PPS Community Meeting

Saturday's calendar was triple booked, with Support for Families of Children with Disabilities's 2007 Information & Resource Conference at O'Connell High, DCYF's Community Policy Forum on Youth Issues with Mayor Newsom at Excelsior Boys and Girls Club, and Parents for Public Schools' Annual General and Community Meeting at Moscone ES. So what's a poor local ed blogger to do?

I skipped all the meetings and worked out. Then I dropped in on the PPS event to check it out and snap a few shots. Turns out I dropped in on the lunch part of the program where members of the BOE sat down with the attendees and got a chance for some direct one on one dialog. Very cool. Commissioners Sanchex, Wynns, Mar, and Mendoza were in attendance.I discovered what many real photographers understand: it's difficult to get a good shot of someone eating, or talking politics in the lively hubub of a well attended luncheon. It was a welcome chance for yours truly to meet these commissioners and shake their hands. We get very hot-blooded and forceful about our politics, but it is imperative to counter that polarized, charged dynamic with some simple person to person connections.

The agenda for the meeting centered on the recent findings published by the Community Advisory Committee on Student Enrollment Recruitment and Retention (CACSERR). Lisa Schiff has this article about the process and the finding. I'm sorry I missed the business end of the meeting. But luckily the peripatetic Kim Knox did not miss a beat, or at least caught two of the three beats which is a much as one human could do this Saturday. Check out her reports over on LeftInSf: Kudos to Annual Meeting of Parents for Public Schools and Newsom’s Town Hall Meeting on Youth.