UPDATE: The Board will take up the Revolution Foods meal service contract at a Special Meeting on Monday evening, Dec. 17. The Special Meeting will start directly following the previously-agendized Buildings & Grounds Committee, scheduled for 6 p.m. that evening.
As I noted in last month’s meeting recap, SFUSD routinely cancels the second Board meeting in November and the second Board meeting in December. So we haven’t had a meeting in a month, and it’ll be another month before we meet again. So you’d think there would be a lot of business on the agenda, right? Not really, as it turned out. It was Norman’s last regular meeting before he is sworn in as Supervisor for District 7 — Commissioners expressed appreciation for his work on the Board and all of us feel sure we will be seeing lots of Norman after he moves to City Hall. At the end of the meeting, staff, Commissioners and one Commissioner-elect posed for a family photo:
Unfortunately, all the news that was going to happen at last night’s meeting got canceled, so while I have every expectation that the proposed school meal contract with Revolution Foods will pass the Board, we’ll have to wait a bit longer (looks like Dec. 17, but not sure yet). In the meantime, here’s the Invitation for Bid from the school district (wonk alert) which tells you the terms the successful bidder had to meet. Good stuff (for super wonks there is even more info here — scroll down to “Student Nutrition Meal Services”).
And if you are really motivated, here are some more things to study up on for next month:
- Commissioner Fewer and outgoing Commissioner (Supervisor-elect) Yee introduced a local hire resolution that has many worthy provisions but is sure to ignite some sparks with our Building Trades unions — stay tuned for that to come up for a Board vote and lots of debate in January.
- Charter school annual space requests have been submitted and the district’s response is due in early February. Prop 39 requires school districts to offer charters “reasonably equivalent” space to similarly situated district-managed schools.
- The state budget is still very much at issue for 2013-14 even though Prop 30 passed. The district expects to start its own budget process early next year and we expect to have to cut. Even though the state will eventually have more money, it will be slow to materialize and make a difference for local school districts.
- City support for credit recovery and additional support for the Classes of 2014 and 2015 will remain a hot topic. In recent weeks, this issue has been very much in the news because the school district has acknowledged that many students in the current sophomore and junior classes are behind on the credits and/or course requirements they need to graduate under the new A-G graduation policy. Last Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors passed, by a vote of 7-4, a supplemental $2.2 million budget allocation requested by Supervisor Kim to support the district’s action plan for addressing the problem of large students who are short on credits. However, there are a few more hoops this request has to go through (with a possibility that Mayor Lee will veto it) so stay tuned for future developments.
I’m also excited to announce that the Board members elected in November will be sworn in at a ceremony on January 4, 2013 at Tenderloin Community Elementary School (627 Turk St. at Van Ness) at 6 p.m. The public is invited — please come to see me, Sandra Lee Fewer, Jill Wynns and Matt Haney sworn in on that date. The first meeting of the new Board and our annual leadership elections will occur on Tuesday, January 8 at 6 p.m. in the Board Room at 555 Franklin Street.
In the meantime, have a very happy and healthy holiday season. The blog will be on hiatus until January 3.
Rachel Norton 
Dear Rachel,
We were overjoyed when we read that SFUSD planned to switch to a local vendor, Revolution Foods (http://revfoods.com/), for the school meal program. On Dec. 3, 2012, the SF Examiner wrote: “A revolution is coming to San Francisco’s public schools: no more frozen, precooked cafeteria food that’s shipped from halfway across the country. On Friday, the San Francisco Unified School District announced plans to award a contract to Oakland-based Revolution Foods Inc. to provide nutritious—and freshly prepared—meals for city schoolchildren. The $9 million contract, which falls within the district’s budget, would supply the food needed to make 33,000 meals and snacks that 114 schools need daily, officials said. The contract now must be approved by the Board of Education. Revolution Foods is a rapidly growing company that says its mission is to combat child obesity. It provides meals to school districts in more than 20 U.S. cities. Founded by two UC Berkeley alums, the company says it is against fried, fatty, sodium-heavy foods and cooks meals fresh daily.”
We beg that you and all members of the BOE vote approval for Revolution Foods on Dec. 17, so that they can ramp up personnel and supplies at a reasonable pace and start serving fresh meals to my children in January. Do not permit the previous truck-it-in, frozen-meal vendor, Preferred Meals Systems, use their influential (insider) SFUSD cronies to stop or delay the approval of this contract. This is their wake up call that they have served crap to my children for far too long to be given another chance.
Go local, go green!
JR