is a little bit unusual, which we've discussed with the board the fiscal stabilization plan is actually a part of the first interim report. It's required by law. So statute says that as long as the district is in a negative or qualified certified status, that we are required to produce a fiscal stabilization plan. And what the fiscal stabilization plan does is it outlines all of the different things that we have the ability. And when I say we, I mean the district and the board has the ability to cut and the amount of savings that could be yielded out of making that cut. It is not a cut plan, and cuts don't occur until the board takes action in February or March of that year. The fiscal stabilization plan is also a plan, which is why it's called that. And you have to change it at every single reporting period to reflect the current status of your budget. So that's why if we go Marin, if you could advance one more slide, please. And you can see at the bottom what we're tracking is the current projected budget deficit in the unrestricted and restricted general fund. And in a three year period, what would be the savings to that to try to eventually get the district to a balanced budget? So that's the concept. It's required by law. It's required by the CDE. It is technically a part of your first interim report, and it should have been done last Tuesday. We got permission to do it this Tuesday thinking it was too much for everybody to absorb in one meeting. It was, and you have passed it in the past. It was just incorporated probably pretty far in the back of a much longer slide deck presentation. But you have passed them multiple times. You are not passing cuts. You're just passing the concept of a plan and where you know that you can cut from and the values that you can cut from. So that is the concept of a fiscal stabilization plan and what is before you tonight.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Thank you. I'll open it up for comments and questions from the board. Commissioner Alexander.

[Matt Alexander (Commissioner)]: Okay. I'll kick us off. Oh, and before I do, I want notice that beautiful banner that I've been noticing on TV behind you all was apparently made by James Denman Middle School students. So shout out to James Denman Middle School students for providing their feedback. So I want to go to this question of whether the cuts are necessary or the potential cuts, however you want to talk about them, because I do think it's confusing. I heard this in public comment, I've heard it from others giving me feedback about this idea of when we talk about the worst case scenario. And last year we last excuse me, last week, we set aside this money in reserves, which theoretically we could use to pay for some of this. But another confusing thing is this notion of deficit spending when the truth is that really we've had projected deficit spending for the most part. And it's turned out to be okay in the end. And we've actually had these surpluses and built up this $430,000,000 fund balance. And so I've asked about this before, but I guess in particular I want to ask about the revenue projections. And I appreciate that you mentioned earlier that the governor's budget or the superintendent the governor's budget and some other there's some things that we don't know. But we do know that for the past three years for which we have actuals, we've under predicted revenue at this time in December the previous year for twenty twenty two, twenty twenty three by $219,000,000 We were $219,000,000 under predicted revenue 2023, 2024, 85,000,000 under predicted revenue and 2024, 2025, 82,000,000 under predicted revenue in the previous December when we were sitting here. So if we do the same this time and have $80,000,000 more coming next year, we really don't need to make these reductions. And so again, not to say that we might not want to reduce spending in certain areas still, but we're not under the gun if the revenue projections are anything like they were for the last five years. So I guess my question is based on this idea, I mean, in some ways, somebody said to me, maybe you don't have a structural deficit, you have structural dysfunction in our in how you do your budget. So I think I think that's where I think we need to be able to say to the public, you know, are these projections really accurate? Right? So I guess my question is, what is different about the '26, 27 revenue projections that are leading to this plan compared to what we've done for the past five years that have led to these wildly inaccurate projections?

[Chris Mount-Benitez (Deputy Superintendent, Business Services & School Operations)]: So the observation you made is exactly what I actually presented to the board in October is that the revenues and expenses in the district have been all over the place in the past. And I gave the board and the public a detailed presentation called the budget to actual variance report, which the district had never engaged in before. It should be standard practice. And it's basically a way of seeing how well the budget process is working. And I think I was pretty clear with the board that in the past, it has not worked well. And that is part of the fiscal problem that the district is continuing to suffer from. So no time machine had, but we can change that moving forward. I'm sure you've noticed, and I pointed out at the first interim, that you're already not seeing those swings. Right? So you did not see a huge advance advancement in unrestricted general fund revenues. But I also would caution the commissioner and the entire board. The budget cycle in the state of California does not allow for, and the reason that they always make us use the word projection, is because you are not on the same fiscal cycle as the state for which we have to pass a budget. Right? So for example, last June, you voted on a budget, and you had to adopt a budget by law before the state adopts its budget and actually gives us our allocations. So what you adopted in June, right, and I it it should be made clear to you every year so that everybody's reminded, is the projection based on the assumptions that the state gives us to give to you. And so if you see any difference between what you adopt in June and the first interim, it's because after they pass their budget, you've already passed yours. And so the very first time that we update it for you is at the first interim, and we show you any differences of what has materialized versus what they told us to assume for your June adoption. That is actually the purpose of an interim report. I will also say this, those numbers change. Yes. If they don't change, someone's not doing their job. But they should change and be able to be labeled, which is what we did for you the first interim. Right? So here's how the unrestricted changed, both the revenues and expenses, and this is why they changed and the amounts that they changed and the source of that change. Right? That means that we're tracking things correctly. Right? So your projections are getting better. You're already not seeing the huge variances. Now a variance cannot be avoided, meaning positive or negative. So if anybody is good enough in your home budget that if you get a $100, you only spend a $100, and it's exactly $100, then congratulations, you are a an anomaly. Right? People budget a $100, they frequently spend $102 Or they budget $100 and they only spend $90 That's what a variance is. It's spending less or more than what you actually plan on. However, by law, we have to account for everybody's budget that they submit to me. I can't take a budget if if, Commissioner Alexander, you were still a principal and you gave me your budget. I don't get to say, no, I'm not putting it in. I have to put in everything that you give me. Whether you end up spending it or not, I don't get to make that decision. But I have to put that in as the aggregate amount that the district's budget. Right? So we've put more controls in so that that variance doesn't go up and down. So for example, we used to let anybody budget and change their budget entirely throughout the school year. Everybody, schools, offices, if you had a budget, you could change it. We don't allow that anymore. You get your allocation, you budget your allocation, we monitor it, and we will actually be taking what you 'll see in the second interim is we'll be taking savings because we are now applying a burn rate and what we call a predictability trend. So if we get to second interim and you've spent 60% of your budget, right, we know you only have by the time we present the second interim, we know that you only have two months left to spend. I can look at your spend analysis, and I can tell you that we are not gonna spend all of that money. So I will be including that in savings for the board so that they get a more accurate picture over time of the actual spend. All of that is just good fiscal management. It's clear based on where the district is right now and has been. That has not existed. I know that there were a lot of changes. That knowledge base was lost. We are teaching staff the basics of entering budgets into systems right now. So the other thing I would caution everybody on is pointing out that there were big additional fund balance ads during COVID when we were getting billions of dollars of federal money that was rather unpredictable and then not spent well. That is not just the story of San Francisco. That's the story of education in the state of California. The majority of reserves in the state of California in K-twelve schools come from COVID federal dollars. And that's true for San Francisco, by the way, as well.

[Matt Alexander (Commissioner)]: And I really appreciate all the fiscal tracking and the actuals things you mentioned. I think I said at that last meeting that I'm super grateful for your leadership on that. I think my question was a little different. It was really specific about projections. And so we've projected revenues inaccurately, including for unrestricted general fund, not just for other funds, by at least $50,000,000 in unrestricted general funds. So I guess what I'm asking is what's different now, especially because for this fiscal year you didn't make the projection, someone else did. Like what is different in how we project revenue now that means that it's that will assure us that it's not under projecting. I don't know if I'm asking the question right because that was the part you didn't

[Chris Mount-Benitez (Deputy Superintendent, Business Services & School Operations)]: So and I've talked about this before. The reason that they were so off in your prior years is no one knew how to do it. Right? So what you see as a difference right now is less than $3,000,000 in the first four months. Right? So that that was a that was presented at the first time.

[Matt Alexander (Commissioner)]: But we never got those reports before. So I don't I mean, I guess I haven't seen don't think it's to just say oh they didn't know how to do it and I do know how to do it doesn't show I want I want to know what did they do wrong and what are we doing right to sort of provide evidence that those revenue projections are in fact accurate because otherwise again we're asking the public to make cuts without knowing that they're needed.

[Chris Mount-Benitez (Deputy Superintendent, Business Services & School Operations)]: It's not about doing it right or wrong. It's having the knowledge to know how to maintain it. So there's a lot that goes into that number. We get all the formulas from the state. We have to go all over all of our local property tax rules. It's a very lengthy, somewhat tedious process. And there's not a lot of folks that have learned that process. So we've taught that process. So the knowledge is here now. We've taught folks how to do it. And we will continue to do so. We are maintaining those revenue. We need to

[Matt Alexander (Commissioner)]: I guess what I'm saying is we

[Chris Mount-Benitez (Deputy Superintendent, Business Services & School Operations)]: need to see

[Matt Alexander (Commissioner)]: it publicly.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Yeah, I'm just going to move us to

[Matt Alexander (Commissioner)]: Yeah, for sure. I'm just trying to clarify what I'm asking for. Because what he's saying is we know how to do it and trust us. And I'm saying we need that evidence publicly.

[Chris Mount-Benitez (Deputy Superintendent, Business Services & School Operations)]: Totally. So just help us out as follow-up and define what the it is for us because it's not clear what's being asked for. But if you make it clear, I will try to get it for you.

[Matt Alexander (Commissioner)]: Okay. Okay. I'll try to clarify.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Commissioner Gupta.

[Parag Gupta (Commissioner)]: So most of my comments were provided before and I actually don't really have questions. I just want to acknowledge that we have a fiscal stabilization plan. And as I understand, we are obligated because we're currently negative certified to adopt a fiscal certification plan. Is that correct?

[Chris Mount-Benitez (Deputy Superintendent, Business Services & School Operations)]: That's correct. That's the statute.

[Parag Gupta (Commissioner)]: And that is from the California Department of Education?

[Chris Mount-Benitez (Deputy Superintendent, Business Services & School Operations)]: It's actually an Ed Code, but the Department of Education is our oversight agency that's making us comply with the Ed Code, correct.

[Parag Gupta (Commissioner)]: Got it. I will say, I I can't actually say it any better than the way Ms. Clafter put it in terms of kind of the contraindication of being obligated to do it by code and at the same time I don't feel like we've met the criteria that we've set forth for ourself by our visions, values, goals and guardrails. And I will just say that my ask and this actually isn't of the financial team. This is of the superintendent that what the public saw for the longest time was just two tables, one that had to do with staff staffing costs and one that had to do with fiscal stabilization plan that was centered on what cuts would be made. And I think the common thread that's being expressed here is what is the impact on our communities and if we can communicate it and such. And I know you've received that message loud and clear from various public comments as well as commissioners. But my ask so that I hope that I can fulfill my duty as a board member to what's required of us from the fiscal stabilization plan is that we have that information that meets our visions, values, goals, guardrails so that we can vote on this.

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: Yes. Yes, Commissioner Gupta, I've heard that very loud and clear. I've also heard that feedback from actually all of our commissioners here is that we need to continue to do better at sharing information and it's not enough or appropriate to just say, yeah, we checked a box. We talked to some folks. We need to make sure that we are engaging. And I will also say that it means that I need to, we need to have staff that has the time and the bandwidth to do it. And so I'm going to have to reevaluate my own team's time and bandwidth and really make some decisions about how we prioritize certain things and what are some things that we're going to have to say let's press pause on because we have to do this thing at this moment in time because this is all we've got. Yeah, thank you.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: I do want to build on that quickly. I think every single person on this board has said very clearly to you whatever you need to move our district forward ask for it and I think we have gone above and beyond to try to resource that for you. So I just want to make sure that I say that in front of staff, say it in front of you, in front of the board and public, we want to get to a place where we are structured in a way where we can actually fulfill the obligations and duties that we have for ourselves. And I think it's a question of just what is that ask, right? I go back to what I brought up in the last item and maybe I'll simplify it even further of just what happened and how do people know what happened. And as I reflect on the conversation with Commissioner Alexander, there is a lot of thinking it sounds like that is going on into how some of these dollars are being determined. I think the question that I have is again where outside of this boardroom do we go to to understand that? And we as a board have continued to say that the boardroom is not the place for two way engagement. And if it's not gonna be the boardroom then where do we go, where do the members of the public go, where do our constituents go to understand what is happening internally to be able to digest something like this because it is kind of shocking and jarring to see a document like this where and I think the experience that I had even as board president has been hearing new talking points and context being added right until the eleventh hour and I think that's my primary concern as a body here and our positioning to accept a document like this and I think that goes back to what happened and how do people know what happened. And so want to make sure I reiterate as I've shared with with Elliot who I know is listening. This board I know is incredibly dedicated to bringing our district to financial solvency. That commitment has not changed. I think the questions that we are asking are largely around how do we ensure that we bring ourselves and the public along in that journey. Because if we can't if we can't understand it through all the briefings that we have I don't know how to communicate that out and for others to understand that. And I think that is where I think I have most of my frustrations in understanding this and I do wanna thank you Chris I think we've mostly interacted with you. Thank you for bringing us along. I think when we have sit downs with you where you do walk us through we do understand better. I think again my frustration is around the timing of all of this of experiencing that in the moment when it should be things that are being communicated externally.

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: Can I just sorry I just and I hear you, President Kim and other commissioners as well who's provided the same feedback to me? And so first, this is the earliest we've ever shared the staffing model. We've shared the fiscal stabilization plan previously but not to this level of detail. And I think because we did it so early, we need to continue to engage our families even earlier and need to make sure that we build in that into our muscle. And something that we've talked about internally within our teams here is we've got amazing advisory bodies. We've got many, many councils. We need to lean in and work with with our parents around how do we communicate clearer, how do we engage our DELACs and our LCAPs sooner, earlier so that we are not rushing to the end to try to share information. And very technical information, just lots of things that have lots of feelings inside it. So I think we need to do a better job at building that engagement timeline. I hear the frustration of the board, I fully acknowledge that.

[Jaime Huling (Vice President)]: I'd like to push back on that a little bit more because engagement did start really early. I believe the first engagement that I went to was in October or November. And my understanding is that probably internally a lot of the ideas that are reflected in this FSP were being discussed among staff. And the instruction based rationales and the budget based rationales were being discussed among staff. And to me, it feels very disrespectful to our community, to their time, to the people who took time out of their busy schedules, many overwhelmingly working parents who showed up at school sites, who logged in online, to not have told them what we were actually thinking about in so many words and why. To not share our rationale for a six period day. To not share that we only have so many places to cut, one will inevitably be security. And so what is our plan to keep your students who you entrust to us safe? And to me, this feels very much cart before the horse in that we're looking at the numbers first instead of hearing from not our budget department, but from our superintendent, from our instructional staff, from comms around this is how these decisions are constrained. This is how they're aligned to achieve our goals. These are the difficult decisions we're making and our plans to make sure that students don't suffer because of them. And we received a lot of coaching about our student outcomes focused governance. And at the core of that is that we cannot vote for budget decisions unless the rationale for why they are student centered is there. That we start budget conversations at a no and it is the superintendent's job to prove to us that we should be a yes. And so for me, there was engagement. It just was not meaningful in the sense that if we were thinking about making a massive change to middle school schedules that might impact English language learners, students with IEPs, students in dual immersion's ability to take another elective, why was there not a designated middle school engagement around those issues to hear from middle school communities? And so I really struggle with just not necessarily what is here, but what are we doing to bring people along and to actually iterate. It concerns me that UA is who's been engaged around some of these decisions, but that they're saying that their feedback is not reflected in these plans.

[Alida Fisher (Commissioner)]: I said a lot of what I wanted to say before, but I do wanna mean, we have much smaller central office than we've had in a long time. We have a lot of new folks. And so, like, I I do I do appreciate, like, thank you. This is a hard conversation, but, like, we've got folks who are already working two and three jobs. And so thank you for doing it. Two things can be true at the same time, right? We need better engagement around this and the folks who are there who are doing the work are working their butts off to do it. Both of those things can be true and I want to recognize our staff. So thank you all for that. Just have about the fiscal stabilization plan generally. Like a lot of what I notice here, realignment, things that are potentially focused on reducing allocations, not cuts, reducing allocations. But I'm wondering, do we ever get an opportunity to focus on investments? Like I'm wondering, like for example, making sure that everyone who can check the Medi Cal box on their IEP so we can do a better job of, like, can we write that in here? Like, the and, like, maybe, like, we're gonna focus I don't I don't even know if that's legit to do in an FSP. I don't know. Is there any way we could maybe focus on some of the revenue generating the low hanging like, we're going to apply for x number of dollars of state and federal grants. We're going to like, can we do more aspirational money attainment instead of reductions? I don't know if that's part so that's just one question. And I'm also wondering pre all of this, you know, we just historically to oversimplify, we had a weighted student formula and when we went under FICMAT control, we switched from our weighted student formula to a more centralized staffing model. Have we done any equity analysis of the difference between the weighted student formula and what was provided under the weighted student formula? Had its problems, but it was very equity based. And that versus the new staffing model, do we have any comparisons year over year for that? Those are my really two follow-up questions.

[Chris Mount-Benitez (Deputy Superintendent, Business Services & School Operations)]: Thank you, Commissioner. No, I actually don't know the one that you're referencing. We're struggling even to find document evidence, as I shared with the board earlier, of it was done over the past couple of years. People didn't leave a lot of guides. Just so everybody understands, every district in the state in either December or January engages in an allocation model that's usually based on their local CBA. It's the same here. That's the beginning of building a budget, which is why we're working on the staffing model so early because we really need to have the budget, the broad strokes of the budget done by late January, early February, to be aligned with the way that the state does budget development, and then to make sure that you can meet your statutory obligations. That's the reason that we are moving it up so much, because we have long been out of step with what districts are told to do as far as their budget development. So that's the push. And that's why we're having these discussions so early. And the staffing model is how we start that by looking at the enrollment. And this district does actually it's really interesting. We do a great job on enrollment data. Kudos to the enrollment department. But for some reason, we've never started the budget development, which should be done at the same time to make sure that that happens together. I don't know why. I wasn't here at the time. But it is interesting. An FSP does not anticipate new revenues. An FSP is reflective of the first interim multi year projection. And any new revenues are in the first interim, which would then lessen the amount of need that the FSP would represent. I hope that makes sense. So in other words, if you have more revenues than the potential delta worst case scenario that you would have to cut is smaller. And I also heard a couple of folks say, well, you're trying to cut the $103,000,000 deficit. Please note the FSP doesn't call for $103,000,000 of cuts. It calls for less than 50. So so no one's ever said that we should try to do it all at once or that we should do both the unrestricted and restricted. So the the goal of an FSP is very specifically the unrestricted side.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Commissioner Ray?

[Supryia Ray (Commissioner)]: Thank you. I don't want to delay but sorry, excuse me, belabor the point too much because, you know, we still have things to do and folks have very well expressed, I think, concerns that we've had as a board. I just want to strongly, strongly encourage the incorporation of feedback and input from our communities in a real way, in a demonstrable way. And to the extent that we may not be able to do something that a community wants, we need to be able to articulate that and explain why. Something that was particularly telling to me in the various town halls that I attended, like all of us, as mentioned, attended a number of these. And one thing that came up over and over and over again was the concern that our community members at those meetings had for social emotional well-being. And yet, we see that social workers were identified essentially for, you know, as a potential thing for reduction and done so in a very, very bare way with no context or explanation whatsoever. Like on its face, it looks like we didn't, it looks like we just flatly ignored the community feedback there. So those kinds of things are sort of own goals for us that I would like to make sure that we try to avoid in the future and that if we are doing something that's contrary to our community's pretty clear preference that we are explaining why we can't do that. I also really appreciate that the district is going to be taking the steps, as I understand, of actually clearly identifying our strategies and initiatives and costing those out. That's something I've actually asked about in a few of the past meetings. So I understand that we haven't done that before. I think it's really critical, and I really appreciate that we are going to do that. I look forward to seeing that information. And I just wanted to concur with what some folks have said. Like, it is an absolutely top priority for me to be fiscally responsible and for our district to be solvent for a multitude of reasons, the most important of which is having a stable functioning school district that works for our students, our families, our staff, and our broader communities. But it has been very difficult to be faced with a situation where we haven't had the information we need and that, you know, where we have been in the dark in many ways or surprised to see things as well as the public. So I appreciate the efforts that are being or what you what Superintendent Hsu was saying about moving towards more transparency and explanation. Thank you.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Commissioner Alexander, do you want make a comment? Okay. Are there any other questions, Commissioner or Vice President Huling?

[Jaime Huling (Vice President)]: I just want to ask questions for clarity for the public. One is that the approval of this fiscal stabilization plan does not mean that these cuts will be enacted. Is that correct?

[Chris Mount-Benitez (Deputy Superintendent, Business Services & School Operations)]: That's correct. It's it's to meet the statutory requirement.

[Jaime Huling (Vice President)]: And if we don't meet the statutory requirement, the consequence is that we remain in negative fiscal certification at this time.

[Chris Mount-Benitez (Deputy Superintendent, Business Services & School Operations)]: That's the worst potential outcome. The other outcome is that they're silent on it. However, in the letters from the CDE, they have specifically directed the school district and the board that they expect a fiscal stabilization plan approved at each interim period.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Thanks. But to clarify, they didn't give us a timeline per se, did they?

[Chris Mount-Benitez (Deputy Superintendent, Business Services & School Operations)]: With each interim report.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Okay. Well, I'm gonna just continue to ask questions until Commissioner Gupta returns. So quick question about that. And I I know that mister Duchamp Elliott, you are listening in. Is that correct?

[Elliott Duchon (State Fiscal Advisor/External Oversight)]: Yes, I am here.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Would you like to make comment?

[Elliott Duchon (State Fiscal Advisor/External Oversight)]: Well, I cannot tell you what CDE will respond to if you don't give them a fiscal stabilization report or a plan. The responsible thing to do is to give them a plan. If there's part of the plan that you are uncomfortable with as a board, you can either modify it or make a proviso in your motion that you're going to commit it in some other way. That's pretty much the the language in the letter that you received from CDE said that they will require you to produce an FSB. It's right alongside our FSP. It's right alongside the interim report. They should go hand in hand. They lose meaning if they're not paired together. I mean, the the problem is if you were to want to negotiate some kind of something different with them, that would have to be a direct conversation with the people that sign off on the interim report and the FSP. So my recommendation is to, in some way, shape, or form, pass it in at least concept and commit to making the cuts as needed. Not necessarily the cuts in there. You can replace one cut for another. I mean, it's it really has got to be. And we're talking. Oh, I wanna clarify that most of the plan that we're talking about, if not all of it, is in your unrestricted general fund. So it's those nine points. It's what's funded in unrestricted, the the money you get from the state basically under your LCFF, and that's it. It's not your it's not your federal funds. It's not other state grants. It's not PEEF. It's not all those other multiple funding, and you have lots of places ultimately where you could move money out of the unrestricted fund. I know that was part of the intent here, but that you could still and and like any budget, it's dynamic. It's a work in progress. You know, I think this has been pointed out before what you pass in June. It can change in July. What you pass in July can change in October. If the state comes back, you have different information, and you obviously are gonna have to modify it as time goes on. If enrollment comes up, you get more money. If it goes down, you trim your loading not your loading, but the number of teachers you have. That's always gonna be an issue in front of you.

[Jaime Huling (Vice President)]: Thank you for that, Elliot. Superintendent Hsu, if we were to vote down the fiscal stabilization plan and the district were to bring one revised fiscal stabilization plan back at the second interim, can you tell me anything you've learned about what you would do differently for community engagement and how it might change between now and then, both the community engagement and the actual substantive plan in response to that community engagement?

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: Sure. Well, first, by January we will have more information from the governor's budget and our student enrollment numbers as well as by that time we would have shared our budget allocation with our site leaders. So we'll definitely have a lot more information which then means that we're not talking to people in the abstract. So I would go back to and start with talking to our site leaders, engaging with our school site council. We will have a school site council summit on January 10. I'm already seeing a lot of invites in my box here for So community just continuing to engage with our communities. I think Commissioner Alexander suggested to talk to current principals about what would it look like for us to change a master schedule in the way that we're proposing and really think about impact. So I will commit to having more meetings with our community. I will say that I've had many meetings already. We'll just continue to have more meetings. I think again this time around I will have more clarity around where the budget is and so therefore we can be more refined about that. Short of saying that I would go back and continue to engage with our families, that is exactly what I will do. I will also go back and talk to our team here including all of our site leaders and central office leaders around having some more because part of the fiscal stabilization plan includes proposed options for central office staff as well. So there's multiple factors moving in this plan. So I will have to then go back with our own central office staff and have those conversations. So within the next three months, we will have a lot more conversations.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Commissioner Gupta, then Commissioner Ray. Commissioner Ray.

[Supryia Ray (Commissioner)]: Thank you. I'd just like to follow-up on Commissioner Huling's question. You referred to having continuing to have more meetings. I'm wondering if there are other forms of engagement that you would consider doing that could reach a larger number of people. It is difficult for many people to come out to these meetings. And I don't feel like we necessarily get a representative cross section of our community. So are there other ways that you would consider whether it's, for example, surveys, going to or having folks go to school sites to actually meet with people at those different sites so that there can be a meeting there or other things, some other means.

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: Yes, and that's what I was alluding to when I was saying that we have a lot of advisory bodies, a lot of parent councils, the DELACs, the ELACs. I will definitely go back and have those conversations at those committee level. And of course, our school site councils. We have the summit coming up in January and we can figure out how we can deploy ourselves so that we can have more focus, maybe a couple of schools together to talk about how a plan like this could impact them. We can be creative.

[Supryia Ray (Commissioner)]: Okay. The one concern I have around that is that we often have sort of the folks who are most engaged and capable of being engaged in those sorts of fora. And we don't necessarily reach folks who are sort of more just kind of more ordinarily attending families and community members. And I just wonder if there's some way to do that. I don't know how best we could do that, whether it's a survey or not. But maybe even we could have somebody not necessarily even set it up by email, but stand around at some schools and offer to just say like, here's something you can fill out and let us know. Just ideas about how to reach people who would not otherwise participate.

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: Thank you. Maybe we should come and talk to you about some of your ideas and then see what is possible. I can see where maybe Commissioner Ray is assigning all of us jobs.

[Jaime Huling (Vice President)]: I hope the ad hoc committee members on public engagement are taking notes.

[Parag Gupta (Commissioner)]: So I also just want to touch upon the same idea of public engagement because I think as Vice President Huling was referring to earlier, it's not just a matter of more. I don't know if more of the same kind of meetings we've been having would get us to the answers that we need. And so, you know, I'm curious how do we collaborate with I mean right now it feels like a lot of inform on that spectrum as opposed to collaborate and empower. So how do we engage the public in a way that actually collaborates and empowers our administrators, our educators, our family members that does reach out in different ways like Commissioner Ray is suggesting? And then also, I mean, what kind of data are we providing? I mean, we understand that, and I think the public understands that we have to make difficult choices. And so what information, what data are we providing? I mean, it sounds like we finally have good data that we can provide where we can provide those trade offs and allow for our sites, our community members to be able to make those choices. And we can trust them with being able to do so. I mean, no one's going to agree on everything. But certainly it feels like there's an opportunity to better engage.

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: Yes, and again I would love to talk to Commissioners about some of your own ideas about how you are engaging with our communities. Again, our initial thinking was to really start with talking to our site leaders, site administrators and lean into their expertise around their school community because that is what the SSC is about. The SSC is really about bringing together the entire school community and having those conversations with our school community about what they need. And so again, we can bring our administrators together, our site leaders together to share with them the proposals and then gather their feedback and then support them in engaging their school community around what the impact would be like, what are their what are parents' and family's fears or what they're excited about, and we can continue to gather that. You know, I know that Chris wants to finish the budget development within January, but maybe what we could do is extend that process for a little bit longer so that we could have deeper engagement, allow families a little bit more time, a week or two, a little bit more time so that we can do that deep engagement so that families are not feeling rushed, so that our site leaders are not feeling rushed. But again, I want to honor the fact that our site leaders are truly the leaders within our schools and really lean into the expertise and quite frankly the role of the SSC.

[Matt Alexander (Commissioner)]: And just as a follow-up, I'm curious what has stopped what stopped the team from doing that already? Because that's what I thought was going to happen, honestly. When we talked this summer about start, I was so excited when we were like, oh, we're going to do outreach super early. We had a plan around budget development. So I thought that this plan was going to have that level of input. And that's why I was honestly surprised to get the feedback I've gotten from principals that were like, we had one meeting, and they just told us. And then all of a sudden, that was a done deal. And so what do you think stopped that? And again, I'm not necessarily even you as superintendent because this is done by folks at levels below you. What stopped the team from being able to actually engage with principals and site councils up to now, do you think?

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: Yeah, that's definitely something that I'm going have to spend a little bit more time debriefing with our team. I do know that when we started the engagement with community in October, We started out with a vision of like we wanted everyone to have level setting foundational understanding of budgeting. And in that first town hall meeting, the feedback immediately was no, we don't want to engage in that way. We want to engage in a different way. And so then in our second town hall meeting, we pivoted again and changed the way we engaged and talked to families. And then in our third meeting, because then they're like no, no, no, you can't talk to us. And then we, I think by the time we had our fourth meeting or even our fifth meeting, we continued to iterate and went deeper and deeper in the way we were engaging. And so I really do believe if we continue to engage and continue to have those conversations, I think we will get to a place where there would be more clarity. I will say in all of our engagements there were consistent, consistent themes of you need to prioritize teaching and learning. That is what we want. We want to see you do that. We want to see you make sure that you're allocating resources through the lens of equity. And that we wanted to make sure that schools had flexibility. So those were some of the things that bubbled up through those engagements. And again, I fully acknowledge that when we posted these two spreadsheets there were no explanation behind it. And so all of that engagement and we just didn't continue the loop and didn't go deeper. So what I want to do is continue. Pick up those conversations and go deeper and continue to have now the impact conversation because we will pretty soon have clearer picture and understanding of what the budget looks like. And as we're now saying, okay this is what we know and now we're proposing some of these cuts, let's have that conversation.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: I'm gonna bring us to a roll call vote. Before I do that, I want to just acknowledge that I will acknowledge that as a commissioner, feel like we're kind of stuck with a statutory legal requirement document that we are needing to face because of the financial situation that we're in. A A document that was brought to the public that didn't have the necessary engagement leading up to it to actually inform us and the public about what was happening. With a with a I think a loud desire for there to be improved engagement and communication across the board. And and I just wanna acknowledge that tension and that frustration. And so here's what I would say, I would say regardless of what happens with this contract with this FSP, I think it is very clear that this Board has an expectation, let me just say it that way, that we see a stabilization plan come forward from staff that incorporate and kind of just explicitly calls out areas in which you superintendent have heard from members of the public on what they value. I mean ultimately our job here is to reflect the value of the community. And I think the pushback that you are hearing from us is because we've heard from so many members of the public who have stated and reminded us frankly of the values that we have as a city. And not to suggest that you don't have those either but we're all kind of in a tough place right now. And again I just want to name as Alida and team are listening, we are incredibly committed to building a solvent district and we have to do it the right way. And so I just wanna say that as we enter into this vote here. Roll call vote please, Ms. Lenoff.

[Ms. Lenoff (Board Secretary/Clerk)]: Commissioner Ray? No. Commissioner Alexander? No. Vice President

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: No.

[Ms. Lenoff (Board Secretary/Clerk)]: President Kim? No. Commissioner Weissman-Ward. President Commissioner Gupta? No. And Commissioner Fisher? No. That's six six nays.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Thank you.

[Speaker 44.0]: So that

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: If I may, just before we move on, I wanna just remind staff, this isn't necessarily a reflection of the work I know that our district is putting forward to get cleaner, better outlooks for our our financial situation. I think what we're experiencing is a deep call from community around understanding what exactly this is and how this plays out for our district and for our students. And so I I just I I wanna recommit to wanting to ensure that this board partners with you superintendent on bringing forward a plan that we can all get behind and again just affirm our commitment to wanting to build a solvent district together. Thank you. Moving to item two.

[Alida Fisher (Commissioner)]: President Kim first may I make a motion to extend our meeting past 10PM since it's 10:35?

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Why do we have this?

[Speaker 14.0]: Second. We have it for good reason.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Roll call vote, please.

[Ms. Lenoff (Board Secretary/Clerk)]: Got it. I'm going back to the regular do I go back to the regular order? Or do you

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: want Yes. To leave Just we're gonna do the roll call.

[Speaker 17.0]: Yeah.

[Ms. Lenoff (Board Secretary/Clerk)]: Thank you. Commissioner Alexander.

[Matt Alexander (Commissioner)]: To extend the meeting, yes.

[Ms. Lenoff (Board Secretary/Clerk)]: To extend the meeting past ten. Commissioner Fisher. Yes. Commissioner Gupta. Yes. Vice President Huling.

[Jaime Huling (Vice President)]: Yes.

[Ms. Lenoff (Board Secretary/Clerk)]: Commissioner Ray. Yes. And President Kim?

[Jaime Huling (Vice President)]: Yes, sorry. Six ayes.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: The next item on the agenda is February SP2 update on progress of superintendent's short term metrics. Can I have a motion and a second?

[Alida Fisher (Commissioner)]: I move that we approve motion 2,500 twelve-sixteen SP2.

[Parag Gupta (Commissioner)]: Second.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: It has been properly moved and seconded that the board approve item 2,500 twelve-sixteen six SP two update on progress of superintendent short term metrics. I call in doctor Sue. Yeah. Well, let me sorry. If we can withdraw that motion and add a correction to this item, this is actually more a of a discussion update on the superintendent's progress monitoring. And so that that just was agendized inaccurately. Apologies. No. No. No. No. Thank you for those who motioned and seconded. I apologize for that. This is a discussion item. So I'm gonna actually move this until after after the approval of PIPS and waivers and then we'll just resume a discussion and then we'll close out for the

[Alida Fisher (Commissioner)]: But do you want me to make a motion to just postpone it or do we have to have the conversation today?

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: I mean actually, while the item is out there, we don't have to have a conversation today. We can have a conversation in January unless Superintendent Su you needed something specifically from the board.

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: Need no. We can postpone.

[Alida Fisher (Commissioner)]: Okay. Then I move to postpone to a future meeting?

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Well, I can just pull the item from the agenda.

[Speaker 47.0]: Okay. Then never mind.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Okay. So we'll pull it. Yeah. There we go. Okay. We'll move to item 251,216 SP three, approval of tips and waivers. Can I have a motion and a second for that please?

[Parag Gupta (Commissioner)]: So moved. Second.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: It's been properly moved and seconded that the board approve item two hundred fifty one thousand two hundred and sixteen three approval of HIPs and waivers. I call on Doctor. Sue to read this into the record.

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: Great. Thank you. And I'm just going to hand it over to our associate superintendent of HR, Amy Bear.

[Amy Bear (Associate Superintendent, Human Resources)]: Good evening. I'm seeking approval of the board to offer five provisional internship permits so that we can have teachers who are working on their credential in the classroom for multiple subject and one mild moderate credentials.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Any comments or questions on the board?

[Alida Fisher (Commissioner)]: Thank you for the continuous recruitment and we appreciate everyone who's coming in to work in our classrooms.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Thank you.

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: Thank you.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Debate is now closed on the motion to approve item 251,216 SP3 approval of PIPs and waivers. Roll call vote please Ms. Lenoff.

[Ms. Lenoff (Board Secretary/Clerk)]: Commissioner Alexander?

[Matt Alexander (Commissioner)]: Yes.

[Ms. Lenoff (Board Secretary/Clerk)]: Commissioner Fisher? Yes. Commissioner Gupta?

[Parag Gupta (Commissioner)]: Yes.

[Ms. Lenoff (Board Secretary/Clerk)]: Vice President Healy?

[Jaime Huling (Vice President)]: Yes.

[Ms. Lenoff (Board Secretary/Clerk)]: Commissioner Ray? Yes. And President Kim?

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Yes.

[Ms. Lenoff (Board Secretary/Clerk)]: Six eyes.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Thank you.

[Jaime Huling (Vice President)]: President Kim has a standing recusal from the consent calendar due to his employment with City and County of San Francisco, which is a frequent contractor with SFUSD to avoid any appearance of impropriety. Superintendent, do you have any changes to the consent calendar?

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: I do not, but I believe you may have.

[Jaime Huling (Vice President)]: In that event, I'd like to move to sever item H26, which is authorization to enter into a master contract with Alpine Academy and SFUSD for provision of instructional services so that it can be voted on separately.

[Parag Gupta (Commissioner)]: Second. We

[Jaime Huling (Vice President)]: have a roll call vote, please.

[Matt Alexander (Commissioner)]: Point of information, isn't that supposed to happen according to our rules before the agenda is posted? I thought it wasn't allowed to pull things during the meeting.

[Jaime Huling (Vice President)]: I checked earlier today and was told I could sever

[Supryia Ray (Commissioner)]: it from a motion.

[Alida Fisher (Commissioner)]: I've been told in the past I wasn't allowed to sever day of or even it had to the process we've used in the past has been once we get the Q and A, have until like Thursday afternoon to sever or Friday. So Friday morning. For clarity, I'm

[Jaime Huling (Vice President)]: not asking to make this a discussion item. I'm just asking to make it a separate vote. I'm not asking to open it for discussion.

[Matt Alexander (Commissioner)]: I don't really have a problem with it. I sorry. Maybe I shouldn't even object. I just wanna be clear about the rule. I I don't have a problem with it. But I just it would be good to know whether we're still adhering to that process or not. That's a great question. I don't know. I don't know whether or not this is something that is continued in terms of custom. But there's nothing from my understanding that precludes somebody from making a motion today to sever something. But we can look into that in the future. There's no objection to vice president Huling's request to simply have this item number 26 separately voted upon. Yeah. Sorry. I yeah. I'm not objecting, but I I would just like to let's look up if we could, just make a note to look up the board policy. And I'm actually fine with changing the board policy if it's not consistent. I just think it might be a violation of board policy, and so I didn't wanna, like, do it and then have it come up later, I guess. But I don't have any substantive objection. Is that okay. Free.

[Jaime Huling (Vice President)]: Can we move to a

[Speaker 34.0]: roll call vote and folks can vote

[Jaime Huling (Vice President)]: how they want? Oh, is there a

[Parag Gupta (Commissioner)]: Yeah. Parag is second.

[Alida Fisher (Commissioner)]: But but we This is

[Ms. Lenoff (Board Secretary/Clerk)]: two votes. Correct?

[Jaime Huling (Vice President)]: Yeah. It's just a motion to sever. Okay. Commissioner Alexander.

[Matt Alexander (Commissioner)]: Motion to sever? Yeah. Yes.

[Ms. Lenoff (Board Secretary/Clerk)]: Commissioner Fisher.

[Alida Fisher (Commissioner)]: Well, okay. Point of clarification. Are we actually gonna discuss the contract or is it just gonna be straight up and down vote?

[Jaime Huling (Vice President)]: It's just a straight up and down vote.

[Alida Fisher (Commissioner)]: Then no.

[Ms. Lenoff (Board Secretary/Clerk)]: Commissioner Gupta?

[Parag Gupta (Commissioner)]: Yes.

[Ms. Lenoff (Board Secretary/Clerk)]: Vice President Huling?

[Jaime Huling (Vice President)]: Yes.

[Ms. Lenoff (Board Secretary/Clerk)]: Commissioner Ray? Yes. Okay. That's it. That's four ayes to separate the vote.

[Jaime Huling (Vice President)]: Thank you. I move the approval of item H26, authorization to enter into a master contract with Alpine Academy and SFUSD for provision of instructional services. It's H26.

[Matt Alexander (Commissioner)]: Yeah. We did just Just FYI, we did just violate our word rules.

[Jaime Huling (Vice President)]: I'm I'm moving to just vote on age 26.

[Matt Alexander (Commissioner)]: First policy nine three two two.

[Ms. Lenoff (Board Secretary/Clerk)]: Is that vote that I just took for the rest of

[Jaime Huling (Vice President)]: That was to sever. And and then this is a motion to just vote up and down on that item. Okay. Is there a second?

[Matt Alexander (Commissioner)]: We just violated our rules. I don't know.

[Parag Gupta (Commissioner)]: Second. 26.

[Matt Alexander (Commissioner)]: Yes.

[Ms. Lenoff (Board Secretary/Clerk)]: Commissioner Fisher? Yes. Commissioner Gupta? No. Commission, vice president Huling? No. Commissioner Ray?

[Supryia Ray (Commissioner)]: Yes.

[Ms. Lenoff (Board Secretary/Clerk)]: It fails. It's only three ayes.

[Jaime Huling (Vice President)]: Thank you. And I move the approval of the remainder of the consent calendar. Is there a second?

[Matt Alexander (Commissioner)]: Second.

[Ms. Lenoff (Board Secretary/Clerk)]: Commissioner Alexander?

[Matt Alexander (Commissioner)]: Yes.

[Ms. Lenoff (Board Secretary/Clerk)]: Commissioner Fisher? Yes. Commissioner Gupta? Yes. Vice President Huling?

[Jaime Huling (Vice President)]: Yes. Commissioner Ray?

[Supryia Ray (Commissioner)]: Sorry, just to clarify, this is on the rest

[Ms. Lenoff (Board Secretary/Clerk)]: of The rest of the the consent calendar. And that's five ayes.

[Speaker 27.0]: You.

[Matt Alexander (Commissioner)]: So just as a follow-up, because I think there might be confusion about this later, we did just technically violate our rules which say any motions during the board meeting to add, remove, or modify items on the consent calendar other than a motion to table an item to a future meeting are out of order. So like I said, I don't have an that's under board policy 09/2022. I don't object to the content of this. And so I don't think it's a problem. I don't know if that's legally a problem. But I would just ask that if we are going to do that, let's just clarify the policy. And I would support changing it if we want to change it, just so that we're clear and that the board policy is consistent with what our practices are.

[Jaime Huling (Vice President)]: Thank you for the clarity. I did contact district today to see if it was in order. And this is the counsel that I got. I appreciate you following up with the details and we'll move forward accordingly in the future.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Moving to item I, board member reports, would any commissioners to speak on any of the following three items, board delegates to member organizations, reports by board members, or discretionary advisory committee appointments by commissioners? Anyone? Commissioner Fisher?

[Alida Fisher (Commissioner)]: Right. Total pick me energy right now. We had a lovely CSBA, California School Board Association meeting in the December. I was honored to be able to attend as one of our delegates along with Vice President Huling and Commissioner Gupta, who are also our delegates. We got a lot of kudos within Region 5 for having finally a full delegation. And also, thank you for reappointing me with consent item number 39. Appreciate that. So we had a lot of great updates in the legislative updates, in the legal updates. We got a great update on the political landscape. And there were a bunch of great sessions at the education conference as well. So there were some really informative conversations around rating funding for mental health support that had been shared with staff. We made a lot of great connections with other commissioners in other school districts to be able to benchmark and share best practices about some of the things we're doing. And it was, I think, very productive for all of us. So thank you both for attending with us in Sacramento. And that's

[Chris Mount-Benitez (Deputy Superintendent, Business Services & School Operations)]: it.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Thank you, Commissioner Fisher. Commissioner Ray?

[Supryia Ray (Commissioner)]: Thank you. I just wanted to briefly share that I participated this year in the student outcomes focused governance cohort training for board members. And I very much appreciate the district's participation in this and for sending one of us in order to go through that training and be able to meet other board members. And not just board members, but also staff and people who are training to be coaches so we can get a variety of perspectives and an understanding of what the student outcomes focused model is all about and how to tackle the sort of everyday matters that we encounter. So I found it extremely helpful. I particularly appreciated being able to connect with board members from across the country and hear about what challenges they were facing and how they were addressing those challenges. And FYI,

[Speaker 15.0]: we

[Supryia Ray (Commissioner)]: are supposed to have a delegate and they are, as I understand, officially considering me the delegate because I was in the program. But if we want to specifically name somebody else, I just wanted to note that because that's what I've been told. So that they consider me to be our district

[Matt Alexander (Commissioner)]: I nominate Commissioner Ray as the delegate to Council of Gray City Schools.

[Speaker 2.0]: Thank

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: you. We will take it into consideration. My people will speak with your people. Any other questions, comments, updates? Yes.

[Parag Gupta (Commissioner)]: Yeah, just a follow-up on our request to receive a list of appointees or appointments that we need to make. I attended a couple of different groups. And the number one feedback I received was, when are you going to appoint people? And so having that list would be incredibly helpful so we make sure that we as board members are doing our duty.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Yeah. I know that board office staff are working in partnership with Hongmei and her team and Chris to finalize that list. I think there's a lot of lists to reconcile. Even thank

[Matt Alexander (Commissioner)]: on the website like the PFCAC list is not updated. I mean, there's a link on our website, and when you click through, the roster is is old. Yes.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Oh, go for it. Yes. So what is, like, everything. Yeah. What we're working on is identifying quite a lot about each of the advisory bottle bodies and appointments. So, yes,

[Parag Gupta (Commissioner)]: it is coming. Thank you.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Okay. With that, item J. German and I adjourn today's meeting at 10:51 p. M.