Politics is not a spriint-it's a marathon. Louise Renne to the Youth Commission

Well gang, the battle in the War for the Kids for SFUSD is over. Battle was not won by the kids. Cuts were made to Child Development, school sites,, 111 teachers were laid off and over 50 paraprofessionals were laid off. The youth of YMAC were shut down when they tried to get funding for their project of funding toilet seats for all students at the District's 18 high schools. And classified personnel (janitors, secretaries, gardeners and others-mainly represented by Local 790) will have to take three unpaid furlough days during the next fiscal year.

But there were some upsides:

Kudos to Commissioner Sarah Lipson for trying to cut money from the Central Office in the Superintendent's, Chief Academic Office's, Chief Development Office's and Legal Offices and put it back in the classroom.

Kudos to President Eric Mar who repeatedly stated the goal "To make cuts as far as away from the classroom as possible" with several possible cuts to the Central Office and for fighting for the Local 790 people who will now have three unpaid furlough days. (He suggested that the managers at the Central Office take the three unpaid furlough days.)

Kudos to Commissioner Mark Sanchez who pointed out that the officers under the JROTC is being paid more than teachers at the top step.

Kudos to Jeremiah Jeffries for bringing attention that the California Education Code requires that the budget must include expenditures from the previous year.

Congratulations to Rick Reynolds, parent of an Aptos scholar, showing that the budget didn't show how the cuts from the weighted student averages were going to be applied-or if they were going to be applied equally.

Thanks for everyone who attended!!

Sigh-we may have lost this budget battle. But we can't let this stop us-we have a lot of work to do to help the students of SFUSD.

And thanks to Mar, Lipson and Sanchez (and Yee), the cuts to the Child Development Program was not as deep as was orginally proposed. And the word is getting out that we have a tough battle on our hands-in getting money to the kids and the classroom.

And with these cuts, we are becoming allied with one thought-we need to work together in order to make sure that we have an education system that includes successful students-and employees who are treated with respect and honored for their work with the students (and that includes everyone in the School District).

We can't forget why we are here-to help 55,000 students at every school have a quality education. We don't want to focus on the noise around the Superintendent. We don't want to react to SFSOS-unless it is about that our message is about the students.

We want to focus on how we can improve SFUSD for the students.So what do we want to do in the next six months? What do we want to work on?
We want to hear from you.

Should we work on: Child Development School Sites Professional Development Rolling Back the Furloughs YMAC's issue on toilet seats Something Else

Email me at kimberleyknox@hotmail.com by Sunday-and we email your ideas in a post!

Step by step, we will create a better school district for San Francisco's future leaders.