hall my name is ryan cotton city manager it's my pleasure to welcome you here especially those who came from a great distance and there are some of you here who have worked on this and have traveled some to be here i want to before i go too far remind people that the cake has been cut and there is plenty left so i intend to enjoy some when i'm done speaking and i hope that you will feel comfortable to enjoy it as well in addition to a number of people to think before we get going i want to recognize that our city council is in good attendance here tonight and i am he speaking because  new york city and sends his well wishes and i am here in his stead so like to make sure you know who is on our city council we have jay peters mayor wayne does double duty as a liaison to the human relations commission and is there anyone here i didn't see from a council all right so thank you very much for being here tonight i am doing double duty also as the interim liaison to the human relations commission and will be introducing our chairperson shortly because you are here partly because human relations commission has invited you to be here tonight because this is one of their regular meeting nights and they knew it was a good night for them i am looking forward to learning a lot tonight from our distinguished panelists i have a lot to learn myself i have enjoyed learning so far is relatively new city manager and i look forward to tonight is another opportunity to find how i can work with the citizenry to make our community world class in the very best community it can ever be we are celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the civil rights commission the city of holland has a distinguished record civil rights going back not quite that far we're going to hear more about that tonight and i think we can be proud of that so i want to say a special thank you before i stop speaking to john go a chef speak who is the primary organizer of this event from the michigan department of civil rights and he is has been able to assisted by a number of folks on your local team  so he helped with that so everyone can see it from time to time and others i don't want to forget map and i can and the entire technology services team and not and last but not least amy prowess has been a key liaison with the human guinea international relations commission we're currently hiring two coordinators for those commissions so we'll continue in our roles but not quite in the same capacity so we thank her for getting us through the hurdle so before i turn over the microphone to john can everyone on the human relations commission please raise your hand so we know who you are and can everyone with the international relations commission please raise your hand so very well represented and with that i'd like to introduce to fill the chairperson of holland's human relations commission for some years in very experience thank you thank you as you are well aware we're celebrating fifty years of civil rights we don't always all agree on what those are there been many arguments but we're here to celebrate that we have made progress ok thank you phil it's my good evening by the way good evening it is my pleasure to introduce of the executive director of the michigan department of civil rights dan came to detroit and worked there anybody here from detroit originally yeah yeah ok so dan was director of parks and rec actually under coleman young actually which is just a few years ago  dan became director of michigan roundtable for diversity and inclusion and then governor granholm tapped him to be the chief operating officer of the state of michigan prior to becoming our director so i'd like to bring up  city really wonderful city and i was going to talk to the city manager where is he sitting after the after the meeting can we have a few words because  i want to find out how to be a good consultant i think holland would be a great place and so we're giving you an award tonight that's the way most politicians talk you know i'm a little different though but i want to thank everybody for coming people say this is a really good turnout it looks like a great turnout and thank you especially to the city of holland for graciously allowing us to hold this event here this evening while many individuals and organizations have helped and that luckily for us in true in all the cities we've gone to and i'm sure it will be in the future cities there been so social people that certainly have been quite responsible and helpful to putting this event together including you gail how are you it's nice to see you so again harrison is one of those that she always is she is probably most of you know is the exec executive director of the lake shore shore ethnic diversity alliance phil corey of the human relations commission who just spoke to us took is a pronounced de gras to go thank you of the human relations commission no hope college and the international relations commission  binge where she she's not here tonight let's on the way home let's see if we can find her and at least go over the material show and  though she couldn't be here tonight i understand a very helpful part of this effort in the committee is jane clark of the west coast chamber of commerce so like each of these fifty cities that we're working with the people that are volunteering are spending a lot of time at it and it shows because you're coming up with some some great products and some meaningful evenings well we're going to celebrate tonight the department of civil rights and this is that this is the fiftieth anniversary for our department probably one of the oldest if not the oldest civil rights commission and civil rights department around the country there are very few of them actually people are doing civil rights in many cities but there's not a statute that defines how and what the civil rights department should do and we have those statutes in michigan so in one nine hundred sixty three michigan voters approved a new constitution for the state and as part of that constitution michigan voters elected in approved the first state in the nation to create a civil rights commission charged with securing equal protection for all citizens our department is in the first leg of the fifth fifty city tour in michigan and it's to commemorate the visionaries who wrote that constitution the legislators who for a period almost unanimously supported the commission and then there's also the voters ultimately it comes down to the voters and they wonderfully voted in the commission and in the new constitution so we're very proud of those fifty years some people have said that it's unlikely that holland would be on the first leg of this tour anybody that's been to holland would never ever think that i don't know why people some people do think that but maybe it's because it's small it's great to grow up in a small city i grew up in a small city many years ago not in michigan in another state but it was a great city and gave me a great start so nothing wrong with small  cities i don't think there are many people though including myself who knew a lot about holland's past and what a rich history and what a great cultural heritage that you have in the city for one thing it does better than large or small cities for the most part at least in terms of our work the percentage of foreign born individuals in holland is way above what the state averages we consider that a plus the percentage of african americans in holland is significantly above the state average and we think it's great to have that diversity as well as all the other diversity you have the percentage of hispanic latino individuals in holland is significantly above the state average so once again in terms of diversity and hopefully inclusion  you you you better the mark in almost every category but there still remains plenty of work to be done to ensure that holland and all regions of michigan become freer of discrimination and that every michigan citizen every government agency and business abide by michigan's landmark civil rights legislation called the elliot larson civil rights act mel larson was a very conservative legislator from oxford michigan which is a small suburb north of detroit and his partner elliot larson i mean daisy elliott was a  legislator from highland park michigan and she was a strong democrat and she walked over across the aisle one day and said to mel mel you know we need to do something about how we relate and  work with each other he said you know daisy i think you're right and six months later we had this commission and we had this department and they were the basic civil rights rules that we have used ever since that day i think it was around nineteen sixty five check that because i want to be right and last year our department responded to about twelve thousand inquiries wanting to talk to somebody about whether a specific act was a discriminatory act they felt like it might be but they wanted to check with the civil rights department and so they came to us and we looked at about twelve thousand inquiries and we decided to take on more than two thousand to investigate them thoroughly and see whether or not discrimination had been committed  i think we settled probably about fifteen hundred of those complaints most of them were in in employment and housing but they're also spread through about ten or twelve other categories so discrimination is still alive and well and we're still committed to working as hard as we can to diminish it  and our mission actually it's unfortunate to say but i've been with the civil rights department now for three years and we probably still have just about as many complaints and just as about as many that are settled and found to be discriminatory i'm not happy about that but that's the reality we still have a lot of discrimination in january we released a study illustrating the negative economic impact from allowing discrimination against l g b t people in michigan holland was one of the four cities where we held a public hearing together testimony regarding the state and talked about that issue and although i don't think it's ready for legislation we've made a lot of progress in michigan just as states around the country are making progress on that issue today's event demonstrates the value we place in hearing from and learning from you after all unless we're able to help you we're not going to be in business very long but the people that have street level knowledge of the civil rights changes in michigan know that we will move forward in this state just like twenty years ago when you can't compare that today we've accomplished a lot in those twenty  years i think that's where i'm going to end but my potential consulting job in the future here in holland the man that may be the most responsible for that  is sitting right here tonight and that's our city manager ryan cut right and i'd like you to come up and accept this plaque from the department of civil life i'll just read a little bit it  says as we travel throughout the state on this us bush's occasion we honor those communities and organizations that are helping these visits become a reality your hospitality and your support is appreciated thank you for supporting of this the fiftieth anniversary of michigan civil rights commission and the michigan department of civil rights thank you very much for hosting  ok so what we what we have tonight is is an esteemed panel that we put together and what we hope to do is go over where we've been you know where we're headed as a city as a region as a state and so what i'd like to do at this point is introduce our steam panel gonzales is the associate provost and dean for international multicultural education  hope college and in this capacity directs the advancement of diversity and global learning at home in collaborative efforts with faculty and staff he works to improve the hiring and retention of faculty and staff establishing global academic relations in several parts of the world including india mexico japan south korea and china with more than twenty years of academic experience dean gonzales works to advance the mission of the college which is to educate students for a lives of service and leadership in a global society dean gonzales has been an active member of our community here having served as founding president current member of latin american united for progress past board member of the western theological seminary past president of the board of directors for howland community hospital is the current president of both hope college graduates would you please welcome dean no ok ok ok superintendent davis was born and raised in hillsdale county grew up on a forty acre farm assisting his parents and raising crops and livestock so he is a work ethic that i probably don't have the same work ethic so this tough work brian's very involved in for each if things slow down today or tonight he was a drum major at his high school marching band and also for my pleasure to personally know gail harrison who is the executive director of the lakeshore ethnic diversity alliance located in holland they are a grassroots organization dedicated to fostering ra language and framework for advancing racial equity and expand recognition of the impact of implicit bias the diversity alliance has mobilized literally thousands of local residents to volunteer in efforts to eliminate racial barriers in advance inclusion through education advocacy and engagement in leader programs gail received her bachelor of science degree from michigan state university we won't hold that against her we what we want to write we won't have anybody go blue right nobody's going to do that right ok and complete a grad work in a nonprofit management course at grand valley state university would you please welcome i could spend the next hour actually introducing this esteemed panel but i'm not going to met messer is the chief of public safety services and i don't know how you know broader perspective you know about you know what that means but his responsibility is fifty seven sworn police officers fifty police reserve officers twenty two full time firefighters thirty part time paid firefighters seventeen civilian staff fourteen victims service volunteers and servicing thirty four thousand citizens with an annual budget of ten million dollars so what do you do in your spare time all  so if we're going to we're going to ask them three to four minute questions where we've been where we're going however we'll be having an audience participation audience comment question period after the panelists are done and so we'll set that up as we go along so the first question that i'd like the each panelist to address is how is your organization been with that if you might have noticed in the bio that was read the thing that i try to focus on is not what i do but what we do from the very beginning of the make sure ethnic diversity and i switch actually started out as a north out of way i think diversity and i and it has only been successful because so many people from the community cared and got involved and affect change for the first twelve years of this organization seventeen year life we were a staff of one and so the only way that we were effective in helping to mobilize the community around advancing racial equity was because people in our communities cared got involved because we partnered with other very effective organizations latin americans united for progress the alliance for cultural ethnic harmony what was once called the african american support group and changed name several times with hope college with some of the professors and faculty at home college and students as well so the way that we have been effective is to really be a grassroots organizing body and so when we talk about who should get a plaza around the table it is really you folks i mean so many times when i come to these events you are the very people i see you and more folks but i just really have to applaud that this is a community that has for the past seventeen years of my professional experience in working on race relations stepped up to the plate said rolled up your sleeves and said we are going to do this work and i don't want to miss out either on the other institutions that have been involved including the faith communities in advancing racial equity work i think that the reason that our work has been a fact of and i do believe it's been a fact is because all of us together have worked at how do we engage community in advancing racial equity it has now been conflictual it has been that who do we blame but rather what are the inequities and then identifying what are the barriers so that we can create solutions and i might to talk just for a minute i'm trying to keep an eye on myself on here i know all young people use cell phones and cell the time and i've since i've never liked watches that for me but when we did our first summit in two thousand and one actually which was created the year before but i had no idea how many people were going to show up for them and there were so many of us involved in preparing and executing that summit on racism that was held at home college and when i had to shut down registration because whole college conference services said enough gayle you're driving us crazy that said to me this is a community that genuinely cares and out of those first five years of summit's there were twenty two action plans that w developed and implemented mostly almost exclusively in this community so fair housing services were started in this community as a result of a community group that wanted to address insuring diverse neighborhoods diverse workforce government agencies were involved superintendents were meeting every month at whole college to talk about multicultural curriculums and you know blah blah blah there was something that was happening in this community that was defining racism and i was wrong and saying we are a community that is committed to inclusion and that has driven i believe the involvement of our community members that has driven the effectiveness of our work stringent hiring process we know we kind of feel like we know who fits island if that's true with the city of holland as well we really strive to get good people and without that you're never going to get where you want to be  o we hire a diverse group of individuals that we think fit very well we then trained them very well last year we had almost nine thousand hours of training time it's a lot of training  expensive but it's very worth it and it's not training just as police or fire operations or you know how to drive a patrol car or thing how to shoot a gun what our training is is more geared  toward leadership conflict management decision making racial diversity we have all those kind of trainees that we implement in our training program and we have one of the best training programs in the state no question about it you can ask any department in the state and i'll tell you that so a little bit about us i mean i know are a small town we talk about being a small town but the how of police departments actually the top ten percent of number of officers in the state of michigan so we are in the top ten percent for as the largest department department in the state so we respond to twenty to twenty three thousand calls for services every year so it's a big  but what we what we really focus on i'm sure you've heard as i hope you've heard this if you haven't heard this week that i'm not doing my job and we're not doing we're not doing our job properly but we focus in on community based policing we have community policing officers that station themselves out into the field and we we really really our number one focus is building community trust because we know if we don't have the trust of the community we can operate we cannot do that so that's our number one priority would from from top to bottom everybody knows it when we hire him we work with the community we don't work above the community we don't work below the community we work with community members so that's the key we try to even our mission statement says we try to build partnerships  right we have a representation we had representation on lay up boys and girls club all these type of organizations we have police officers assigned to home all the schools i met with bryan and his staff yesterday for a couple hours of disco and over many different issues will be assigned officers to the schools we think it's important in we're not assigning these officers to the schools because we think our schools are dangerous we're signing those off for the school to build relationships with those students and the adults and the parents that come to the school that's why we do that top of that it does build in a little bit extra security and fortunately with her thing going on nowadays to have officers there so and we have other programs junior police academy for middle school students we have our citizens police academy where we have individuals come in and learn what we do and but the big thing that we try to do is we purposely create positive contacts with the public and i said this numerous i mean many of you've heard me say this is that you know unfortunately when we get call to a scene  normally it's not to eat dinner with people ok normally if something negative is happening at that location so we we don't purposely create situations for officers to build positive relationships it's not going to happen because we're not going to build a positive relationship with our community when we're responding to domestic calls or situations like that because we're there to do the job so we are we really strive on creating positive impacts  partnerships with the community however we can do that through through this is get me through just join a police academy we have driving programs for use those are the positive environments those are the positive contacts where they learn exactly what kind of people we are executive secretary to the commission many years ago i know the many you know thankless hours we spent over in the library someplace talking about the different issues that or now part of our of our community that is the issues that brings us together the idea of civil rights of world well of you who are here you know you have labor you continue to hold on to a vision that i think that has made our city much better and i college diversity inclusion or things that we talk about now with you know a great deal of public pronouncement but indeed i you know if you were to look at the history of hope college you would find that indy collette is a class of aiken seventy nine the very first class of hope college you know one third of our graduating class it was international those first students  class that one third were two students japanese they were class was only sixty wouldn't so thirty three percent were international students and that french commencement address delivered in japanese and in la n established a legacy for hope college that remained really a legacy that continues to be alive today but then something happened as is often happens in organizations you know we think that we have a right and we do not continue those things that give us a bible and see we did not have continued to seek more and more students internationally or within the american context so for a long time we were graduating one two or three some students from india some students from places like baghdad or creed but in fact there was not a formal connection to our community was not until the one nine hundred sixty s you know following the late part of the one thousand sixty's when the civil rights six begin to tug at the heart of our own community that people begin to ask you know why isn't hope going is doing more and i can go back and maybe four or five major reports in which a number of recommendations were made hiring you know sensitivity classes better admission procedures i mean you name it those things were in evidence in sixty eight and seventy two in eighty four and eighty eight in ninety two and i suspect that there's some of those things are still there but we've made some progress but there's one thing that i say that i would want to leave with you is that small increments or time make make a difference when you think of the legacy of hope college you would think that you know ice always been you know does or does americans have been part of our community and in did in all the parts of the world but when i look at the graduates whether you're looking at the first native american james people or be in the class of one nine hundred twenty five or if you were to look at james carter d across the united states you cannot get a job in our community but he did it best next thing for the next twenty years he was able to touch over five thousand lines of students that he taught in places whole because they're not always had a great there been times when we struggle there been times when some of you have reminded us that there are things that we need to do and we need to do this better but if the early graduates of those people is the legacy for us you know where to be here and you hear their stories those are stories of change over time jump forward then to you know to to the entering class of twenty seventeen fifteen percent of the incoming class for the class of twenty seventeen will be under represented students that it really is an amazing story for a whole college and then when i look at the makeup of our of our faculty and our staff you know twelve percent or nearly tore up twelve percent so over time hold college i think a struggle in some ways but i suspect that we're well on our way to make a difference and once you achieve critical mass i think you can move forward the one thing that i suspect we need to continue to build on is the vision of those early members of the h r c of the civil rights commission really the vision of the settlers of this community to be able to move forward this idea of racial harmony in our own community so what is racial harmony and ended by saying dissuading it is relationships it just breaks into one another it is the willingness to see the other a brother or sister that is the possibility that together we're a better community than if we were separate in that in fact that education can and does make a difference over time if we had more time to  those early stories you know i can call them people like you know ralph pickert in our own community here and going back to the seventies we can talk about some of the early things we're trying to do that we're not so we'll receive to have you here in such a large presence suggest to me that this is a vision that it's worth the our time and our continued commitment gets me in trouble but i remember is some of the statistics were shared earlier this evening i remember sitting at the institute just not so long ago where was a dr rusk richard david rusk who shared statistics that while we are one of the most diverse communities on how and one of the most segregated communities in holland and i think when we look at our school systems here in the city of holland we're one of the most segregated school systems in our state and i think until we can have courageous conversation around that topic and talk about some of the real issues that we have and intel we can put some very strategic action to that we're going to continue to have this conversation year after year after year after year after year and that becomes a challenge is because that's why some of these items that we're still talking about at the answers and solutions were easy we would have solved them years ago and across our country and so as a school system for the first time publicly our school board has been able to really talk about the racial equity achievement gap in our school system at our board meetings and i hope you've been following that to talk and run about what we're doing because as a system we need to further identify these gaps not just how in public schools but all of the schools in the hollandse own area and really take a look at the statistical gaps in achievement between different racial and economic groups as a system we do it for the identify these assess the potential reasons for these gaps and reach a level of instructional and cultural proficiency that's necessary to eliminate this disparity i recently learned about the difference between cultural competence and copper cultural intelligence and it was explained to me as cultural competence being the similar to basic math understanding the applications of basic math we need to get beyond how to say how an exchange business cards when we get into a cultural intelligence which is related to algebra how do we really apply the basic principles of culture and apply it to who we are in everything that we live work do and breathe in our community and i'm telling you get to that level of intelligence i'm not sure we're going to get to the level problem that we can we've made some great strides as a community no question but i'd challenge us to come for a greater sense of urgency in moving that ball forward we've been doing a lot of work with talking about research and one of the components we're looking at research is by singleton and went in and they say only when educators and i consider all of us educate because we're all learners at heart only when educators have us devilish both a language and a process for addressing the intersection of race and achievement where they be able to restructure their schools in ways which improve student performance and fulfill the promise that every child has a right to run or run regardless of their race culture or class and that takes some pretty strategic work so we began that in our schools  leadership team and being able to bring that down to our teachers because i think many people extra power and think of holland as what the festival rez we just celebrated last week they don't view her in public schools seventy percent free or reduced lunch where thirty realize that's who we are our federal congress individual represent us as i've gone around washington d c don't recognize that's who we are and as we try to recruit candidates to be principals and teachers and coaches and so on they look at and once was so how do we begin to share our story of who we are and celebrate that so again i kind of speak my mind how it is and i hope that you appreciate that we've done so far as i did  my entire district leadership team has with the help of you know gone through their institute on human racism that's what it used to because i believe now change and reform in about a little bit that was a big step for us to have some critical conversations around our own prejudice our own institutional bias or internal b as that we might have were taken to extend that now to unravel leadership team and about of education with the next level of work with which is there racial equity seminars we're also working with michigan state university in developing a racial equity impact audit to look at everything from curriculum in programs to hiring practices to to discipline referrals to achievement records and how students are doing we've been doing visits to other school districts who work who have made some steps ahead of us working with districts like east lansing public schools who have been recognized for their work and efforts and what they're doing i mean recently sent a team of individuals down to training in chicago for educating latinos for the future of america and a dream deferred the future an african american education that was put on by the american college board to begin looking at one of those best practices across the board that we can really bring in to how in public schools to address the achievement gap begin in the process of putting together an achievement with out the gap task force and there may be opportunities for individuals that are here tonight to begin taking a look at that as well how do we engage a much larger sector of the community students by the time a better one the time i turn eighteen years of age i said it's good but i'm on so many boards been able to work with destination education burgess you know recruited me for that and some great work being there on the ready for school readiness council on kids hope usa national board working with a council folks working with resin grass club each of us working together to try to establish what those girls can be some simple things that we've done as part of that we wanted for the first school districts in the area to include a note to feedback on some statements said earlier i were the first school district in the area to include a no discrimination state which is of children of color taken advanced placement classes while maintaining our revenue performance and also increasing because if we set a standard of expectations differently for different groups of students we're going to hit those expectations where w most of my teachers were trained twenty five years ago to be educators many of them grew up in holland went to high school student taught and how in high school and i teach in the same classroom but they went to school and the community has changed significantly over that superintendent it's lansing really left me with a profound statement he said i think the conversation is further along than the action and this may enable the action to finally catch up with the conversation so i'm hoping that our conversation tonight allows us to catch up and do some action to get around this racial equity and harmony this is working right right years so that the second question you know it is a general question to you well what challenges and impediments has your organization faced in furthering that attempting to address that achievement gap other that money is money i mean yes money right ok everybody knows yes we need more money city wise police wise school wise so we know that other than money what are some of the impediments you you face and you know when superintendent you talk about how to get people to recognize who we are you know does everybody want to do that desire and so you know you might want to address some of the impediments that exists dean gonzales when you talked about  the class of two thousand and seventeen having a large percentage of under represented populations are there any impediments other than money again they you face in attempting to address those under represented populations chief messer when you when you talk about your hiring process and your recruiting retaining and promoting diverse populations  educationally or skill wise what are some of the impediments there in your whole philosophy of community policing it means a lot of different things because the reality is holland and everybody else can't put a police officer on every corner and so you need the community and the community needs you so how to what are some of the impediments in your community policing philosophy and gail when you when you talked about you know the the one of the reasons you're effective in this community is that you're not about blame casting blame calling out people like that but how do we address the problem and have you encountered impediments in attempting to address that so i'd like all four panelists if we could you know two and these are these are also questions that you know you may want to individually pose the panelists as well when we get through these and they have their time  but again the question is what challenges and impediments has your organization faced in furthering that effort and superintendent davis if you wanted to start and then we'll work our way back toward this and ok i think probably the largest as it head of it is maintenance of the status quo right it's very difficult to want to change different things and so the way we do school is probably the biggest impediment when i have students who come to us as a tenth grader who doesn't speak english or is it can a guy who doesn't speak english the ability to accelerate those students to not only learn their academic content but to learn in a different language at the same time becomes increasingly challenging and doing it one hundred seventy three days a year in the current way that we can construct a calendar isn't going to close the achievement gap because the gap is so significantly different when they arrive into the school and if you intersect poverty across that one seventy percent of my students are in poverty if you look at a child from the middle class family who has five they have over thirty thousand more vocabulary words than a person living in poverty the child who is five from the middle class home can sometimes have a greater vocabulary than the adult who's lived in generational poverty and if we think about that and then that child has been raised in their household they've already started at such a wider margin and so we've got to do school differently and changing the system and structure of school is hard because we're i went to school this way right and we were for the most part probably did pretty well and it worked for us but we're expecting of our students today is significantly different we're talking about twenty first century skills and achieving on the gravel scale and and careers that they're going to go into that none of us even knew existed there was so much emphasis on technology today how many of you own an i pad ok so there's some are trying with your grandchildren if you haven't already done for the day it's significantly better than what we did so we have to you know one of the impediments is the way we do school itself one of the pieces i think i mentioned earlier is recruiting and retaining people of color to work in our school system and to be models for our kids that we have because we're viewed as a community a certain organisational rise and so we have been challenged with that because our students need to see individuals like themselves who have aspired to do different things and impediment is really models to work with our kids every one of us should be mentoring a child and how in public schools failed them for whatever reason and guess who goes there largely students of color why is that somewhere around the system something happened that we didn't get right and something happened within the community that we didn't get right and and girls club where it's working the upper bound and trio that's working through united way then host well one thing that we have in this community is not a rack of community organizations right all different and so on the things we're actually doing and partnering with leader is being able to look at how we can address racial equity seminar and bringing in the leaders from decimation education ready for school i put down a trio the boys and girls club united way holland schools and so on to get around a table to participate in this equity seminar around the topic of education and say what can each one of us do as our individual organizations we don't want to step on anyone's toes on their collective vision or mission but how do we have done a five hour larger community initiative that we wanted to take place and then each individual organization can talk about whether and working to close that gap i think another impediment that we have as well as being able to and rob our community and more specifically our parents in our schools and help them understand how how they can support their children and how they can contribute to the school setting and schools can sometimes not be a very friendly place because it may be based upon experience that you had when you were in school and high school is so different now than what many of us experience so that's a piece that i think that we can work on as well and i didn't mention money but i certainly think time each one of us gave up something to be here tonight you gave up being with your kids you gave up dinner you gave rocking or run a bike in a beautiful evening here in holland but each one of us is going to have to decide what is it that we're going to give up in terms of our time to say how do we have that serious encourages well as you can see there is a lot of a lot of intersections to this conversation and i suspect because i work at both an educational in a bureaucratic institution this idea of change you know come slowly i guess for me one of the one of the biggest challenges is perception the perception that people have of your institution  perception is that you're not welcome or in our case that you're elitist or conservative or too expensive or unwilling to to welcome that person if that's the perception is so it becomes a reality because those individuals who are not present are not going to apply to the positions that you're going to post and then you're going to say but i put it in the hall and paper and i was looking for under represented person or a woman in a body showed out but they didn't show up because there is no trust there's no relationship and unless that is that is change that perception is change then i don't think we're going to get very far so i was thinking sitting here who is not president you know in our audience today is a lot more than those of us who are here if you want to learn about you know h the west style of and work with that community and if they were to be having their own celebrations their room would look like them and we would not be there so i think perception is one of those things that we have to understand but that perception most into the fabric of our community i think many of the times you know we think of heaven you know monolithic community that is it is one or two groups that are here i mentioned to some of my colleagues in fact i mentioned to my students when i was teaching the class a class that for every person of color you see working downtown you would get an extra five points in your in your class and they would come back empty handed because they could not find a single person not a single person working in a downtown area on the other hand of those same students went to the mall they would come back with a long list of names and people they would talk to and then that would spur a wonderful conversation how is it that this wonderful christian community can be so selective about those people they want to lead in perception is that thing that is very hard to change for us that impacts hiring because of the perception is that you're not going to be welcome or those who have come before you just succeeded they're now being promoted that they've been ostracized by the very people that you're going to be a part of that community then why would you want to be a part of it so for us the question of recruitment and retention issues that we have to deal with curriculum you know yes we need to make sure that we have our students who are under represented there are succeeding but i'm equally concerned for a majority students or they get into critical thinking skills or they so i think for us is a lot more than simply having the conversation and i would submit with brian that i think in our community in our own nation we're very good with public pronouncements but privately as organizations and as individuals we go only so far to include the other so we need to to find a way to change that and for for our here who's a director of international occasion trying to promote this idea that if you really want to complete your education get out of holland go go to hell in the netherlands or go to china or go to some other place but try to get a different perspective and when you come back i think your mind will be expanded in a significant way that i think is going to be very helpful to us well there are more things that i could say but one way that i think that i found that i future faculty program that any of your other programs there's something special about our community and i think we need to celebrate that because if i speak with some sense of negative tones about some of the things that are missing i would also want to make sure that we understand that there are people that care deeply about this issues and who are putting themselves on the line to be able to create those changes and and in fact i think that it is only because of that collective group of people the caring people the majority people in our own organizations and i think we see that in fact you know something much better responsible what ended his comments on that because i was starting to get a little depressed up here you know what i think we should we can we can also look at some of the positives of this community for sure that  et's not lose sight of some of the strides that we've made some of the organizations now you know let's let's not lose sight of that i think i've i've been able to travel to numerous different cities through different investigations i've been here twenty two years and you know i see how it is being one of the one of the great places versus many other states that i've been around and investigate and work with police departments work with communities and there's a lot of great things going on in holland do we need to continue to work of course we do just like every community but you know i don't want to be that the doom and gloom because there's a lot of positives going on here and i think we should try to build off of those positives versus thinking we're starting from scratch in the you know there is there are some negatives of course but i think we're we're doing very well here so i just wanted to say that i don't think anybody would disagree with that  s of course we do have our issues trying to find minorities for our jobs as far as police officers we try to recruit them we do fairly well i mean we have several on staff but again i think a lot of the younger kids now as brian said earlier there are more and technology and computers and engineering and those kind of things and it's very difficult to find them that are in arrested in law enforcement we've we've reached far and and we've got a few on board now but that's a challenge for us that's one of the impediments that we face for sure probably couldn't can't leave here tonight without talking hopefully a little bit  about some of the impact that they gang activity has in our community as brian said earlier it is what it is we've always recognize we've had these issues since their early ninety's it still exists and recently hopefully all of you are aware we had a federal indictment on thirty one individuals and certainly that's been an impediment for us trying to work with some of these families who have been out of boys and girls club escape  some of those and we know that you know we hate to be where the enforcement arm of this ok there is the preventative arm that's out front and we've certainly rather have the prevention deal with these individuals versus us we don't like arresting people we'd prefer not to have any crime here and that would be our preference but unfortunately that's not what it is so we made these arrests and we understand the negative impact that these arrests have on families and how and and that's certainly an impediment to us trying to continue to build this community trust like i took talked about earlier having to make these arrests obviously we don't have a choice with law enforcement it's difficult we're always in this delicate balance of trying to provide closure trying to you know provide justice for victims of crime without overstepping our bounds in violating someone's civil rights that's that constant scale that we live on on a daily basis so for for us it's very tough we understand that we realize that it's a tough job but those are some of the you know and i got to on the gangs i just hope that all of you if you leave  tonight leave you with this is probably the most important thing about this is that anything you can do to help us out with that we've been trying to establish some jobs for these individuals we have to give our young people other opportunities other than just joining gangs we have to give them a sense of belonging us that's basically what gangs are they take the place of a family unit or a mentor or those kind of things that we talked about earlier so i mean right head on head earlier as well know mentoring these kids keep giving them other opportunities learning experience this is the manager and i met with several young students in the one of the biggest issues is getting a ride getting transportation to  an opportunity they don't have a ride to get there they can't get there providing jobs any of your business owners take a chance take a chance on some of these individuals you could turn our lives around so that's that's one thing i'd like to ask tonight all of you in the audience to take a look at that some of these young kids are very good individuals they just need a chance to be an opportunity to somebody step up and help them in their lives and i can give you example after example of individuals that used to be in that environment someone stepped up and helped them give them an opportunity in life they are great members of our community now so that some of our  you in the work that we do in our work is all research based and there's been a great body of research that's been coming out around contemporary bios and modern racism as we call it  over the last really twenty to thirty years and for us our belief is that and nationally believe people who work in the national racial equality field believe that what is called implicit bias or unintentional bias is an incredible impediment to our ability to move forward and eliminate some of these racial barriers and i want to explain how that works how that i works in that in our society today to be called the racist is to be called a bad person we all know that socially being a racist is bad and so those of us who are a caucasian to our racial attitudes we say i am not a racist and yet because of our history and because of our social conditioning and in part a large part because we are so segregated both in the state in our schools in our neighborhoods in michigan was at the two thousand census the most racially segregated segregated state the nation by race  we don't have those personal relationships to break down those pervasive social stereotypes and so racism and yet we still respond and behave in ways that reflect those negative stereotypes that are embedded in our subconscious and that creates a real conflict in how we can move forward because we don't recognize our contribution to creating and advancing those opportunity gaps that brian was talking about earlier and it happens in all facets of our society so there's no i don't know how many of you have gone through the institute but there's a white  that peggy macintosh wrote she's very famous about what are the advantages that we have as white people that we don't recognize as advantages because we don't understand what it is to not have those advantages in life so for me to be able to walk around a grocery store and be followed for me to be able to try to rent or buy a house and not be deterred or to say gee i'd really like to rent you that premises but i just talked to someone earlier today and we intend to you know that person's going to rent it would indeed that may not be happening there is a study been done by the university of chicago there's a famous study that was done a few years ago employment and try in a university sent out five hundred identical resumes one set with african american sounding names and one set with caucasian sounding names identical resumes and the caucasian sounding name resumes were fifty percent more likely to get called for an interview than the african american sounding interviews even though they were identical we need this kind of disparate treatment happening all the time in spite of our best intentions so i was working with one school district and organizational systems review and what are the policies and practices that are creating barriers to inclusion and this person was explaining i said explain the process that you have for hiring  very white school district and he said we just about had we just about had a person of color hired on faculty and i said well what got no way when they came in second and i said well tell me how that happened well it got down to the h or superintendent and i picked these two candidates and then we send them to the school where they're going to be working and for faculty members from that school interview the two candidates and then a collection and that's the candidate  go with and i said well tell me about the faculty all except one faculty member in the school district of thousands were white all except one so if a person is interviewing for a position before for white people who have very little exposure to racial nothing diversity or understanding of implicit bias and how that plays out the group think it's a natural psychological process it's not that you are a bad person it's that this is a natural process the group think is going to be i am going to pick somebody who looks like me or i'm going to pick the white person because the african american person gee i read about crime all the time and it's always  person on the front page of paper in reality it's not always a black person on the front page of the paper but we have conditioned ourselves to see crime is committed by black people so there are that happens at the interpersonal level in terms of having a sense of white privilege versus oppression a sense of lower self esteem people of color that then advances into interpersonal relationships and how those play out and how you recognize each other's gifts and and limitations and then that plays out into institutions and how we create policies and practices both formal and informal that either can create barriers to inclusion or limit them and then finally the structural piece of how do all these institutional it's brian talking about bringing all these institutions together to try to advance a culture of inclusion that is community wide which is really where we need to go because we are so segregated we have gotten to the point like maybe this used to be the chicken over here of the internalized processes but we are now so segregated when we have always been so segregated that we don't have those interpersonal relationships to break down because we structurally now have these segregated systems so we need systems approach we really need to work at all levels of this continuum but if we could start understand unintentional bias and how that happens and i just i know my time's up but i just want to give you two real simple examples that are so concrete so there is a suntan lotion that says on it and i forget the product tan colored gown and it was referred to as in the press as a flesh colored gown why she was it because it sure wasn't michelle obama's flash so even also liminal messages that we see over and over again influence the way that we perceive people from various racial and ethnic groups and that is an incredible impediment that if we can come to understand it will lift the fog on contemporary bias and modern racism and help us to start to deconstruct the systems processes  so is the panelists you get ready to answer the third question this is something that you may also want to pose to us as you know as you give your comments or questions for the panelists individually or collectively but we're going to ask them at this point what issues should the michigan department of civil rights make as a priority over the next ten years and maybe th something you want to relay to us as well because we have department people here i mean you heard from our executive director dan vicki levin good is our communications director  seconds i mean or a minute to you know to address the panel you could address in the form of a question individually or collectively you know tell us what you going to departments work on the next ten years but i'm going to give first crack at awful lot of organizations that are doing educational work in this particular community in particular in the grand rapids area and there are just people doing all kinds of educational work in grand haven and you know so so when i look at where is the gap that really needs to be addressed and i look at what tends to perpetuate not only that implicit bias that we're talking about but also perceptions by people who live in the community or people who do not live in the community the experiences that we have had over the years both in this community and just a little bit north around hate crimes or acts of hate even if they don't qualify as hate crimes i think for all the work that we do it all the steps that we take and all of the accomplishments that we make jointly it gets pushed so far back every time there is some visible act of hate that happens that defines to us that this is a community that is racist is basically what that says and i really don't know that any of us can adequately handle responses to all the complaints around acts of hate so we get calls all the time at our office about you know somebody as been calling this name or you know has been you know things that maybe don't make it into the press things that definitely don't make it into the press is well as those things they do you know and so when we had the the n word painted in you know foot high letters on the robinson's yard and these are people that came in from jamaica to work and you know the global economy and this is their experience and and we could respond as a community and within two weeks we had three thousand signatures to a page that went in the newspaper saying not here not now not ever again that was written by an well  i mean she wrote that we asked for people signatures we got funders and corporate people to fund putting that in a newspaper we had a party in the park we had a hate crimes conference that was put on by mark bishop and said this is like six weeks after this happened i've never seen anything like this that so many community members would turn out to learn about hate crimes six months after the incident this is a very special place but those incidents push us back in terms of our goal of moving forward and if we could consistently and regularly turn those over to you know the department of civil rights and know that they were staffed well enough that they could really handle those in in a timely fashion i think that would be very helpful to the rest of our efforts about understanding the complexities of race and moving forward are perfect and reduction to what i was on talk about because number one on my list is he crimes and i'll tell you why we don't respond to him because there's no laws against them at th that's why we don't respond to them we have one law one law on the books it's called ethnic intimidation the two year felony that's it nothing else every other law that we can charge people with is so i think if that was my number one of the you know the machine department of civil rights is going to do something they certainly can lobby or pressure or whatever you want to phrase it to get some laws on the books for law enforcement to enforce these kind of acts that gail disposed of because they are huge problem for our community and the tried it to get them at the federal level is a very very difficult especially some of  the i don't want to use the word minor because they're not they're major problems but the feds are only going to take large groups that are involved in hate crimes and those kind of think so yet individual that's involved in a hate crime all we assaulting someone and we put this ethnic intimidation and it runs the same time as this other it doesn't run consecutively afterwards like a felony firearm of you if you commit a crime with a firearm a two year enhanced missile that runs government voting in these types of protections at the local level i know we have about twenty two or twenty three or twenty four cities now in michigan that have done that i think and i know that the michigan department of civil rights has been fighting this battle trust me i've read some newspaper articles those kind of things but i really want you to continue to fight that battle to make that a standardized act at a state level i think if we continue to vote all these hodgepodge fragmented city ordinances in throughout the state of michigan i think it becomes a problem i think the the elio larsen action be amended to include those individuals  but i think it should be a state decision and not individual city ordinance decision that's just i think it's much better standardized and i think if if we are the true true  who you are you don't have equal rights because it changes as you enter entered different jurisdictions so you know i would i would like to see the department of civil rights continue to work on that give hillary larson civil rights act amended and that way it will eliminate all these fragments of city ordinances throughout the state so just so i'm getting this right it's their recommendation to amend eliot larsen to include sexual orientation and gender identity is that what we're let me say that i would i would concur with miss recommendation you know that certainly would be one of my my own items on my list my number one item on the list was something that brian spoke about and this is the  the gap in the educational achievement i don't know what we can do to you know to move hearings or to work with the department of education the department of commerce but it seems to me that that is going to be one of the highest priorities for our for our state and as we're able to salvage the lives of young men and women we're going to be facing some major challenges not only economically but in terms of the quality of life for our own communities so i would you know defer to brian but that's really would be one of my own highest priorities there are so many so many things i want to can ask an organization and i know that your your the commission in a quarter to nine hundred sixty five report on the status of migrants and farm workers in the state of michigan and when i look at that report you know i saw that there were some things that need to be investigated again and saying do you know recommendation i was struck by looking at your web site it sort of the lack of the positive side i think matt spoke about sort of the positive things that are going in our community you're hearing speaking about about you know all the different pressures that we have in our own gail so i just want to say that i think that programs or helpful but people make a difference programs are helpful but people make a difference and this people that you see here or people that i would say or or on the trenches they get in day out so my recommendation for the commission is what about something on best practices for fostering change you know across the state i didn't see that i see all this report things that are there and it seems to me that we're missing an opportunity to tell the story maybe you'll pick up the stories as you go through the sort of the rolling stones fifty city tour oh all right you don't know me i know i'm just me know it's interesting i noticed the same thing as i was perusing the website too and i think sometimes the perception of the michigan office of civil rights and so on is one of complaint in following up to issues rather than how are we being proactive to prevent issues in the first place so i think talking about those practice stances i want to echo a little bit too about statutes you know most recently the way in which matt safe school law got so misinterpreted across a state where it started and where it began and respect an individual's beliefs but when it came that a student based upon his religious beliefs could bully a student based upon their beliefs i thought was just so misc so misaligned to what needed to be and with that i think we can we hold our elected officials accountable for how they vote in legislature so we can talk about some of those issues and what does that look like and i know that that the political side of things can become very challenging but when we cast our vote we have to make sure th casting a vote for our people and not just for some but the biggest thing that i would like help with is let's assume for a moment we close the achievement gap and let's assume for a moment the latino young man gets to haue in high school graduation and he walks across the stage device field house three weeks and many do but let's assume that young man is an undocumented citizen we estimate in holland that about thirty percent of our latino students are undocumented citizens when i talk with the students they tell me in the how and the one area is probably closer to fifty percent now we have no statistics to gather that for certain because we don't ask about citizenship at the time of and moment but if i get to graduation and i make it through the system and then i can't access post secondary because i don't qualify for scholarships because i don't have a source of security number we've just created for that seven year old brother at home and that twelve year old sister why go through all the process and work because it's not going to matter anyway because i'm going to end up working on the north side of town in the service industry versus a downtown in the professional industry and so i think we've got to continue to talk about this notion of immigration status i work with children every day who came across the border as a three year old five year old six year old with their parent and they're here i work with kids whose father went to wal mart on saturday night at ten thirty to pick up again him out and didn't come home mom is not a us citizen but but the children are born here mom can't go back to mexico to be with father and get hurst children safely across the border because she can't go to detroit to get a passport for them for fear of being deported that's a much larger issue i would just like to say we're going to do right best to graduate every single student  school and provide multiple opportunities to get there but we have to make sure that once they get to that point they can move on to that next level because we're going to lose the very own family mentor that they need in their own family to get there so we've got to address those undocumented status and a obvious kids who come to school every day who do the work who graduate as students they've got to be able to go to college in the state we have a podium in the middle of the room it's time right now if i mean it's your turn basically so you know if you wanted to go down and behind the podium there and  ask your questions of the panelists if you would like to hear what you would want us to work on in the next ten years what your vision is where i mean we do serve you  i don't know if you read the newspapers or not but you know where you know where were we may take a hit so a little bit of it resource wise and we may know that but you know so we're working on a lot of things when we talk about missy school our running a statewide in tabling initiative one of the districts we're working with is allendale on the west side of the state here i have i have a lot of questions for the panelists but i i'm going to defer to you actually so that mike is running according to rory and it's your turn and i may ask you to limit it to about a minute you know and then if you have to if your question or observation is for a particular panelists address them individually or if it's for the whole panel to address the question you know please state that as well ok good evening marty dougan i live right downtown here a few blocks away  just some feedback from brian in particular and it's curious because brian i have had some differences of opinions on some things in the last several years on how schools however i had to get here late because i go to boys and girls club money through i've been all over this community for me my education having gone to oberlin college in the late sixty's was the best thing i ever did as an education opportunity because forty years ago that was a very diverse campus already  but to build on brian's point i try very hard in a screen to get more adult people to join me as a volunteer at a boys and girls club because i have a whole bunch of kids there on a monday and wednesday i've got two other kids and a few caucasian kids mostly hispanic i spend my time doing homework with those kids and as they're then i hear the name and some parents picking up with them describe to the parents what we've just done what they could do at home if i finish a piece of homework i write a note on there put my name boys and girls club and make a comment to the teacher about what was good and what could be helpful what this community needs is some way to break down all the problems that we have because we a very segregated community and i've been here twenty five years moved turned eighty eight with herman miller and i just still keep seeing those of the downtown since two thousand and one i walk everywhere and i do that intentionally to be in this community also so brian and that you mentioned two boys and girls club the name keeps popping up but it's a classic example of where more and more of us if we would spend more time because the opportunity to mentor not only one young kid but forty young kids is there at a moment's notice and these young kids love it because they just don't have that at home most of them thank you master you're on the board it boys and girls right now i am yes do you have any any insight into how to get more adult volunteers is that i mean become more inclusive is that you know is that the gist of it i think yeah i commend marty he's been a boys and girls club for for years he is definitely the top volunteer there we certainly do need more individuals to step up to the boys and girls club on the board there for seven years it's growing it's growing tremendously of a and i had a plug but i am on the board so we have a we have a location there's a location of the north side now and again i talk about communication again myself city manager and some city council members had a meeting there a couple weeks ago with twenty five thirty young young individuals and  listen to their concerns and marty is exactly right like i talked about earlier that sense of belonging as their sense of wellbeing they feel safe there and we talk to them and this is their this is their words not mine they they feel much safer there than they do on the streets or a lot of times at home so you know marty is exactly right the more individuals we can have their volunteer they need those mentors they need those positive role models in their lives that they may not have at  home or definitely not on the street but we have a lot of other organizations in the city that do a fine job to just take the boys and girls club has been around the longest they're very consistent and they do provide a great service for all our young people for five dollars a year so certainly that is one of the highlights and positives in our communities is the boys and girls clubs will thank you for bringing that up marty and brian do you have anything about the school's relationship with boys and girls oh it's a fantastic relationship as i said we only have the kids eight percent of their life so we need those community enters but i think sometimes we think that being a mentor is a very difficult thing to do and people are anxious or scared about it what do i know about eleven or twelve year old kid you know what all they need is someone to share their story with you would be amazed at how much you can learn if you just listen you don't have to talk you just have to listen and  their on your worst day even if you don't feel like you have the skills you are tired to get up on your worst day sometimes that's the best they've got and so i just with you know they're ready for school has all kinds of play groups and things that they're trying to do to look at those zero to five year olds we've got our high school students across the board we have young parents in this community who could have you know have a listening ear to help about raising their kids so doesn't have to be just mentoring our kids  we have kids having kids i mean there are so many ways and opportunities in which we can help our whole community at large and then that mentoring piece you know kids hope usa i'm on that national board as well and there are specific training programs i thin models across the country that i think we can use to engage in mobilize united way has some great training programs for mentors as well so if you don't feel like quick to do that there are certainly individuals that could help you do that and it sounds like marty would have a lot of ideas as well to join up in that circle time with just incredible difficulties that children my going to her cultural workers face in transitions and limiting english proficiency and poverty rates and parents being out of the home for long hours work in the fields because there's no protection to graduate now who've been on our mentoring program eighty four percent of those kids are graduating the national average for children migrant agricultural workers graduation rate is forty five fifty five percent and the other thing that we have is a summer reading program where you meet at our office and you just follow the case worker out of the camp and it's an over town start right at holland township and the kids come running now we've got the books and got blankets and chairs and we play a game after so much time of reading and then have a snack together you don't have to commit for the whole summer well you can do is show up when you want to and you can bring your whole family and it's a great opportunity to break down those cultural barriers to provide a service to have fun and i would just strongly encourage to take a look at our website and to consider the possibility of doing either one of those two things things that i've been concerned about is the inequality of funding on the educational level if you go back to one nine hundred fifty three workers the brown of education separation beagle was not constitutional and yet in michigan we have  five hundred thirty two school districts i believe it is fifty of them are in economic difficulty and yet some districts are getting significant more money than others and that seems to me would it be seek any quality for any districts are on a flat basis they're all treated the same thank you care to address that well i'm not sure that i'm you know it's well first well not particular side of the law wayne but i certainly would concur with that you know i you know right maybe better better person to respond to the question for the rest of the audience but we certainly have a a state of schools that have send a lot of schools that have  not i just echo and applaud wayne for bringing it up there are there are school districts on the east side of the state of michigan that receive fourteen thousand dollars per student i receive seven thousand dollars per student and some of those districts that receive fourteen thousand dollars per student have less than ten percent free or reduced lunch less than five percent special education and don't have second language learners in the same manner in which we do but we better economy as a scale around that and in one nine hundred ninety four we passed proposal re and the law was changed to equalize that fighting across the board and it did not happen and it did not happened in the other thing that's happened in our state the school aid fund has been the most robust revenue stream in our operational budget and every year our legislators take money from the school aid fun that's designated for k twelve education by constitution and found it to other means and if they take our gasoline tax you've been following that every time you fill up your gas  of out of that tax goes to pay for your k twelve schools right here in your local community and there's a movement right now to shift that tax to pay for one point two billion dollars a year to fix our roads and bridges and infrastructure i think we i believe that we need to do that but if that shift occurs each school district will receive five hundred dollars less per kid abyan schools i believe decided today if they didn't there were going to decide they're closing their high school we're going to vista close the entire district close their doors last week the state has now rescued them to open i have almost a two point seven million dollar deficit for next year i'm deficit spending two million this year grand haven over three million dollars deficit was eight point seven million dollars deficit if we don't look at how we're going to fund public education in our state to wayne's point we're no longer going to have public education and if we think things are separate about segregated now  education ladies and gentlemen it will be a series of have and have nots like we've never seen before and we have to herd our legislators who represent ottawa and elegant county accountable because look at the votes that they've cast every single one one of the recommendations that we make when it comes to various contacting of legislators it's more effective if you call them rather than e mail them if you've heard that because e mails could come from anywhere but when they see your area code pop up in you vote in their district they're more apt to listen honestly that's just a recommendation that they listen i mean if it's you people who are in organized groups that are for whatever reason cutting education and furthering the disparities that exist they call their legislators you know you when you talk about perception being reality i don't know if it's possible to overstate that chief press or when you when you made that a side comment that if the public didn't know what the police department is doing you're not doing your job and then i wanted to make the point of the migrant mentor program but i want to say something kind of kind of based here about perception being reality i've had the absolute pleasure of voluntary and with the migrant mentor program through leda and i don't think i can overstate the importance of of spending time with kids who have and who have been whose experiences are so much different from our own i don't think that it's also possible to overstate that when somebody goes to look for a job in this case whole college and they are a minority even sexual identity if they're in person the perception is that hope is  too conservative place is an unwelcoming place so that application never gets put forward i've also had the great pleasure of working for latin americans united for progress in their mass i want their program and twice a week i have the of working with area high school students as they try as we try to close the achievement gap for them and i am so proud to say that three of our seniors one has a full right to the university of michigan and to have full rights to whole college regardless for cardless of their immigration status for cardless if where they come from what means they come from there on the path to success and it's such a proud thing for us here in holland and the thing that i think we struggle so much is how do we let the public know all we say how do we get involved you know in my work with holland is ready for that when we talk to voters when we talk to citizens they say where have you been for the last ten years how come you're the first people to ever ask us what we think about this issue where have you been and we say wow you're right where how we pay where is the work that's being done by these nonprofit organizations by the city of holland by our government public can get involved this morning i again i was i had the honor of being on the radio for the first time which was terrifying to to promote the international relations commission's multicultural festival and the interviewer said kind of flippantly when i said oh this is the i r c this is what we do and he says wow who knew that the city of holland did that and it took my breath away for a moment because you know all the hard work and the dedication that we put into promoting and serving the city of holland and yet our own hometown radio station had no idea that we existed so the gap you know when we talk about achievement gaps there's also a knowledge and a communication gap that happens some of our students and i must say that on a program i somehow just am appalled when i hear things that come out of their mouths like do you know how hard it is to not join a gang no i have no idea i have no idea and i don't ever want to know that but the view in it's their reality and the thing is i have to ask myself and the institutions with which i work what am i doing to make that child's life better and what are we doing and i hope my recommendation to the department of civil rights everybody in this room including our elected officials including mr cotton our city manager is to ask ourselves every single day how are we serving who are researching why are we serving and the answers to those questions had better be good because while the point made that we've all sacrificed our time to be here some people couldn't sacrifice the time to be here and that absence should speak very large so i think you all for being here thank you for offering this event and offering the opportunity to speak on the note of being positive i want to thank the city council holland sentinel and i'm a stoner and make an ask what i'm talking about is gang prevention as chief messer mentioned we've spent some time in reaching out and having focus groups the variety of sources and we've learned that mentoring makes a big difference and jobs we can employ someone over eighteen and have them drive a car or under eighteen and drive a car use power president so through the member from the city council who cannot be here tonight he is on his way to tennessee for family matters but he wanted to work with us and the city council approved a new program to employ individuals fourteen to seventeen which are most at risk of being recruited in gangs through the state ministries superintendent davis we are in touch with families whose children can benefit from some summer youth employment so i want to thank the city council and everything that's gone into that program we have six seven when you with the supervisor that we will hopefully be employing shortly the program is tailored to specific that and that is a vehicle a source that we didn't have before of communication to underscore the point about communication so because of the holland sentinel we have an anonymous donor that has so the last thing is they ask with that kind of support nothing's impossible if there's anyone else out there that wants to get involved in this type of program of private providing connections to the youth in ways that they can earn his family at the time were one of our host families and i think this is an op an excellent opportunity for people to get to know other cultures so it's one of the reasons my wife and i do it we have kids that come from former soviet union countries from predominately moslem countries from asia south america europe as well as the middle east so and holland high school has educated a few of them for us and we very much appreciated it and contributed to the diversity of the student body and we had excellent time it's a good program that brian heads up there i think  knowledge one of the things that they face community that i belong to some other members are here are on a committee called peace with justice and we look into these kind of issues our group has gone  on some sundays to a city park and had a picnic and provided food to whoever was there in a in a city neighborhood to try to help make the parks more safe for the youngsters that's something people can do we could do more of that i wanted to throw a challenge out to the human rights commission a impossible one and that is plan was pretty astounding if you've ever read the gulf fourth report pretty inclusive long range forty year projections why can't we do something like that for human rights have a concentrated community effort and focusing on what we have what are the problems how can we solve them together i'd like to see that they don't call it the i'm going to  know my family brought in the individual young man from brazil and i believe or not i just prior to this meeting and during this meeting my phone's going off i'm going off because he's e mailing me because he has some questions for me and he's down in brazil right now he stayed with us for about nine months a couple years ago and i say it is the greatest experience you'll ever have to learn about culture teach kids and you know if you learn about how you know positive how good we have it here we we have a pretty good compared to some other countries so i tell you if anybody wants to get involved with the foreign exchange students that's a gentleman to see there and his wife great great experience i'd really highly recommend ok and actually if i just met you say something very quickly john is that you know the college you know we received will probably about one hundred students there are international this coming year that number continues to increase every year experience sometimes yes out for dinner so there are some ways in which you can do this and i can also tell you because we do this often ourselves and my wife and i it is years one of the most rewarding things one can do evening my name is charlie benet powers i live in grand junction michigan but i do work in holland and then i'm also active in the organization holland already and also a member of the lakeshore p flag on it and i just i'm not sure if this is a question or just a statement i do agree with chief master in terms of the way to go is to amend the larson act on it and that would solve a lot of problems unfortunately we heard from our first speaker that the department of civil rights had hearings around the state last year they gathered a lot of information and a lot of data but quote unquote it's not ready for legislative action on the alley at larson act has languished in committee for over a year there's really no sign of it being acted on so it seems to me that the way we need to go continue to go is to do the local ordinance ordinances on it and that's not  most desirable way to do it the state why actually federal would be the best on it but that's going to be a long long way off from what i've heard the there have been attempts for at least ten years to include l g b t in civil rights ordinance is in the state and it's probably not going to happen raised and international students   potential college students juniors from holland high school west out of high school participated in after school classes there all last year they participated in summer work based experiences they came back as their senior year they receiving high school credit for that of these students many of them are going on to post secondary studying engineering and hopefully we'll have job opportunities when they come back here in her miller and so we think about the talent that we have here the talent exists we have to just continue to foster and grab that he with us now signed as well as fourteen other companies we just launched it with over two hundred fifty business leaders at their labor breakfasts this past tuesday and i'm looking for a newspaper article that will have a bit of college here in the city of holland where students would come back their thirteenth year so during their sophomore junior senior thirteenth year they actually get an associate's degree and it won't matter what country you're from or from what language you speak with your documented or not sometimes we have to work around the system to get the job accomplished so i just want to give a big block to our community leaders who are doing that our business leaders who have stepped up identifying these great and very talented at risk youth and are the teachers who have joined this initiative who are going through different levels of training to partner in that so just going back to what matt said it's sometimes easy to focus on some of things that are not working and i just wanted to share an example of a i've a great thing and there's ways you can plug in with that one as well thank you brian our department because it's right thing to do and you take hits for it but our department did conduct the forms that director kirk mom talked about and the legislative climate is maybe not right today but we're working at it and sometimes you you do it in small increments and it becomes the right thing to do and right there in the right time so we have two more gentlemen in line here and if i can i add to that real quick yeah i want to add to that there's also a republican represent thousand and nine so we can be done i still think that's the best way to go instead of having you know two hundred some cities and twelve hundred townships of their own their own ordinances let's keep folks have a statewide initiative versus trying to fragment that thank you  the constitution the first amendment that the constitution states that congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise  am part of a congregation we called it into a congregation before but now we call it all spirits let my bill freeman three years ago we challenge ourselves what we could do to benefit the community and be agreement investigated that and had found out that soup kitchen provide a meal every day except saturday with cold cereal and milk and or a huge start up with five or ten people coming and that it grew from there and in two years  are feeding about one hundred ten to one hundred twenty people in the meantime when we were searching out to six founding we get friendly listening  ears but we got no support this is a discrimination that that just go under the radar you know to a point that we were deciding we did two years that we so we are desperate at that time so one of our wall and peers just issue an article in the newspaper saying we didn't mention about religion because  ok now we are still going about to more than two hundred people my point is you know even though there is no obvious discrimination but if you are going out there trying to do something good it's feedback first for him i'm i guess i'm not going to be as articulate as i probably should be so i'm not going to i'm just going to kind of read  i guess this is mostly comments i someone has mentioned my perception is reality well first of all i take issue with that statement that's plainly not true  but my perception tonight is that as a religious and political conservative i'm probably one of maybe four here and i would my quite xclusive of conservative values and since they're charged by state law with equal protection i have a obvious problem is that if we just do the diversity thing and the poverty thing in then cheap what happens and i'm sorry but no pun intended because i just thought of this i'm from the old school  i believe that the job of education is to educate and not to do social engineering through the kids so the other perception other perception i have basically is that white is bad color is good obviously that bothers me because i know that not to be true the phrase has come up undocumented citizens there is no such thing as a citizen who is undocumented it's impossible hate crimes and elliot larson eliot larsen is a good law as it is but when someone can show me that choices of lifestyle now qualifies on the same level as birth and skin  color then i would be willing to look at that but right now both scientifically and socially and religiously there is absolutely no justification for that and it shouldn't exist in any way as a statute so my problem i guess tonight is not problem that's a bad way to put it my what keeps going through my mind tonight is that the values your sorry your core sense of values are being violated to an equal number of people in jerusalem i may argue against that but i think the point that i you're trying to make for us is that this part of this conversation we need to enlarge that thinking of what goes into make community any of those one a way for us to understand and for us to have a hearing to gather as a community i welcome  for equal protections and housing and employment for gay lesbian transgender and bisexual individuals and i just wanted to say those words i know we've been talking about gender identity we talk about  sexual orientation but i wanted to be able to say lesbian bisexual and transgender think it's important for us to use all of those terms and we don't say a lot in this  community well maybe in some groups but none of the other so i just think it's important to bring up that also just i feel young in this group which there's been so many people who have worked really hard for many years for rights and a lot of times and i guess i don't i'm not really that young but i think that it is it's  it's important for us to recognize the work that has happened and to continue to nurture change in all generations which i just really appreciate our whole panel and how unique of  community we have that we have a university in our in our city and then also really strong public schools because not every community that you're going to going to will be able to have that dynamic on the pan and i worked at grand valley for eleven years so i definitely have a part of my heart that belongs young adults and social justice is something that is very important but i also wanted to know from brian a little bit more about the bt and i remember what you said something program that is going on and how in public schools because i didn't know about it maybe i haven't been reading the paper so i admit that fully but i wanted to know a little bit more about what what that was that you're speaking to i was just sharing that our board policy also includes that as a protected class as part of our board policy for hiring practices and also for students and we do have a as part of extracurricular club activity group that has a class adviser and students are able to participate obviously in that as part of extracurricular activity but i was referring more to policy that was established by the discussed diversity in the school after say that the children there as well as the children and the most i want this program just hit so many want to feel things to say about the versity and the bad thing that has taken place in  d public school district this year the comments from the children just in having mirra like images to represent them made them feel like there was a place for them in that school the reason i got involved in the work it is because there was something lacking in holland for my children holland is very much rich and is dutch cultural heritage and i want my children to have a place where they can find it as well and it's nice to see that there's a representation in the school district that same panel the students when asked if they face any discrimination within the school district had various answers some of them said yes and some of them said no and the thing that i found really curious as we built denselow it is that the ones that were transplanted students that is students that were not born and raised here in holland where the ones versus the ones they were here and then recognize what they were have been experiencing the whole time so it is my hope that the school and not just the school but the community as a whole take note of it our children see it what can we do to make sure that they don't feel that as they can seem to be successful  and citizens of our city as well and then as a community as a whole what can we do to be the ones they reach once and teach one because all it takes is one someone mentioned i think his name was martin from the boys and girls club the challenges that he has had with volunteers that would assist them at the boys and girls club i can say that i'm sure that's the challenge a lot of organizations space here in holland and all it takes is that one person to say that they have something that costs nothing and that is just time to be able to give our children thank you so much i apologize this is getting late but i do have a question and it gets for bryan who seems to be the target of many of our questions my name's brian as well by the way i mean park township so we're not in your school district but something you said really caught my attention you said that  we need to do school differently and i was wondering if you could give us a little glimpse of what that means i mean what would that look like doing school differently so that we can really start to make a dent in that achievement  well if i give the answer why you want me to write a book i think that's the big question we talk about school being done differently it's not fourteen hundred students on a bell schedule every fifty five minutes that was based upon the industrial revolution  be one example you know knowledge now has been liberated in essence it's free a great you tube video to watch is to go home and watch his name is daniel brown what every educator should know and he dropped out of college and he's now making six figure income a year with these different blog posts and videos but the reason why i dropped out of college is because college got in the way interfered with his learning because it was based on such a traditional model of being able to look at how do students interface with learning today and basically knowledge has been liberated it's free to get information anywhere that being said we have to teach responsible digital citizenship we need to teach responsibility of  you have access to everything i think we need to look at our school calendar the way in which we do think that basically i can look at achievement was students and we can make two and a half years game with individuals from september to may but when they go home from june to september and there's not books in the home there's not someone there to provide extra economic support they're not involved in the various community organizations that we have kids can make a year and a half to two years decline so we have to restructure i think our whole calendar differently we have some wonderful wonderful educators here in the area who care deeply deeply about our kids the hundred mission of how do we establish relationships with not only our students who are here to look differently than me but our students who move into our community one of the things i'd like to see us do is we need to better orient families to our community we do open house on august but what happens to families who move in september october december january and ice a lot of tension in some of our neighborhoods and some of our housing complexes we need to focus on the ready for school initiative we need to make sure that every child in this community has a preschool experience every single child and that's one of the girls for ready for school to be able to assist parents and helping with that we also need to make sure that all of our youth are involved in some kind of extracurricular activity because if we're not providing either a semi structured or structured activity we've talked about some of the semi structure structured activities that exist at i mean with a young man today talk about some of his discipline pieces who was involved with the game here in holland he would like to get out the challenge is if he gets out he's no longer safe so we need to talk what it means to be safe to be a thirteen fourteen fifteen year old for every single child in this community regardless of where they are i am i know difference of opinion may exist with that but i have forty one hundred kids and i consider every single one of the my own in each one of them deserves to have the same equal access to free public education that's what public education was founded upon in our country and how do we ensure that along that way those supports are in place to do that so we need to look at there are many things in education that are working very well too so we don't throw the baby out with the bathwater by any standard measure but we have to challenge the status quo a little bit and say the traditional format that we've done school of that we still have to have the cor academic component solidly in place but we also have to prepare students to work in a more global economic scale of my board members several of them do global international business of sort of my parents are doing global international business if we're going to continue to maintain our economic presence as a country as a community where one of the most i think last year the stats was per capita we were the fastest growing county in the country from an economic standpoint if you look at the furniture industry the automotive industry agriculture and business we the life sciences with that with the health field and so on we need to be providing opportunities for students to be able to enter into those careers that's going to take a lot of collect their work for that so preschool post secondary make sure our kids have that opportunity college capable and career ready because we're expending of my forty two million dollars budget that i oversee almost twenty five percent goes into that into remedial services we've got to get it right the first time we don't have the resources anymore to keep redoing and redoing and redoing kids shouldn't be going to summer school for remediation they should be going to summer school for enrichment and acceleration and so we've got things really around a little bit and we've got to focus on all those efforts that can get us or that place that the challenge of that is going to it's going to take resources and from school differently parents need to be part of school parents need to be are wrong that pathway with us and not just say they're yours for six hours a day why take care of this we need to be walking hand in hand together with that so we can help you as parents it's difficult being a parent today my goodness gracious all the things that kids have access to so those are just a few examples and i think you know whole nother topic i'm sure that it will raise all kinds of concern but we have way too many children in this community who are not served with health care and to be able to have basic health care needs dental needs vision needs that's why we have a school nursing program to be able to do that we have the mobile donn who comes in we need to assist these families because if you're not if your basic needs are met you're not going to be able to learn the levels of learning we want individuals to be able to do so that's just a few examples i hope you took something from that off the top the fact that you're superintendent the fact that you're superintendent is speaking international business attraction the global economy is positioning this community well for the for the future you know thanks for doing this that's wonderful and hope colleges at the table with the international student retention and and the international relations commission and this this community has had the right direction definitely and we have one more young lady in line how we need to recognize when when we have a problem with racism i moved here from flint in one thousand nine hundred ninety three and i was not aware that i was actually exhibiting racism to my children every time a children come home from school the first thing they'll talk about is the new france that they made and i will say what color are they i will ask them that every day not realizing what i was actually saying and doing and one day my nine year olds the mommy why do you always ask me that and i think it's very important to recognize and fix the problem you got to recognize that is a problem in people who have problems with it and address it if it's within ourselves that want to thank you so much for doing that you know allowing our children to learn from our mistakes the second thing i want to say briefly is i started well our nation started a workshop is called the power to be fair to workshop where we take african american children and our children and basically teach them about african american history and and just to be about culture or about our culture whatever and when we wanted to the high schools to sign up we let them know that this is in the money race because sign up for this program is basically going to teach you about african american culture and history and it was astonishing that ninety percent of the children to find white children and i said well if we do a play about  you're the fact that the children were interested in learning about african american culture and our history shows that there are they are being taught something positive at home you know by some of the parents i do thank you when your homework assignment tonight is to google juneteenth right all right ok and phil you're going to close us out yeah when i was thinking of preparing my speech on history and some of the causes of h r t and then i got nervous and forgot to give the speech but a neighbor of mine the former mayor and i asked if he could think of any of the situation issues but he wrote me a letter and i would like to read it out of respect at which the effort  thoughts on the changing faces of holland from phil tan a former mayor in the early one nine hundred seventy s when i was growing up in holland and went to one of the most ethnically culturally diverse schools in the city washington elementary  i was introduced to such exotic food as tacos and had a couple of friends who were hispanic in the late late ninety eight nine hundred eighty s when i was mayor the first hispanic with elected t city council from the second ward in the middle of which washington school sits when a different councilman maybe casual read racist remark at meeting we were all left we were left all taught a valuable lesson and very public lesson hall and was changing but attitudes were not keeping pace today my son goes to school in holland holland west though we still live in the greater washington elementary neighborhood and i am pleased to see the diversity of his friends far exceeds what i had at his age holland was changed has changed significantly in just one generation one might even say it's caught up with the namesake in ethnic cultural diversity like the rest of our nation we're increasingly diverse we should celebrate all that we have achieved all that we've been able to do together and then we should double our efforts to not only welcome all people but also ensure that everyone is treated fairly and equally no matter who they are because despite our commitment our efforts and our stride colon attitudes still do not keep pace with the reality institutional racism is only beginning to be a great addressed and equality for many marines a distant dream i would be thrilled if that dream could come to fruition by the time my son's children head off to school on  thank you very much for coming out tonight this is supposed to i saw it a clock and it's less than a forty five minute forty two minutes longer however you gave us a good sense of the rich cultural diversity inclusion that both exists and we're working toward because we've come a long ways but we have a long ways to go so thank you very much on behalf of the mission department of civil rights as well