Good afternoon.

The meeting will come to order.

Welcome to the March 25th, 2026 meeting of the Budget and Appropriation Committee.

I'm Supervisor Connie Chang, Chair of the Committee, and I'm joined by Vice Chair, Supervisor Matt Dorsey, and Member Supervisor Danny Souter.

Our clerk is Brent Halipa.

I would like to thank Seuss Etnalls from SFGov TV for broadcasting this meeting.

Mr.

Clark, do you have any announcement?

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Just a friendly reminder.

To those in attendance to please make sure the SoundSall cell phones and electronic devices to prevent interruptions to her proceedings.

Should you have any documents to be included as part of the file, these should be submitted to myself, uh the clerk.

When public comment is called, please line up to speak on the west side of the chamber to your right, my left along those curtains.

And while not required to provide public comment, we do invite you to fill out a comment card and leave them on the tray by the television to your left by the doors if you wish for your name to be accurately recorded for the minutes.

Alternatively, you may submit public comment in writing in either of the following ways.

You may submit them to or email them to myself, the budget and appropriations committee clerk at B R E N T dot J A L I P A at SFGO V dot O R G.

If you submit public comment via email, it will be forwarded to the supervisors and also included as part of the official file.

You may also send your written comments via U.S.

Postal Service to our office in City Hall at one.

Dr.

Carlton B Goodlick Place, Room 244, San Francisco, California, 94102.

And Madam Chair, then concludes my announcements.

Thank you, Mr.

Clerk.

And before we call on item number one, we will need to excuse Supervisor Shaman Walton and President Rafael Mendelman.

So I would like to move to excuse them.

Second.

Second by Vice Chair Dorsey, a roll call on to excuse.

And on that motion uh to excuse both supervisors uh Walton and Mendelman from attending today's meeting.

Vice Chair Dorsey.

Aye.

Dorsey.

Aye.

Member Sauter.

Aye.

Soder, I, Chair Chan.

Aye.

Chan, aye.

Uh we have three ayes.

I neglected to say it was the motion by the chair, seconded by Vice Chair Dorsey.

And we have three ayes with members Walton and Mendelman excused.

The motion passes.

And with that, Mr.

Clark, please call item number one.

Yes, item number one is our hearing to identify the youth commission's budget priorities for fiscal years 2026 to 2027 and 2027 to 2028.

Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr.

Clerk.

And this is our annual hearing, uh, hearing from our youth commission uh for the hard work that they've been doing and uh letting that this body and letting the city on the record to know um their recommendations for the budget.

It is our part of our guiding principle and guiding um principles for our budget priorities every year.

We do this.

So for that, I'm very grateful to today to uh to have our youth commissioner uh presents before us.

We typically do this at the our unusual time, you know, for the budget appropriation, but to schedule at 4 p.m.

to accommodate our youth commissioners uh work and school schedule.

And so uh with that, I'm going to leave the floor uh and for your for you to introduce yourself, our youth commission.

Thank you so much.

First off, thank you so much for allowing us the space to present our budget and policy priorities.

Uh my name is Taylor Ahmir.

I use she, her pronouns.

I am the vice chair of the San Francisco Youth Commission and a member of the Transformative Justice Committee and a current senior and D2 resident.

Good afternoon.

Thank you uh for taking the time to listen to our budget and policy priorities.

My name is Leah Mordehai.

I use she, her pronouns.

I'm the District 1 Youth Commissioner, and I serve as a legislative affairs officer and on the Transformative Justice Committee.

Hi, everyone.

My name is Evelyn Conboy.

I am a senior in high school and I represent District 7.

And um right now I serve as a legislative affairs officer, and I also sit on the Civic Engagement and Education Committee.

And our last presenter, Harper Fort Gane, she's running a little bit late.

She's stuck in traffic, so she'll be here momentarily.

So first off, just a quick background about the youth commission.

Um per city charter section 4.122 to section 4.124.

The youth commission is responsible for advising the mayor and the board of supervisors on SF youth issues, particularly focusing on unmet needs.

And every budget cycle, the youth commission compiles its top priorities and recommendations through our budget and policy priorities or PPPs, as we like to call them, which are reported to the mayor and board of supervisors.

And this year, for fiscal year 2025, 2026 to 2027, fiscal year 2027 to 2028.

The youth commission approved 19 BPPs across three committees, as well as some commission-wide priorities, and you'll hear about two of those later.

So the youth commission has three subcommittees that each focus on specific issue areas.

They are the Transformative Justice Committee, the Civic Engagement and Education Committee, and the Housing Recreation and Transit Committee.

And each of these issue-based committees individually draft their own budget and policy priorities, which are then voted on and reviewed by the full commission later on in the term.

And there is also the executive committee, which is responsible for the function of the commission by approving meeting agendas, minutes, and among other items as well.

The makeup of the executive committee is there is the chair of the full commission, the vice chair of the full commission, our two communications and outreach officers, and our two legislative affairs officers.

And with that, I will be passing it off to Officer Mordehai to begin our discussion around the youth commission's budget and policy priorities with the Transformative Justice Committee.

Thank you, Vice Chair Linnae Amir.

I will be presenting the budget and policy priorities for the Transformative Justice Committee.

As a brief overview, these are the four budget policy priorities that the Transformative Justice Committee passed.

Immigration, AI regulation, youth violence prevention, and food insecurity.

Today we will be focusing on the two budget and policy priorities that this committee has identified as most important for this year.

First, I would like to talk to you all about immigration.

Especially Chair Chan advocating for legislation to allocate $3.5 million in funding for legal defense of immigrants and other work, all other members of the board have done to support this issue.

This issue is deeply important to the youth of our city, both as youth who are immigrants and newcomers to make sure that they feel safe and supported when they are coming to our city.

Youth have rallied around this issue.

There was a student-led walkout in January of this year that was organized by students to advocate for immigration protection.

And so it is an issue that youth in our city are deeply passionate about.

To this end, we want to recommend to continue funding community-based organizations that serve newcomers with multi-year contract grants and making sure that know your rights campaigns and trainings are available for staff and contractors for the city.

Second, we want to emphasize that as immigrants are coming to the city, it is key that they are able to understand the resources available to them, that they are able to become fully integrated into their communities.

And one of the most important ways that happens is when there's language access and education.

So to that end, we want to make sure that we are funding OCIA's language and access community grants and other city language services.

We also want to make sure that when immigrants are seeking support from the city that there are bilingual staff who are able to help them, specifically including Vietnamese language specialists, which there has been a shortage of.

Moving on to our second priority is youth violence prevention.

Youth violence prevention is something that is very important to youth in San Francisco's shootings, have risen 74% in the last five years.

And one in three homes with children have a gun in them.

And in this past term, the youth commission has issued three statements related to youth violence and shootings related to youth in a five-month period.

And this is significantly more than the youth commission has done in its most previous terms.

This happened personally, one of these shootings was in my district, which was very important for my community, and it's very important that we are working to keep guns off the streets and away from our youth so they are safe and the youth around them feel safe.

So this to this end, we want to recommend that we partner with gun buyback and weapon trade and events to make sure that we are removing firearms from our communities.

We want to make sure that youth mental health access is expanded as with youth violence.

There is a need for mental health support services after incidents to prevent these incidents.

And so we want to make sure we are increasing counseling staff, reducing wait times for this type of support, and making sure that SFUSD's wellness centers where students often have most of this access to mental health are supported and funded.

And we also want to make sure that our community organizations who are doing a lot of this on the ground work to keep our youth from violence and from perpetuating violence.

So United Playas, Baby's Hunters Point Foundation, and Salmon Community Development Center.

Thank you so much.

And now I will turn it over to Evelyn to talk about the civic engagement and education priorities.

Thank you.

So today I will be talking about some of the CCs, main BPPs and priorities.

And so just an overview of these priorities.

And just like Leah just did, we'll be highlighting two of our main long-term priorities that we believe have the greatest impact as youth.

Our first priority is gender-based violence, and unfortunately, many far too many students have been affected by gender-based violence, especially in SFUSD and the classrooms.

We believe that increasing Title IX curriculum, so this would be renewing the Title IX student advisory group, and then also implementing SFUSD curriculum regarding sexual assault, Title IX, and sexual health.

We would also like to urge the board to provide non-competitive funding for those who have been affected by domestic violence.

And then also with the surge of increasing tourism, this leaves a lot of youth susceptible to human trafficking and domestic violence.

And there are many statistics in the BPP that will be provided to you, but most notably in 2022, only five out of 24 Title IX sexual harassment complaints within SFUSD were investigated.

And unfortunately, this is a pattern that I've heard from many students across SFUSD, and really needs to be addressed.

In addition, our second priority is economic empowerment.

So we believe to establish youth employment pathways, so creating and strengthening partnerships with existing establishments such as SFUSD, the Office of Workforce Development, SF Youth Works, My Path, and other youth-focused career programs.

Because ultimately, career literacy and financial freedom are the best ways for youth to gain independence and that autonomy to move forward and create a life for themselves after graduation.

We also believe in strengthening workplace protections, and so we really urge the board to establish work permit verification and also mandate employer and employee training on harassment prevention and anti-discriminatory workplace protections so that youth can feel safe in their workplace environment.

Thank you so much.

I will be passing this on to my colleague Harper.

Good afternoon.

I'm Harper Fort Gang.

I represent District 8 on the Youth Commission, and I chair our housing, recreation, and transit committee.

And thank you very much for listening to youth priorities and giving us the chance to share them today.

This year in HRT, we covered these five areas in our budget priorities, and I'm going to spotlight the three that we think are most important.

Starting with reducing transitional age youth and youth homelessness.

Every night in San Francisco, there are 405 youth and 1,001 TAI who experience homelessness according to the 2024 point in time count.

Unfortunately, family homelessness has grown by 82%, and TE homelessness by 11% between 2022 and 2024.

Our recommendations here are based on community organizations and a series of focus groups that Larkin Street Youth Services held with different demographics of TE who are homeless, including LGBTQ youth and newcomer youth.

And the strongest feedback that youth shared is youth want to expand the diversity of transitional aged housing for youth who are exiting homelessness, especially in neighborhoods outside of the tender line, like the mission and the hate, and in neighborhoods that are close to colleges and with good access to public transit.

We also recommend creating a youth-specific housing assessment and placement process because youth and adults have distinct needs and currently they're lumped together in the placement process.

We recommend reconsidering questions like how long have you been homeless?

Because those place younger people at a disadvantage.

We also recommend strengthening collaboration between public and private organizations to create a coordinated support system because each organization offers different resources like mental health support and job training.

This would build on the success of rising up, an initiative to cut youth homelessness by 50% and involved a partnership between ACHSH and CBOs to integrate all of their different resources.

And we also think this aligns with the mayor's priorities around public-private partnerships.

It's important to note that over 50% of adults experiencing homelessness first became homeless when they were a young person.

So early intervention is critical.

Moving on to street safety and public transit access for youth.

First, we want to thank the board for protecting free muni for all youth.

We have heard from many youth that this is really important and they really appreciate it.

We want to continue making public transit safe and accessible by investing in lighting, security cameras, and emergency call stations at high traffic muni stops that youth use.

We've also noticed that there's a lack of data about youth transit safety and ridership.

So we recommend including youth in annual surveys to better understand whether they feel safe on transit and to inform resource allocation.

Confirming this just this past Monday, our HRT committee heard from Janice Lee, who talked about how she and other organizations are piloting a youth transit safety audit, which seems like a great idea that could be scaled up across the city.

And lastly, strengthening efforts to combat climate change.

This is a budget priority that we worked on across committees.

And our recommendations are based on talking to SF Environment about the current budget situation.

We recommend protecting SF environment by allocating $3.4 million from the general fund to protect the eight at-risk positions.

We also have more of a long-term vision for expanding climate education when funding becomes available.

We urge SFUSD and SF Environment to dedicate a district-wide day of climate action that builds on the climate action youth summit run by SF Environment to enable all students to attend.

Over time, we also hope to see SF Environment's Education Program expanded because so their curriculum can cover biodiversity and environmental justice.

It's currently limited to clean water and zero waste because of their funding.

And lastly, to secure permanent funding for the SFUSD High School Climate Action Fellowship.

This is a group that brings together high schoolers across SFUSD schools to learn about climate change, green jobs, and launch action projects in their school earlier this year.

The youth commission, they came and visited the youth commission at City Hall, and we exchanged insights.

So thank you again for this chance to talk about the priorities that we've been hearing from youth, and I'll pass it back to Vice Chair Lonay Amir.

Excuse me.

So the last two priorities we will be focusing on are the two commission-wide priorities.

So first off is to keep the San Francisco Youth Commission in the city charter.

So back in October of 2025, the Commission Streamlined Task Force recommended that the San Francisco Youth Commission be removed from the city charter and move into the administrative code.

It said it's a reason that was because the youth commission, quote, does not oversee a city department, end quote, and it lacks the power outlined for a charter body in Section 4.102, and it therefore cannot be considered a charter body.

The main recommendation for this priority is to again keep the youth commission in the city charter.

This allows the youth commission to be more independent and truly advocate for the needs of youth without the fear of being removed from the administrative code.

Additionally, back in 1995, when the youth commission was founded, the voters voted the commission into the city charter, making it the constituents' will to have a chartered advisory commission be part of the city charter.

And our last party that we'll be focusing on is to support the clerk's office budget proposal to maintain a fully staffed team of three at the San Francisco Youth Commission.

The San Francisco Youth Commission is typically supported by three staff roles community partnership specialist, youth development specialist, and director.

During the 2021 and 2022 term, the commission experienced a severe staffing shortage with staff numbers dropping from three to two and eventually to just one staffer.

This shortage creates significant stress for the remaining staff and limited both staff and commissioners from working at their full capacity.

And while the San Francisco Clerk's Office did step in during this period of staffing shortage, they did not have the capacity to provide the same support that a fully staffed staff could provide to the youth commission.

On January 9th, 2026, Alondra Scivalg, uh excuse me, Schival Garcia resigned from the position of youth commission director.

And after her resignation, Joy Zan was named acting director, which vacated the role of youth development specialist and delegated that position's responsibilities to both acting directors and community uh community partnership specialist Joshua Rudy Ochoa.

One of the essential requirements for a stable and effective youth commission is a fully staffed team of three who are able to navigate the administrative function of the commission.

And with the current mayor's hiring freeze and the large city deficit looming, we cannot risk the potential of eliminating this role without either significantly increasing the workload of the other two staff positions or significantly reducing the capacity of the youth commission's ability to represent the needs of San Francisco's youth, as we saw with the situation that took place during the 2021 to 2022 term.

The sole recommendation for this priority is to support the clerk's office budget proposal to maintain a fully staffed team at the San Francisco Youth Commission and to ensure that the youth commission can continue to have a director, youth development specialist, and community partnership specialists to ensure the success of the youth commission's work and capacity.

So that is the last priority that we have for you today.

And we want to reaffirm the youth commission's partnership with the Board of Supervisors and the continuation of the sending of our BPPs to the board.

The priorities you just heard are the youth commission feels the most prioritized ones to the present and should be given the utmost attention of all of our BPPs, especially in the wake of the current budget deficit.

It could be a really dark time right now, looking at our city, country, and the world.

And the youth commission hopes that with these priorities we can begin to work to bring light back to our communities.

And with that, we can move into the QA portion of this presentation.

Thank you so much for your time and listening.

Thank you so much, Commissioners.

I really appreciate the presentation today.

I do have a few questions, if possible.

Let's start with, in my opinion, it's the most alarming at the at the moment.

And it's really, let's start with really the gun violence portion of it.

And could you help us understand a bit better?

I think that throughout the pandemic and now we have seen an increase of violence incident among our youth throughout the city.

We have learned, you know, a couple years ago, starting with Stonestown incident to the most recently in our district, as uh Commissioner Manahay has mentioned about the gun incidents by Ocean Beach.

And could you could you help us better understand why is it that we're seeing this trend?

Yes.

So this trend is currently happening because we are seeing an influx of also weapons on the streets, and there are not enough efforts that are working to combat this.

So these weapons are not being removed off the streets.

While the gumback programs are working, the rate at which the weapons are being removed is not fast enough to prevent youth violence.

Like we've been seeing, like the program has been successful, but then again, we are seeing shootings, we are seeing youth injured by weapons still occurring.

It's because of that that there isn't a there's not enough attention and support to get weapons off the street and out of youth's hands and out of their reach that we are not seeing that available to to our to our use and to the use of the city.

And do we have some idea like potentially access to guns among among our youth throughout the city?

Are there ways that we could support both SFUSD in your opinion?

Um, especially when you mentioned here is to strengthen violence prevention program.

Um I I concur.

Um, are there um other access points that you see that we need to strengthen in providing either safety measure um to be able to again prevent access to guns?

Yes.

So starting with the SFUSD specifically, I would say that additionally, while preventative measures are also important, I think counselors need to be more available at schools, especially in the wake of these instances.

I think we saw, I think it was about two or two and a half years ago, I think with at George Washington High School and at Galileo with those incidents.

And in the wake, there maybe probably were some counselors available, but not to not as many available to be able to be available to the mass student body that were there at present at both of those schools.

And additionally, I think with preventative measures, just communication between SFUSD and parents.

I think there was a lot of many parents did not know what was going on in the wake of that incident, as if and SFUC eventually did send out a newsletter, but I think that definitely feeded that a little bit.

Anybody else want to speak?

Yeah.

Just like echoing, I think mental health support can be a big part of prevention.

For example, I know part of the Ocean Beach shooting was a conflict between youth, like a youth with a weapon and other youth.

And so I think having mental health support that might allow youth resolving that conflict in a nonviolent manner could also be a way to prevent conflict with um guns and weapons.

Wonderful.

And when we talk about mental health access, and here I'm seeing uh you were making the recommendation of increased counseling staff uh and reduce wave time.

And my assumption is um is to increase counseling staff on sites, at school sites, and so then actually reduce way time for counseling access either during school hours or immediately before or after school hours.

Um I would just say right now, SFUSD obviously in a budget, it's in a very dire fiscal situation.

But what's happening is that when counselors are leaving, those positions are no longer being filled.

So there are situations where SFUSD schools only have one counselor for 2,000 people, which is just not a viable situation for a lot of youth that are afflicted by mental health problems.

And so we see situations where youth are experiencing a lot of these problems, and at school at SFUSD, they have no outlet to find the help that they need.

Thank you.

Vice Chair Dorsey.

Thank you, Chair Chan.

Um first of all, a great presentation.

And I I just even even the the design of the PowerPoint, I it occurs to me as I was watching this.

We sit through a lot of PowerPoint presentations here.

They could uh take some tips from your presentation.

I agree um and really appreciate the leadership that you are seeking to take on um handgun violence.

This actually just came up in something else that I'm working on, but I was shocked to see that since 2020 um firearm violence is the leading cause of death for youth ages zero to seventeen, and that's been the case since 2020.

I think some of that is attributable to 10 and 15 years ago, there were some Supreme Court decisions that really devastated the ability of local government to regulate handguns or any kind of guns.

Um what we're left with is community organizations like United Players that's doing some great work on gun buyback.

So I think that's a really the the uh a really important um function, and I just appreciate that this is exactly what the youth commission um should be doing.

So I really appreciate you flagging that.

That's not to say that any of the uh some of the other priorities aren't as important as well.

There was a a statistic that you mentioned that I would like to explore a little bit about in 2022, five of the 24 Title IX complaints um were investigated.

Do we have information on what what happened?

What was the rationale for why there were so few?

Um so a lot of the cases that I read on situations were that um certain teacher teachers or counselors were flagged to have problems and rather than them being investigated, they were given a period to resign and they were able to leave the school without any uh punishment, retribution.

Um so those those um allegations were dropped.

Okay.

And so that's what I believe has happened.

And I think the process right now is um one that is not reformed in a way to really allow to put students' voices at the forefront of that um situation, and rather the teacher or the counselor is protected in that situation.

Okay.

That's great.

If I mean I know I if you know if there's something that needs to be brought to our attention.

If I mean I know I if you know if there's something that needs to be brought to our attention, bring that because I think that was an alarming statistic that certainly jumped out at me.

I wanted to be on separate um issue.

I think I agree with a lot of the climate priorities.

I wanted to ask a little bit about the youth commission in the city charter.

So one, you know, I think we're considering how we're gonna and what whether and to what extent we're gonna move forward with some of the recommended um reforms.

One thing that I asked um Ed Harrington when he was here was about the wisdom of a little hybrid solution that the committee or the commit the committee did with um I think it was with the arts commission.

What they did was they left the arts commission in the charter that there shall be an arts commission, but took some of the details and moved it to the administrative code.

So I'm gonna tell you why there is a good government reason to not sort of tie our hands by having something in the charter.

Once something is in the city charter, the only way that it can be changed is going back to voters.

Um it's beyond the reach of the Board of Supervisors.

So if you wanted to have, let's say in five years, um you want to add some members to or a some group, there's something that you want to do to change the the youth commission.

Um it's a it's a much heavier lift that then we have to go do it do it to go to the charter process, and then we actually have to raise money and hire consultants and go to voters.

And it can be kind of onerous.

And I was actually doing some uh back in 2019, I was uh on a campaign, you may remember Jewel Labs, the vaping giant big tobacco.

I was on the no campaign against Joule and Shireen McSpaden was out campaigning for a charter amendment that was just to change the name of the of the Department of Aging and Adult Services.

Um by virtue of being in the charter, they just wanted to make some minor changes, but they had to go to voters to do it.

So I wanted to ask if the youth commission would be open to a compromise that we would make sure that there is a youth commission enshrined in our charter, but take some of the prescriptive elements and move those to the administrative code so that they're not beyond the reach of the Board of Supervisors if we or you ever want to change them.

Is that something that you might be open to.

I do not have an answer right now, but I believe that we can maybe bring it up at the next full commission meeting and have a discussion around it and then get back to I just don't want to speak for my or just the four of us now about must be the full representation representative for the entire commission because there are 17 of us.

But I will make sure that is brought up before I believe our next full youth commission meeting is one or two weeks, and I will have that brought up as a discussion item.

I would just like to add that while yes, that is very big to have to go all because it's in the charter to have to go all the way to the voters to even make a minor change.

The I believe most, if not all of the youth commission right now, word is like the bylaws, the violence have been amended and changed, but like the 17 members, the no pay, where there's six mayoral, all of that has stood the same, I believe, since almost its beginning in 1995, and that's almost a 30 years, and there's almost been no need to go back to the voters.

So I don't right now, obviously things can change, but I don't foresee right now having to go in like the next five or ten years go having to go to the voters with any changes for the youth commission.

But I will definitely I will make sure that is brought up as a topic of discussion for the next youth commission meeting.

Great.

Okay.

Okay, that's it for me.

Thank you.

And I have a few questions and thank you for this presentation.

Um first if I want to ask you maybe for more ideas or examples under economic empowerment, strengthening workplace protections.

Um, you talk about like this this permit establishing work permit verification, some of the anti-retaliation laws.

So if you could just maybe share more details or give examples of um things that have come up that are behind this experiences that you've heard about um with youth in the workforce that we can do better on.

So right now, youth um, I mean, SF Youth Works, opportunities for all, a lot of these organizations, they're at risk of being cut.

And a lot of youth do rely on those organizations to find viable internships, jobs, um uh after-school organizations that they will get pay from.

Um and then as for um the um retaliation anti-retaliation laws um and strengthening workplace protections, um, that really mainly stems from what we've seen and what we've talked to youth about, where there have been cases where there have been um an imbalance of power, or um they don't feel fully comfortable in their workplace environment.

And so just to ensure that youth are protected, especially in that very vulnerable stage of it can be their first job that there is that training in place where that where they actually feel um protected in that workplace environment.

And then you have uh you mentioned AI, and that's obviously a complex topic.

Um I'd love to hear any thoughts on AI or more broadly um you know, internet and social media and everything and all the challenges that that is posing.

And I think everyone's trying to figure out where to regulate that and where not to regulate that.

So I'd love your perspective on that, please.

Yes.

Uh I will do my best.

The commissioner who authored that budget policy priority is not um present, but um I think the main content of that budget and policy priority is thinking about how um the city is using AI and how it's regulating AI and um this is a budget policy priority that to youth I think is very relevant because AI is something that we experience very prevalently in our daily lives both at school, both in how you know, like whether or not it's used, I believe in like traffic lights and things like um you know tracking transportation and um things like that.

And uh many youth, you know, are getting their licenses and driving, so it's affecting them in that way.

Um I wish I could give you a more detailed overview of that uh the full contents of that budget and policy priority, but it was not my focus during this budget season.

But um we will send you a full copy of those priorities, and um we'll be happy to answer any questions later.

Thank you.

Um it's a it's an area in particular that I I think I would love to hear more from you on.

So thank you.

Um last uh question on you know going back to the topic of um some of the the violence um in terms of youth violence and um it's a challenging question, but I wonder, you know, the um in in 2020, the partnership and funding partnership between the police department and the school district was canceled, and essentially since then there's been no school resource officers, so that partnership and relationship has eroded.

Um do you think there's appetite to bring that back and what is the relationship with you know school and students in the police department at the moment.

Yeah, I I think um it is a big uh part of keeping students safe.

I think always with SROs, we need to think about um how youth feel having police officers in their environment and whether or not that can oftentimes create more fear than uh protection.

Um I do think there are possibilities to integrate that relationship to make sure youth are feel could feel safe with um police officers in schools, but I think um that's a kind of a very tight line that needs to be walked because I know that there are a lot of um there's a lot of fear and uncertainty with having uh police officers in schools, and if my colleague wants to add.

I just want to add that a lot of times many youth, especially if there's like even SRLs and police officers on school campuses, even just to provide security though, many youth might feel threatened by their presence, and that actually might even incentivize them to even bring a weapon just in case something happens to protect themselves.

So just to echo what Officer Moraya said, it is a very, very tight line.

I think that is definitely why maybe that partnership is not as prominent as it was, because you're kind of seeing it's just a give and go.

You're trying to figure out how to be able to provide protection at schools, but again, not increase the risk of weapons being brought because kids might feel threatened, because I think that if at my high school, if suddenly police officer SRO show up on my school, there wasn't really a ton of warning, I might start getting worried and like, oh my god, like something might happen, something might go down, and I might feel in the noise that even brings some more protection to protect myself, and that can just lead to an escalation and eventually what we're trying to prevent actually takes place.

So thank you.

Thank you for that.

Sorry, if I can add one more.

I think um like really the key with youth is um thinking about prevention before it happens, and I think like sometimes having an SRO is kind of putting out the idea that like implicitly like youth it like puts out the assumption that youth might have guns, that you are responsible for guns, and I think that puts a lot of fear and shame.

And so I think a better resource is kind of mental health and making sure that we are taking preventative steps so we don't need to necessarily have um those kind of uh larger protective uh steps in place that might create more fear and distrust um than building that trust relationship.

Thank you for all the insights on all my questions.

Thanks.

Thank you.

I I do want to circle back, if I may, to the gender-based violence a bit more.

Um I I am concerned just seeing that only five out of the 24 um sexual harassment complaints were investigated.

Uh in that I'm also concerned seeing that your recommendation um is to renew the Title IX student advisory group, which means that the current there's there's none, there's no Title IX student advisory group.

Is that correct?

Uh yes, that's correct.

Um it previously was in place and I believe it was dissolved.

Um I'm not totally sure why it was dissolved.

Um, but I I think it would just be a very vital student group just to give that input and that student perspective to SFUSD and ensure that Title IX protections are in place and that they are being enforced and prioritized by the school.

And um do you could you walk us through a little bit more about the Title IX student advisory group, who would be appointing the advisory uh group and how would they meet and where would they be, and do you have some idea about what that would look like?

Yeah.

Um I don't have a full answer for you right now, but I can definitely um circle back and talk to the person that directly uh wrote this specific priority because uh she is um in a public school, and I think she would be interested in spearheadings um this initiative, and so I can definitely get back to you on that.

We would love that.

I think that um based on your recommendation today, we uh I I would love to work with the youth commission to implement this particular um recommendation, um, being that you know um I think there were a lot of students.

This is two years ago, um, that there was a walkout and there was a march and they came to Civic Center Plaza as well.

Um, and I I think that it was a it was building uh on top of a lot of concerns and about sexual harassment and assaults on campus that were not fully addressed, and that I am alarmed to see that there's still yet to be a Title IX student advisory group.

That means that students are not at the table to have being able to have these conversations with uh be it school staff or at our educators as well as families and parents and guardians, and I think that and or even our board education commissioners uh and our superintendent absolutely our students should be at the table and being advisoring like advisory group to advise us and guide us through uh specifically addressing Title IX but as well as gender-based violence all across is absolutely must uh absolutely critical.

So I I look forward to that.

Um I want to express a different sentiment, and thank you so much for you know um for explaining and responding uh and a different sentiment that was expressed by Vice Chair Dorsey, but I I also want to say, generally speaking, I am probably not in the same uh realm as many, many people when it comes to the uh entire uh conversation around commission and uh bot like advisory bodies.

I know that there are people who things and and it's just really this general approach, the the premise that we have too many of them, hundred more than 150 commissions and advisory bodies.

I for one love it.

I I really do not come from the same space.

I I believe that San Francisco city government is better because of it.

I believe that um the San Francisco City government is better because we have youth commission, that we have many different bodies who volunteered their time uh and more than willing to dedicate uh their hours and resources to figure out ways to make city government better and function better.

Um so, and I actually think that I'm not even I I think there are people who are in various degree of like, oh, we need to have just this 86 bodies, and then there's like 65 is more than enough.

I know that there's many actually robust debates been ongoing.

I probably am a different ends of the spectrum to be I love them all.

Um, and so I I definitely do not think I'm in the majority, but I nonetheless have to express my opinion about um I agree um that the youth commission uh should remain its independence.

Um in fact, I think many commission charter commissioners uh should remain their independence.

Um so I just want to express that.

Uh I don't see any other name on the roster.

Uh commissioners, uh thank you so much for your leadership.

We are grateful for the work that you do.

Um I think that this is a very critical moment.

I I want to say that clearly um Vice Chair Dorsey and I are both interested in learning more about the gender-based violence issue, particularly about why only five out of 24 cases uh or complaints were investigated.

Um I think that let's follow up on that.

Um, and I separate in a part I would like to understand and have feedback on the Title IX student advisory group, uh, how we can work together to uh continue on.

And clearly, uh Supervisor Sauder has questions about AI regulation and would like for uh Commission uh please send over that information um for the supervisor to review and and uh better understand your AI recommendation.

Um I do have a homework for you, if I may.

It's a homework for myself too.

I think that it's homework that this body is gonna work on in the coming months.

Regrettably, there is almost a billion dollars budget deficit.

While we appreciate your recommendation today, I think that we also would like for you to help us understand in the coming months in the events that truly that the city will be facing painful reduction of our budget.

We would love for the youth commission to also make recommendations to us if there are ways that you see perhaps the city government can do better, that there are things that we can reduce in terms of spending.

Is it wasteful or is it a necessary or is it redundant?

Um we look forward to hearing from you again as well.

Um, should you in the coming months when you see the mayor make his proposal uh that you can identify ways to have more effective and strategic spending.

Um so with that, uh we will go to public commons on this hearing.

Yes, we're now opening public comment for this item number one.

If we have any members uh of the audience who have joined us today who wish to address this committee.

Hello, supervisors.

My name is Emily Yang, and I'm a high school senior at Babala High School in a citywide San Francisco Youth Commissioner.

Climate change continues to be an active threat in hindering the safety of our young people.

Today, youth are facing climate change-induced health issues from health strokes to food insecurity and respiratory illnesses.

Last week, San Francisco's heat wave reached an all-time high of nine degrees in March.

Further, by 2100, the San Francisco Bay is expected to rise up to seven feet, directly affecting youth in the Chinatown, Mission Bay, and Bayview neighborhoods.

Youth need the skills and resources to learn and grow to face climate challenges in the near future.

The San Francisco Environment Department is an instrumental place for youth to look get gain climate opportunities and education.

Under their current leadership, San Francisco has reduced its carbon footprint by 48% between 1990 and 2022, has engaged over 20,000 youth in classroom visits, field trips, and the annual climate action youth summit.

As a youth climate leader, SFE has empowered me to expand my work as well.

Through their mentorship and support, I found my voice in the climate movement, such as hosting a Green Careers Fair and projects focused on climate health and equity reaching hundreds of youth.

Therefore, I urge you to restore funding for the S San Francisco Environment Department, particularly in allocating the 3.4 million from the general fund to prevent the loss of eight additional staff members.

These members directly work on the Clean Transportation, Climate Equity Hub, Climate Action Plan, and Healthy Ecosystems Teams, which are vital for youth support.

Climate justice is youth justice.

Thank you.

And thank you, Emily Yang.

Next speaker.

Hello, Board of Supervisors.

My name is Alondra Esquivo Garcia.

For the past four years, I had the honor and privilege to serve as the uh director of the San Francisco Youth Commission until um this past January.

Um I please urge you to keep supporting the San Francisco Youth Commission.

Um it was truly a pleasure to advise and mentor these spectacular youth leaders of today.

Um it was truly nice to listen um and to still be inspired by their advocacy and by their work.

Um the commissioners, the youth of San Francisco, they have to live um and keep advocating with all the issues and and the work of you know, or decisions that that we're we're doing.

Um and you know, the investments that we we have to do.

And so last week the Department of South and Women um released their women's agenda and I think um we need to have these conversations on what a youth agenda looks like and so I think the budget and policy priorities report could be a framework for what the Board of Supervisors and the youth commission could work together on a youth agenda.

So I urge this body to uh please invest and continue working together with the youth commission to support the BPP and to look towards the future on what a youth agenda looks like Landra Escaville seeing no other speakers madam chair that completes our queue hey um seeing no more public comments public comment is now closed colleagues I think uh we will be um I will make thank you so much and I look forward to hearing from our commissioners again and uh so with that I would like to have this I would like to make the motion to have this hearing uh heard and filed second and with that a roll call please and on that motion by Chair Chan seconded by Vice Chair Dorsey that uh we declare this hearing heard and filed Vice Chair Dorsey Dorsey I member Sutter Sauter I chair Chan.

I Chan I we have three ayes with uh members Walton and Mandelman excused and the motion passes and Mr Clark do we have any other business before us today?

Madam Chair that concludes our business the meetings adjourned