BOE Passes Budgets with a Counselor for Hilltop and a Bungalow for Guadalupe ES (edit this)
The BOE’s last FY 07-08 regular meeting began at 5:20 p.m. and ended at 11:30 p.m. 
So I will just give some highlights with a longer story to follow:
1. The San Francisco Board of Education passed with 7-0 vote the FY 07-08 budget with two changes:
a. The funding for the counselor at Hilltop was found with Prop H and Violence Prevention funds.
c. The Building and Grounds Department found funds for a bungalow for Guadalupe, beginning in October. Terri Fontera’s appearance with Austin and Alexa (her children) in every meeting and every venue was not only impressive-but it worked to convince the Board of Education to allow Guadalupe to have a computer room. (Terri for Mayor!)
2. The Board voted 4-3 to approve an one-year lease with Envision Charter Schools to house Metro Charter High School at the old Newcomer site on Jackson. Voting for the lease was Sanchez, Mar, Maufas and Jane Kim. Voting against the lease was Wynns, Mendoza and Yee.
Supervisor Alioto-Pier’s aide complained that they had to learn about the lease from a reporter. Pacific Heights residents complained about the parking from estimated 107 Marin students coming to the Jackson Street address. I pointed out that they forced Newcomer to move into a small elementary school without a cafeteria and now they were renting their former home at Newcomer to a group that will include 107 Marin students and a student body that only has 20% of its students getting free or reduced lunch (Newcomer is 52%.)
Eric Mar said, “I hope that Newcomer can come back home.” But he noted that Envision had kept Board members in the loop with emails about the need to find a location for Metro and its students from its closed location in Novato. Jane Kim enthused about Envision and said that the District needed to move forward with the contract.
Hydra Mendoza noted that Envision’s charter application for Metro noted that Metro’s mission was to serve students in the southeast side of the City. She questioned that Envision would want to move back to the southeast side of the City-especially with Marin students coming to the Newcomer site for one year. Mendoza noted that it was faster to get to Marin from Jackson Street than a location in southeast San Francisco.
Metro is currently at Treat Street in the Mission.
3. Two emergency resolutions were delayed due to the absence of Commissioner Yee. Emergency resolutions require a 7-0 vote to pass.
Yee was at most of the meeting, but he left prior to the two items being presented at 11:00 p.m. The resolutions dealt with an underground storage tank at Harvey Milk and repair from fire damage at a Bayview property rented to a nonprofit organization. The resolutions were postponed and the board discussed meeting on Friday, July 20 or Saturday, July 21 to pass the two resolutions.
4. It was Superintendent Chan’s last meeting as the interim superintendent. The entire board thanked her for her hard work. Her senior staff gave her flowers and a standiing ovation.
The Superintendent thanked all but one of the Board Members. She noted that she had worked with Jill Wynns when Chan was an assistant principal at Washington and Wynns was a parent and founder of a parent group. Even though Maufas was out of the room, Chan noted that it was great that another parent advocate, Kim-Shree Maufas was on the board. Chan thanked Yee for his two years as the president of the board and noted that she was very happy to see him at “90%.” Chan thanked President Sanchez and noted that she had seen him grow and blossom during his tenure as the Board President. Chan thanked Mendoza for getting the Mayor interested in the School District. Chan told Mar that while they didn’t always agree, she appreciated that they always took time to discuss issues and to clarify different points of view. Commissioner Jane Kim was out of the room with Commissioner Maufas at the time.
It was also General Counsel David Campos’ last meeting. Campos will be leaving the San Francisco Unified School District to do some consulting work and run for supervisor in D-9.
5. The Board approved the recognition of Local 1021 as the bargaining unit for much of its classified workers. Local 790 was merged into Local 1021. Karen Bishop eloquently talked about all of the great work that Local 1021 does to keep the district going.
In the front row is Kaden Knatzer, Field Representative for Local 1021 and Karen Bishop, chapter president for school workers for Local 1021. Sarah Thomas, CPUC and volunteer and Lisa Spinali, executive director of SF School Volunteers for John Muir ES, are studying the budget.
6. The Board did an initial reading of a new contract with Local 38-Stationary Engineers. The contract will have a public hearing at the Board’s regular meeting on August 14.
Here is our representatives of Local 38-the people who keep the schools’ boilers and air handling equipment working without a lot of resources and usually working with equipment that no longer has available spare parts.
7. The Board of Education will not be meeting until August 14, except for a short meeting to revisit the emergency resolutions.
June 27th, 2007 at 7:39 am e
I posted an account specifically of the Envision/Metro/Newcomer lease flap on sfschools last night. (I had been at the meeting earlier but listened to this part later on the radio.)
The issue that provoked neighbors was not the lease to Metro/Envision itself but the fact that Envision had decided to “merge” Metro with its mostly-white, zero-low-income Novato school and have more than 100 students commute from Marin to the Newcomer site. That specific point is what Jill Wynns and some other BOE members said Envision hadn’t told them — they learned it from the press (the Marin Independent Journal and the Novato Advance have been covering it). Other BOE members rather weakly defended Envision by claiming the company had tried to contact them.
Below is my account of last night’s meeting and background on Envision’s rather puzzling plans.
***
Some surprise sparks flew at this evening’s (Tuesday, June 26) SFUSD Board of Ed meeting over renting the former Newcomer High School site in Pacific Heights
for one year to a charter school comprising SFUSD’s Metro Arts & Tech merged with now-defunct Marin School Arts & Technology (MSAT) of Novato. Both are charter schools run by Envision Schools.
By a 4-3 vote, the board approved a resolution supporting the one-year tenancy. An aide to Supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier and several Pacific
Heights residents, concerned about traffic from an influx of Marin students, spoke heatedly against the arrangement. They said the plan for Metro to merge with MSAT had been sprung on them with no
discussion, despite promises by SFUSD to communicate plans for the site. Several BOE commissioners said the reason they had not communicated with neighbors is that Envision had not mentioned the merger plan to them. Others said Envision spokespeople may have left
them a message.
All the Pacific Heights neighbors said they had supported the occupancy of the site by Metro, but that they believed that 100-plus commuter students driving from Marin would increase traffic and
parking congestion. An Envision spokesperson promised that a chartered bus would transport students and would drop them off some distance from the school. He also described Metro several times as “underenrolled,” which was surprising as Envision schools have been reported to have waiting lists.
With next year’s SFUSD budget taking up most of the agenda, the Metro site was hardly the most important issue, but as I’m one of he few people who has been following it, I’m giving some background (though
there are holes in my information too).
Metro has been located at a North Bernal church site for its one year of existence. Its stated mission, like that of Envision Schools, is to serve low-income students who are likely to be the first generation in
their family to attend college.
Metro reportedly turned down an offered site in the Bayview in favor of the Newcomer site, although the Bayview represents the community Metro committed to serve (while Pacific Heights is the wealthiest
neighorhood in the city).
Envision’s MSAT, in Novato, just graduated its first class. MSAT, located in one of the nation’s richest counties, is mostly white and reports zero low-income students. Novato’s two non-charter high schools enroll more students of color and do serve low-income
students: Novato High lists 23.7% low-income and San Marin High lists 14% low-income.
On June 5, it was announced that MSAT was shutting down and merging with Metro at the Newcomer site. A couple of days before that, MSAT had announced that it was severing from Envision and would be run
autonomously. The revised announcement was accompanied by many statements blaming the Novato Unified School District for the school’s
demise (Envision took out a full-page ad in the Marin
Independent-Journal to make that point). Currently, more than 100 MSAT students are expected to commute to Metro.
http://www.marinij.com/marin/ci_6070892
SFUSD commissioners Kim, Mar, Maufas and Sanchez voted for the lease proposal; Mendoza, Wynns and Yee opposed it. The three who voted no voiced concerns supporting the neighbors and about the influx of
out-of-district students. Wynns noted that non-charter schools may also enroll out-of-district students, but that they have to be approved by SFUSD, while charters have full enrollment autonomy.
Mendoza wondered why Envision had turned down the Bayview site for Metro in favor of one located far across the city from the community it is supposed to serve, and voiced concern about whether the Marin
students will continue to attend after the school completes its year at the Newcomer site and moves again. The commissioners who voted yes said they shared those concerns.
Commissioner Wynns proposed adding language to the lease clearly limiting it to one year, which was done with no objections. The commissioners promised to meet with Alioto-Pier and the neighbors to
discuss the plans further.
{For those who want more informatino, here’s a bit more background on the issue.)
One SFUSD commissioner this evening described MSAT has having been shut down by the Novato (NUSD) school board and was corrected by Wynns. News reports indicate that Wynns is correct: It was Envision’s
decision to shut MSAT down, not NUSD’s — for the stated reason that NUSD was not being cooperative in helping MSAT find a site.
An Envision official at this evening’s meeting claimed that Envision would have alerted the BOE and the neighbors if it had been clear that so many MSAT students would enroll in Metro, indicating that the
number was a surprise. But actually, Envision told the Marin Independent Journal for a June 5 story (link above) that as many as 170 MSAT students might commute to Metro, and has encouraged MSAT students to do that.
There has been friction between MSAT and NUSD from the beginning. For the first three years of MSAT’s existence, California charter school law mandated that districts pay charter schools a set amount per
student. In NUSD, this amounted to $800 per year per student more than Novato’s two non-charter high schools received. (This same discrepancy
existed in SFUSD.) This meant that all students at Novato’s non-charter high schools were sacrificing to subsidize MSAT students (including a reported 50 percent who lived outside NUSD).
NUSD approached state Sen. Carole Migden, who authored SB319, a bill remedying the inequity. It took effect in fall `06, so now school
districts don’t have to pay charter schools more in district funds than non-charter schools get. (Gov. Schwarzenegger, a fervent charter supporter, signed the bill on the basis that the inequity was
discouraging school districts from approving charters.)
MSAT collapsed after one year of functioning without that extra subsidy. It’s not known whether the loss of that extra subsidy was a factor in the school’s demise.
Unlike MSAT, Metro does serve a student population that’s mostly low-income students of color. Statistically, low-income students of
color post lower academic achievement than high-income white students. It’s statistically likely that the influx of high-income students will
significantly raise Metro’s test scores.
June 27th, 2007 at 8:01 am e
Oh, and Kim, I’m not sure if you did the math averaging Metro’s free-lunch rate with MSAT’s, assuming 107 students commuting in their Beamers (stereotype alert!) from Marin. Maybe that’s how you arrived at 20% free/reduced-lunch — I haven’t tried. 06-07 figures are 40.1 percent for Metro and a big fat zero for MSAT.
June 27th, 2007 at 5:42 pm e
Thanks, Caroline.
One very important fact that I missed-the schools will be cut an additional 1% for a total of 2% to create a reserve fund for possible raises for teachers and other unions that they are in collective bargaining with.
June 28th, 2007 at 9:48 am e
Thanks to both of you for the disclosure.
First, why does the district keep approving new charter schools? Especially this one, in a wealthy neighborhood inaccessible to our poorer residents in the south and eastern parts of town? The charter schools we already have continue failing one after another (posting dismal test scores and then closing outright).
Why continue this failed policy?
Second, The Chron reports this morning that “health insurance costs” are eating increasing shares of the SFUSD budget. This should be a major concern, because lifetime health insurance guarantees for teachers (anyone with 5 or more years of service) were what bankrupted the Richmond School District.
June 28th, 2007 at 11:32 am e
This isn’t a new charter school; it’s a new site for an existing one, Envision’s Metro Arts & Tech. (Envision is kind of making it into a new place with the influx of kids from Marin, if that really happens, but that’s beyond the BOE’s control.)
To the BOE’s credit, it has voted down all more-recent charter proposals since it approved Metro two years ago, though some members have voted yes on some of them.
(And re health care — it’s like the really, really humongous elephant in the room, nationwide, impacting the private sector too — really makes you realize that our nation has completely lost its innovative, “can-do” spirit if we can’t fix this crisis.)