Sabrina

Last night I attended a birthday party at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse on Van Ness. One of the members of our party teaches at Bessie Carmichael . She ended up talking with one of our waitresses named Sabrina. It turned out that Sabrina is a teacher at Sherman Elementary. I knew that many teachers in San Francisco have to take part-time jobs in order to afford to live in San Francisco. I even wrote an op-ed about it with USEF President Dennis Kelly but I never really encountered it.

I talked with Sabrina a bit and she confirmed that she indeed could not live in San Francisco off her paycheck from SFUSD and even if UESF is successful in getting a 12% raise for her and her colleagues, she would still need to hold a part time job. So I asked her what she fealt she would need to make as a teacher in order to not take a part time job. Her answer was $50,000 a year. That's a little less than a 25% raise. For the rest of the dinner I thought about how it could be possible to give teachers that kind of raise. I quicky saddened as I realized its not possible at least not any time soon. There's a parcel tax coming up on the ballot and I'm all for it but I'm sure even that cannot balance SFUSD's budget at give teachers a 25% raise.

What can we do that will enable us, the residents of San Francisco, to pay our teachers a wage that will allow them to focus on teaching our children? In order to accomplish this we need an extra $85 million every year, probably more actually since other Unions will want bigger raises as well. There's only two years until SEUI 790 comes back to the bargaining table. Just for the $85 million, that parcel tax would have to impose a duty of $107 on each and every resident of San Francisco.

Why I wear the same UESF T-Shirt to every Board meeting

I will wear a UESF t-shirt to every Board meeting I attend until teachers in San Francisco receive a fair and equitable contract.

When Teachers come first, Children come first!

First Post!

Hello, this is the first post of my blog that will journal my campaign for San Francisco Board of Education and with the support of Parents, Teachers and other San Francisco voters I will continue to journal my work on The Board of Education.

I believe in total transparency and openness and to that end I will, from this point on, journal all of my activities related to my work with SFUSD. I'll also post random thoughts on public education in San Francisco and at times totally random thoughts with no restriction on topic. Here's what I've done today so far...



Today's activities:



I've been working with Mark Sanchez to get a resolution we co-authored introduced and ratified by The Board of education. This resolution calls for the creation of a Community Advisory Council to look into the many complex issues of school enrollment, not just under-enrollment but over-enrollment, enrollment trends, diversity and program placement. The Parent Advisory Council made this one of its recommendations during last year's school closures and The Board didn't take that advise. I didn't give up on this and kept pushing along with other PAC members and now The Board is finally taking us seriously.


This Community Advisory Council will be filled with the best and brightest parent and community leaders and will also have members of The Board of Education and The Board of Supervisors as well as representatives of The Mayor and our local State Assembly Representatives. This will be a strong committee empowered to truly make a difference. This committee will reach out to the communities of San Francisco through on-the-ground community engagement; proaction with the community replacing reaction from the community.


One week of meetings, noticed only a few days in advance, where parents get a minute or two to make their case AFTER decisions had been practically made, culminating in a ten page packet of information delivered to The Board of Education ON THE EVENING THEY WERE TO MAKE A DECISION is NOT community involvement.
The District still practically operates as though it has 70,000 students even though its enrollment is 56,578. There are school closures and mergers that make sense. A few people in a central office working over a few months with only the afterthought of community involvement cannot find those closures and mergers that truly make sense for the community. The answers lay in the community and we need to pull the community together and get those answers FROM THE COMMUNITY



So... I've been sending out an email blast to a few people to get them out to The Board meeting tonight advocating for the creation of this council.

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I spoke with an LA (legislative assistant) from Supervisor Gerardo Sandoval's office regarding a resolution he submitted to The Board of Supervisors asking Dr. Ackerman to give her $375,000 severance back to the children of SFUSD. I worked on this with Supervisor Sandoval after Dr. Ackerman made her announcement. After Gerardo submitted it, Supervisor Maxwell sent it to committee. Well actually she dumped it in a committee that never meets. Recently, Gerardo acted to pull it out of committee and today the full Board of Supervisors will vote on it.



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I spoke with a community leader about the merger of John Swett and John Muir. She was concerned that even though The District has indicated programs will merge, in fact programs could be cut partially or entirely due to lack of funding after 15% of the effected students leave the combined school or because there will not be enough room at the John Muir site. We discussed the need to be vigilant about this. I will contact the principal of John Muir and get involved in the merger process of the two schools. We met at the recent Parent Summit and discussed issues with the merger. I'm sure she'll welcome me to the process.