Bilingual Community Council
Meeting Minutes
5/19/14, Bryant Elementary School
Attendance
Members Present: Kim Garcia-Meza, Naheed Misfeldt, Leonor Jackson-Flores, Tyler Woods,
Gabriel Rodriguez, Akiyo Yokoi, Flor Ramos, Cindy Choy, Christina Cañaveral
Members Absent: Valerie Persky
SFUSD: Luis Ochoa (Director, Multilingual Pathways Department), Christina Wong (Special
Assistant to Superintendent)
Members of the public: Matilda Tellez
1. Public Comment
A special welcome to Matilda Tellez. Her son is in seventh grade with an IEP. She
participates in his school’s ELAC and has also been to some DELAC meeting. When her
son was in elementary school she was told he didn’t need to be reclassified because all of
his therapy was in English. She learned after another meeting that her son was never
reclassified. That is why she is participating more with ELAC.
2. Add Agenda Items
No agenda items were added.
3. Review and approve minutes
Kim moved to approve minutes from the April 21, 2014 meeting, Naheed seconded, all
approved.
4. Report from Luis Ochoa on DELAC
The DELAC community conversation is following the same protocol that other CACs are
using with three questions around eight principles: 1) what is working for ELs? 2) what
are suggestions parents have? and 3) what services do we want the district to continue?
The BCC asked why it was not solicited for feedback on the LCAP, and Christina Wong
noted that the BCC was formally invited to participate in any of these community
conversations. The purpose of the three questions is to see what’s working , what can be
done better, and what specific goals are for improvement. Community groups decided to
focus on student access and achievement, student engagement, and parent involvement.
The last DELAC meeting will be this Wednesday at Civic Center High School. The PAC
and the DELAC are the two formal governing bodies who will be giving formal feedback
on LCAP.
5. Report from Board of Education Liaison
No news to report.
6. Report back from Subcommittee
On May 7, 2014 a subcommittee was convened to review the bylaws for PAC and CAC
Special Ed. The subcommittee took aspects from both of them and drafted a version of
the BCC’s new bylaws.
Not having childcare at BCC meetings is a real issue of access and equity, especially if
other CACs are making childcare available. Gabriel moved to approve the bylaws, Cindy
seconded all approved.
7. Preparation for Board of Education Presentation
This will be prepared at tomorrow evening’s subcommittee meeting.
8. Ongoing Dialogue with Internal Oversight Committee & Report Back from
Multilingual Pathways Department
The IOC meeting in May discussed the Lau Action Plan Revisions. They also heard from
Aptos, Longfellow and SF Community about best practices. Some presentations were
videotaped and staff will try to make those available to teachers.
The BCC requested IOC meeting dates for the upcoming school year.
At the last IOC meeting, Christina Wong also shared high level observations from the
BCC site visits (positives and areas of improvements). It was helpful for the IOC. The
professional development schedule for next year is being prepared and BCC feedback
from the visits will be helpful in this regard.
Q: What were Lau Action Plan revisions for ELS with IEPs?
A: We wanted to get feedback on students with IEPs on how to better serve students.
We started talking about edits to the plan. But IOC wanted to hear about best practices
for the three schools.
Q: Is there feedback around EL/IEPs. Someone mentioned gathering data on kids with
learning differences and language acquisition. Will we get a report on that?
A: A researcher wanted to partner with SFUSD but we decided not to because of
capacity.
Q: Before there was a relationship with SFUSD and the USF Special Education
department. That’s not the case now. Why aren’t we taking advantage of higher
education institutions to help support our ELs or students with IEPs? Where will we pull
resources from?
A: We are looking at possibly extending our relationship with Stanford. Our grant with
Stanford will end in June. We have built deep relationships with them. Christina will
look into the previous USF partnership.
Stanford Study Next Steps
SFUSD would like to put some of the information in user-friendly terminology into the
EL program guide. Christina will bring a draft to the next meeting. The BCC expressed
concerns about relaying this information since we haven’t talked robustly as a community
about the data and the graphs. There are concerns about bias in the graphs and what it
means for the pathways. Concerns were also expressed about the data being used to push
families into certain programs. Christina Wong stated that the EL guide’s purpose is to
describe the programs in an unbiased way. The BCC stated that until educators have time
to talk about the results, it’s premature to put the graphs in the EL guide.
Christina reminded the BCC that the Stanford study answers the question of whether a
student is gaining English proficiency. There were concerns that students were not
learning English fast enough. The data is focused on English acquisition. There is not
consistent longitudinal data on target language proficiency.
Q: Of the Latino students in the study, how many were bilingual? There is an issue of
Spanish teachers not speaking Spanish correctly. So how well are students doing in their
native language? That is the kind of information that will motivate parents and students.
Q: The district can ask, what does it mean to look at bilingual education? Is it only
learning English quickly enough?
While the BCC expressed continued conerns about whether the EL guide was the
appropriate place for the study results, Christina mentioned that it was meant to be put
somewhere so parents would not lose it. She will bring a draft to the next meeting, and
we plan to discuss this again during Christina’s report back.
9. Conversation about DELAC & BCC
DELAC had brought up in the past to meet jointly with the BCC once or twice a year to
exchange information and ideas. One possibility is to solicit feedback from the DELAC
before the BCC plans its site visits.
10. Set the agenda for the next meeting
Agenda highlights: BCC candidate list, LCAP, insert for EL guide
1) Public comments
2) Add agenda items
3) Review and approve minutes
4) Report back from Luis on DELAC
5) Report back from BOE Liaison
6) Report back from Membership Subcommittee
7) Report back from BOE Presentation
8) IOC report back
9) Set Agenda for Next Meeting
Date: June 16, 2014 Time: 6:00-8:00 pm
Location: TBD
11. Adjourn
Adjourned at 8:02 pm