Bilingual Community Council
Meeting Minutes
12/16/13, Cleveland Elementary School
Attendance
Members Present: Kim Garcia-Meza, Naheed Misfeldt, Flor Ramos, Leonor Jackson-Flores,
Akiyo Yokoi, Tyler Woods, Gabriel Rodriguez
Members Absent: Cindy Choy (with notification), Valerie Persky (without notification)
SFUSD: Jennifer Fong (Multilingual Pathways Department), Luis Ochoa (Director, Multilingual
Pathways Department), Elizabeth Blanco (Asst Superintendent, Special Education),
Roderick Castro (Supervisor, Special Education), DJ Irvin (Sr. Statistician), Margaret
Farruggio (Supervisor, Special Education), Christina Wong (Special Assistant to
Superintendent)
Members of the public: Ubaldo Fernandez (Legal Aid Society Employment Law Center),
Yolanda Herrera (Parent)
1. Review and approve minutes
Naheed moved to approve the minutes from the October 28, 2013 meeting, Tyler
seconded, all approved.
Leonor moved that the minutes from the November 18, 2013 meeting add a comment she
had made during the discussion about parent liaisons. Naheed moved to approve the
November 18, 2013 meeting minutes as amended. Kim seconded, all approved.
2. New Business
There was no new business
3. Add Agenda Items
We moved Report back form the Subcomittee to agenda item #6. We added Report Back
from BCC Liaison to BOE as agenda item #8.
4. Public Comment
Yolanda Herrera is a parent whose child formerly attended Flynn Elementary School,
where she served on Flynn’s ELAC. She is also a former BCC member. She has a
seventh grade daughter who currently attends Aptos. Her daughter is a reclassified EL
and is also receiving special education (SpEd) services. She is also an honor student.
Despite having an IEP which specifies service minutes, she has not received any of her
services. Last year, in the sixth grade, the daughter was receiving services and support
per her IEP and had a great school year. Her teacher was viewed as a team member.
This year she is struggling in math. Yolanda is not sure why it has been so challenging
for her daughter to receive services this year. She has spoken to the teachers (some of
whom did not even know there was an IEP), the case manager (who just informed
Yolanda that she will be moving on and will no longer be responsible for her daughter’s
IEP), and the school principal.
Dr. Blanco said she will look into it and get back to Yolanda. Unfortunately, there is
currently no SpEd supervisor that is in charge of Aptos. Margaret Farruggio offered to
contact the Aptos principal on the family’s behalf. She will look into how the daughter is
being scheduled into the school and how her services are supposed to be delivered. Dr.
Blanco stated that if the daughter has not been receiving minutes they will make sure her
lost minutes are made up. The SpEd team offered to get back to Yolanda by the end of
this week, before the holiday break.
5. Presentation from Special Education
Dr. Elizabeth Blanco: introduction
Dr. Blanco joined SFUSD from Southern California two years ago. Working with ELs
has been a passion in her career. She previously worked with categorical programs, and
after Prop 227 passed, started a program for parents who wanted to acquire English and
wanted to work with their children at home.
Working with ELs who are doubly identified with SpEd is a challenge. This is because
not a lot of staff get cross functionally trained. However, at SFUSD, there is a huge
collaboration between our two departments (SpEd and MPD). She is confident they are
moving in the right direction.
Dr. Roderick Castro: demographics
Roderick is a Supervisor for SpEd who recently relocated from Los Angeles, where he
spent 19 years at LAUSD. His time there included 3 years as a bilingual coordinator and
9 years supervising programs (master plan). He has also also taught for USC (Culture in
Schools, Instruction for English Language Learners).
Currently 15,011 SFUSD students receive EL services, and 7,013 receive SpEd services.
The intersection is 2,219 students. The two most prevalent disabilities for the doubly
identified students are Specific Learning Disability and Speech or Language Impairment,
Long Term ELs: at least five years and haven’t reclassified. Of the 2500 long term ELs,
880 of them are identified as receiving Sped (35%). Clarifying question: non-native:
students who
Dr. Elizabeth Blanco: disproportionality
We are not significantly disproportionate with Hispanic or Asian students in specific
learning disability or speech and language. There was a time when the state was using a
different formula for calculating risk ratios and we were not making the cut on that
formula. The state could not agree on the formula so they took it out of the equation. The
state does not report by English Learner, they report by race.
DJ Irvin: statistics overview
What is a risk ratio? Consider the risk of being involved in an earthquake if you lived in
San Francisco. Now consider that risk if you lived in Dallas. The ratio of these two is
the “risk ratio.” CDE calculates risk ratios for each ethnic group and each disability
category. 1.0 is considered “normal” and anything under 5.0 is sufficient.
Dr. Blanco: pre-referral process
Due to disproportionality (primarily with African American students), we have spent a lot
of money addressing pre-referrals. We are hoping to track all pre-interventions
electronically across the district. We want to make sure students are receiving certain
attention in General Ed before we put a label on them. It’s always a balance.
We are training assessors in this area. The law forbids us from providing services for
students who are not coming to school, who are coming from another country and in the
process of acculturation.
Q: How long do foreign students have to acculturate?
A: It depends on how they accelerate in learning in English.
A teacher recommendation is a referral. If a parent requests testing, regardless of what
we think, we are required by law to provide testing.
Q: How do you communicate with students who were in SpEd programs in their home
country?
A: We sit down with them, try to get documentation to put them into a program that is
similar. The home language survey asks if the child was receiving SpEd in their home
country. If the parent doesn’t mark it on the home language but the teacher notices a
student is having difficulty, might refer to SST.
Q: How many assessors do we have?
A: We have 65 psychologists and over 100 speech pathologists. Plus another 30-40
assessors (e.g. occupational therapists, physical therapists) in other areas.
One of the reasons we are having a difficult time getting assessors is we really want those
who are bilingual. What’s important is that people who write IEP goals are writing
linguistically appropriate goals to meet EL development needs. Through the SEIS
system, there are a lot of tool for assessors and teachers. We also work with MPD to
modify a student’s SST process.
Margaret Farruggio: inclusive practices
Last May, SFUSD adopted guiding principles for inclusive practices. Two years ago
SFUSD started working with Stetson Associates, in response to the Urban Collaborative
Report. Her favorite guiding principle is that all kids are in general education first. In
every class there are flexible groupings and differentiation. If you are acquiring a second
language, those pieces are also in place.
If a child has an IEP, we start with least restrictive supports (how can we do curricular
modification? How can we do the language work if they are also learning English?).
Maybe they need a little extra support (Specialized Support). We want to make sure kids
are getting the content but also that there is intervention when necessary. We want to
make sure disabilities are being addressed, but also that the child is in general ed and
getting the core content they need so they are not falling behind.
Co-teaching is very specific to individual needs. Not everyone will do it. For example,
in secondary what we would like to see is a Sped teaching ELD one period, English
another period, based on the needs of the students. Not everyone is a content level expert
or certified in specific areas. We need to work together so students have access to
rigorous content.
Dr. Roderick Castro: professional development
SpEd offers many different levels of training. Content specialists have access to training
which they then bring back to the school sites. We also offer a rotation of courses on the
Special Education Information System (SEIS) which tracks students who receive
services. Stetson training for inclusive practices has happened with about 80 schools (2/3
of the district). Project REAL is a set of courses on how to make accommodations and
modifications in the general ed classroom.
We are working with MPD and the humanities department as we roll out the new
Common Core State Standards and new ELD standards. This is a cross collaboration so
no one falls behind.
We view parents as partners. We need to hear from parents so we can understand how to
better support them.
6. Report from Subcommittee
On December 2, 2013 a subcommittee of the BCC met to discuss the scope of the Site
Visit Study for 2013-14. The subcommittee narrowed the focus of our study to middle
schools and high schools with a high number of long term ELs who are doubly identified
as SpEd. Eight schools have been selected using this criteria.
In January we will convene another subcommittee to work on the protocol. In February,
we will call a different subcommittee to work on BCC bylaws.
7. Ongoing Dialogue with Internal Oversight Committee & Report Back from
Multilingual Pathways Department
Luis provided a summary from the last IOC meeting. Two months ago, MPD did a series
of three presentations to the IOC. The first presentation had to do with making sure
everyone knew about the new ELD standards. The second presentation went deeper into
the shifts for ELD. Because everyone at the IOC is a department head, MPD is asking all
members what they are going to do in their capacity to speak to ELs. MPD wants to
ensure that everyone is becoming an advocate for ELs and not operating in silos. The
third presentation to IOC is professional development about math through the EL lens.
MPD is also rolling out new new ELD standards training.
We have set Thursday, January 30, 2014, 6-8pm at 555 Franklin as the date for the
Language Pathway Forum. A couple of years ago, Stanford initiated a longitudinal study
examining student performance over the past 13 years across various standardized tests to
get a sense of how students were doing in each of the pathways. All CACs will be
invited to attend this highly anticipated forum.
Q: We wanted to talk about the report card and getting the box back regarding progress
towards reclassification. Can that be on our agenda for January or February?
A: There are concerns about this physically fitting in the space because report card is jam
packed. When ELD was a separate section on the old report card we had more room.
Are there other ways that we can communicate that? We can have a conversation about it
in February.
Q: Concerning reclassification, some parents of ELs have said that they were not notified
that their child would be taking the CELDT. What follow-up does the district do so
administrators are communicating with families?
A: There is a checklist for administrators. We can follow-up with the sites names to see
if their checklists were filled out and returned.
8. Report from BCC Liaison to BOE
The BCC Liaison sent another note earlier today to the BOE asking for clarification on
all the points that went unanswered in her prior note sent on November 14, 2013.
Specifically we would like clarification on when terms expire for all BCC members;
whether the BOE will consider another appointment process similar to the PAC; and
whether the BOE plans to fill the many open seats on the BCC. We reiterated that it is a
challenge for us to complete our work with an under appointed BCC.
9. Set Agenda and Location for Next Meeting:
Agenda:
1) Review and approve minutes
2) New business
3) Add agenda items
4) Public comments
5) Report back from BOE Liaison
6) IOC report back
7) Report back from Subcomittee
8) Work on protocol
Date: January 27, 2014 Time: 6:00-8:00 pm
Location: – Monroe Elementary School
10. Final Thoughts/Adjourn
Adjourned at 8:05 pm