Accomplishments - Norman Yee First Term Highlights

By Norman Yee

The District as a whole is in a much better situation now than when I first started on the Board of Education. We have a new Superintendent who is providing strong educational leadership for the District's staff. We have a Board of Education that is focused on leading and supporting positive changes to improve the quality of education for students. A strategic plan was recently approved by the Board of Education to create the infrastructure necessary to make positive systems changes and hold all of us accountable to our students. We continue to develop new partnerships with City government agencies and with community groups. More parents are choosing San Francisco public schools for their children. We have also seen improvement in students' math and language arts proficiency-our District is the top urban District in California, with students' average API scores continuing to rise from an API of 745 in 2005 to 764 in 2007.

I have kept my 2004 campaign commitment to improve the District by addressing the following goals: Excellent Schools Everywhere-

• Guided the District through a smooth superintendent transition process including appointing an interim superintendent, without losing focus on student achievement
• Identified new, strong leadership that unfolded a bold strategic plan to move every school in the District towards excellence
• Created a process and framework to determine the number of schools needed to better utilize the school district's resources and reflect changing population in San Francisco
• Led the effort to pass the $450 million school facility bond of 2006 to update and improve our very old school buildings
• Provided leadership in developing and passing the 2008 Proposition A Parcel Tax measure that provides increased salaries for teachers and incentives for quality teachers to stay at our neediest schools

• Supported Principal leadership training and helped to expand leadership training for the District's early childhood education program managers
• Improved the working relationship between School Board members by leading two board retreat efforts that resulted in agreement on the District's goals. These goals have guided our decisions since adapting them in 2006

• Supported the expansion of the District's preschool program and led the Board's effort to have create a seamless preschool through third grade program with aligned curriculum
• Initiated discussion with external funders to support our child development infrastructure

• Created and led the process to hire a new superintendent for the District that met the approval of community members, parents and staff
• Partnered with parents to lead the effort to expand language programs for students to learn at least two languages to prepare them for a global economy
• Supported a resolution to have parent and community groups lead the effort to provide input into the development of a vision for the district
• Bridged communication between the District and parents with deaf and hard of hearing children
• Supported increased fund gaps for translation services.

• Actively engaged in the Small School By Design policy that asked for the expansion of the number of small schools by design in our District to provide alternatives approaches for students to reach their academic potential

• Sunshine Policy- Assisted in the creation of a more transparent process for school board decisions and governance by co-authoring the District's Sunshine Regulations
• Prompted the School Board policy to have the District observe the Lunar New Year as an official holiday