misguided by current employers, and either within the city, or the departments themselves or in the city itself that you would think that the disability community keeps coming up against and kind of stops us from being seen as an equal status and my concern is that i see as a buyer's market that i can get any of the employees in the mind set,

disability. i had a very, unique role i work in the mayor's budget office for four years and was able to interact with almost all of the department heads in the city and each and every one of them to their credit recognized me as a valuable, colleague. and many of them indeed turned to me for issues and concerns that they were having i think that a lot of is rooted in lack of education and the abilities of people with disabilities i remember, that i speak fondly and i have a great memories of my work in the mayor's office. but i can tell you that i recalled, distinctly, when i lost the issue of my blindness in my interview and offered them an opportunity, and offer them an opportunity to pose a question about how i will go

about doing the job as an employee with a disability. the first question that they asked me is that i send a lot of text messages, how are you going to be able to text? >> you know, it is a very obvious and it was folks it is an obvious question, if you don't know, you don't know. honestly a lot of it is exposure, and the more that we are able to get the people with disabilities integrated into the workforce, i think that a lot of those concerns will fall away. >> thank you very much. >> any questions for the staff? >> okay. seeing none, we will go ahead and break, shortly, for a ten-minutes and, we will be back here for the presentations thank you, again for all of those who attended.

[break] >>6. information item: a review of civil service rule 115 and its' implementation for hiring people with disabilities. presentation by donna kotake, department of human resources, workforce development director, city and county of san francisc >>student: >> human resources advices us that she is running a few minutes late and so if you have flexibility you might want to go to the next item if that is possible. >> thank you. >> moving on for to item number

7, information item,san francisco public library and its' successful implementation of civil service rule 115. presentation by marti goddard, access services manager, san francisco public library. >> the staff hired the rule, reflect the local communities of the users who are deaf and blind and those who have learning disabilities and the works are one or two part time positions for people with the developmental disability and presentation by marti, goddard, access services manager, san francisco public library. >> that i think this meeting is a celebration and i am so happy to be able to be a part of it, thank you very much. >> being a lie braeer an, as i was thinking of what to say today, i spent the time looking at and thinking about

definitions of diversity and inclusion and mostly i found when related to humans something like the state of having people who are different races, or who have different culture and a group or an organization, and or references to people of all backgrounds, and experiences. and we are lucky in san francisco because we don't have to work really hard at recruiting a diverse workforce and when the job openings are posted and a number of talented people who represent, many racial groups are always in the applicant pools and however my experience, we don't often find the great numbers of applicants of disabilities with *f in those pools but i am really proud to be here representing the san francisco public library, because this is the city, department, that has made a commitment to building a staff that represents all kinds of human diversety, and including people with disabilities. and i want to identify

individuals among our staff who have been hired through a 115 process, but i will tell you in general terms about my own experience with hiring colleagues with disabilities and support of rule 115. and i have four examples of positions where we have benefited by being able to deliberately hire people who share the disability experience with the consumers of our services. one program of service, that always has included at least one staff member who has a disability is the fspl deaf services center and so someone that i am happy to name today, roberto esteves was responsible for establishing the library and print in 1972, and our deaf services center in 1977. and he really set the precedent of having a library assistant job always filled by a deaf employee, that is a step above that entry level position.

and but the very talented deaf woman who was in that position when i started working at the library 25 years ago. made meeting people in the deaf community, really easy for me and through the years having someone who represents the community served by the deaf services center has helped to make it a place, where other people in the community feel valued and so they value and support the service. at this time, the only two full time staff members in our deaf services center is the library and the assistant and both of them happen to be deaf. rule 115 made it possible to hire one of those folks without having to wait for the new eligible list, and you will hear about that soon and did not have to wait for that new eligible list to be developed and the other was hired through the standard hr process. and so the people with disabilities come to us in more ways. and in the library of the adult literacy program, many of the

consumers of the service are with us because learning disabilities really affected their success in school, during the conventional k-12 years. and they entered adult hood and they need to improve, and the reading and writing and path skills so that they can succeed or advance in work or help their children with homework or many other things, that they come to project read. and when we were ready to hire someone who to be a full time community out reach worker, the very talented individual, who had been doing that work on a contract basis, happened to be a person who has learning disabilities. the shared experience and empathy that he has for learners made him a natural for the job, however the exams and the typical hr process was more than he could deal with. through real 115, we were able to bring that person on board and he is a successful member of the team who is beloved by

learners who know that he shares their experience in our library for the blind and print disabled a braillist is the essential member of the team, the fact that there are only two positions within the entire city and county of san francisco makes the labor of establishing and maintaining eligible lists not a priority at all. and so when the long time braillist retired there was no list of potential people to replace her. the braillist th we hired last year is halfway through the extended period, that is through the rule of 115 but she is a great member of the team but i have very little doubt

that she is going to be with us for a long time or as long as she wants to be. finally, the committee and so with the partner with the arc of san francisco, the committee members have been looking for opportunities to bring the people with developmental or intellectual disabilities for the library of volunteers and so as we were working on that, identifying the potential jobs, the wonderful man who was our current chief of branches, edward milton decided that volunteer positions were not enough and that he set aside one and we are hoping two positions that are really entry level page positions and so

they will be begin in the streets of employment through the rule 115, and then it will just be part of our staff and so, i will finish this by saying, it only makes sense to have people working in city government who represent all of the communities of people we serve. >> thank you. >> question, and comments from the council members? >> co-chair supanich. >> thank you for coming today. and it sounds like you have an ininclusive atmosphere at the public library for many years. is all of this at the main branch that we are talking about? and what about a branch libraries around the city? is there equal efforts being made to incorporate the people with disabilities in their hiring? >> actually, the last physicians that i talked about is kind of makes me really smile, and our chief of branches is who said, we should not be just hiring, or bringing

people in as volunteers, we really want to make some opportunities that are really entry level, and although, the first one and we are hoping two positions that will be in branch libraries but it was kind of funny to me and i was talking to my boss who is the chief of the main library and said guess what edwards is doing and, she said that we can do that at the main too. and so that makes me happy. >> thank you. >> any other council members? >> council members senhaux? >> there you go. i can hear in your voice because of my visual impairment your dedication and how you talk about your employees and how incredible they are, and what it is like to work with

them. and their contribution, you know, as individuals, and not just from their disability, you know, perspective, and that is to be, you know, commended and we don't hear too many success stories and so i compliment you and commend you for what you are doing. and for how you feel about, you know, the people with disabilities and looking past that and seeing that they can contribute and they can work. and so, i really appreciate that. and i can see the joined commitment that you have from your end and your boss. so i thank you for sharing very heartfelt stories like that with us. >> thanks. >> all right. and i have got a comment from then followed by a couple of questions. >> my comment is thank you very much for coming here today. and i think that we can all say that we really appreciate all of the work that is being done and not just the main, but through the branch as well and try to create an ininclusive

atmosphere for everyone, i will speak to the learning disability portion and that is such a huge commitment to see at the library system to hire somebody who has a learning disability. where i come from in the midwest and i am not going to stay which state, because currently also in the world series. okay, thank you. i am not wearing a hat today for a reason. so, but out there, it was really tough to have a conversation honestly, about a person with a learning disability or adhd like myself and often times, issues like one of those hidden disabilities that too often the people who are seen as being dumb or stup pid or slow and really are kind of embarrassed to talk about it or reluctant to speak to someone about it, and the wealth of resources and the person with the learning

disability who is working very well with the community, that is just speaks really widely to just the efforts that are done, and not just through rule 115 and also the opening hiring process. my questions are, first off, after the actual process of identifying a job as a rule 115, job, you yourself, were going through this, or do you have a personal experience in doing this and can you kind of speak to, is it a labor intentive process or is that not as hard as it may seem. can you give acronym. >> for me as a supervisor vicing manager the only labor was saying, that this is important and we need to fill this job and it will best be filled by somebody who brings that experience with them. our hr staff has been really supportive. and i know we have had to do a little bit of extra paperwork, but not much. and through the probationary

period, we have had, it is a longer and there are more reports, so i think that is harder on the new employees than on us, frankly. because you know, it is more of the waiting but, it really, i don't know if my colleague and in hr would say it defendantly, but it doesn't seem to be a very big deal, you just say that we want to do this, and fill out the forms and then have you to fill out a lot of forms any way. and then it goes forward. and thank you. questions from the staff? >> and thank you, and my question is a little bit off topic for a moment and i know that you had a library commission meeting last night and i think that you had something that you wanted to announce? that was announced at the commission meeting, about some of the different new features available in the branch

libraries? >> we just call it disability awareness month and in october we offer a number of programs and so i was invited to talk about that and as well as the other feature and since you digressed i want to digress a tiny bit. and i really want to invite you all to come to the main library and go into the growth street entrance because we have a new exhibition, hoping today, by arists by the fox explored and it will be there until the middle of january but come to the library and see that wonderful exhibition, so sorry about that we are installing something that is available in the cr