good morning thank you for coming out today we have a packed program so my job is to keep it moving so if i seem rushed i am i'm john roberts a member of the board of belmont against racism and on behalf of our many co sponsors i want to welcome everyone to belmont's nineteenth annual martin luther king breakfast i would like to invite dan principal belmont high school i am always encouraging energized by the chardon of so many members of our community i think it is critical that we use this opportunity to come together every year to regroup and recharge ourselves in our mission of continuing dr king's dream i am already that we are able to host this event at belmont high school the education of our youth is critical we are every to attain the goals of racial even reading writing and arithmetic all seem to be so urgent and pressing these days they are not the whole purpose behind the existence of our schools and the words of dr king himself we must remember that intelligence is not enough intelligence plus character that is the goal of true education here in belmont i believe that on a daily basis we are attempting to curry impostor character is a key interpol part of the work that we do and the belmont public schools students not only learn the three r s of reading writing and arithmetic but also the core of our responsibility i believe that it is important for our children to understand that because they have been afforded a great deal in this world they are responsible for returning the favor and giving back to society i also believe that this message is getting through belmont high school students annually amass an amazing number of community service hours that borat see the forty hour graduation requirement our students can be home giving of themselves to work and soup kitchens hospitals homeless and homeless shelters and nursing homes our students can also be working in our elementary schools giving them the opportunity to impart the responsibility of service to the next generation we gather here this morning i am thankful for the opportunity to slow down for a few hours and reflect on all of our accomplishments and remember that there is so much work still to be done as i observe my students  at belmont high school i am confident that we are on the right path thank you and at this time i would like to introduce the bishop ryan thompson from the church of jesus christ of latter day saints thank you our father who art in heaven as citizens of this community we gather together to express our feelings today for our precious freedoms and to remember those devoted in courageous leaders in our nation's history such as the reverend martin luther king jr who lived and died for the freedoms and the beliefs they hold dear we express our gratitude for the privilege we have of living in this great nation with its rights to worship and to express ourselves freely we ask the father to bless the leaders of our nation and of our local communities we ask either please protect them and to guide them toward decisions that will bless and protect our citizens while also preserving our freedoms we prayed to the father for the young people of our community in our congregation assay to guide them toward correct choices in their lives we se to help them recognize and shun the evil influences we ask you to bless them to be disposed toward service toward integrity and toward those principles of life that will bring them success and also happiness we ask the father to protect our children please protect them against violence against hatred against evil influences that trouble our society we press specially father for those children in families who've been affected in recent weeks by by the next including the families and the loved ones of those blasted children in school workers in newton connecticut we ask you to please comfort each of them and strengthen them we are indeed grateful into the dear father for our abundant blessings  recognize these blessings as being from my prophet in hand and strive to maintain a spirit of worship and gratitude in our lives each and every day we dedicate this day of remembrance for him to be and do so in the holy name thank you dan and thank you bishop bryant for your words of welcome and thoughtful invocation belmont against racism was founded almost twenty years ago to help recognized understand and counter racism following the march for a think globally act locally many of you have been longtime supporters of bars work belmont has benefited from that support we thank you and welcome new members this breakfast in celebration of dr king's legacy has become an integral part of our community and would not be possible without the active support of so many individuals and organizations in town please take a moment to look at your programs and see how many different community organizations are sponsors of this event we thank our sponsors for their active and continued support over many years and because dan touched everyone in this community so please keep his family and dan in your prayers and we thank him for all his support over the years we have a number public officials here with us today and we appreciate their support could you please stand as i call your names but please hold your applause until the end first i would like to recognize state sen brown's burger and our state rep dave rogers i believe he's here yes great we also thank members of the board of selectmen for joining us today andy rojas i believe markopolos here and ralph jones yes great and our superintendent tom kingston all belmont school principals in attendance so please all stay out thank you for your steadfast support of the belmont program of good belmont and we'd also like to welcome members of the school committee including chair lori graham and ask them to stand as as i call the names richard mclaughlin chief of police captain peter her and a few i miss someone i sincerely apologize the active involvement of our town officials supporting this breakfast and carrying its message throughout the year is so important to making belmont a welcoming community so please salute our town officials with your applause thank you for being with us to rented extra tables for us thank you mr ass mr scenario will be leading the children's activities and susan had nourished our daycare coordinator kids spaces once again providing toys for the daycare program which preston volunteers his time every year to handle it just kicks and sound system which is all in order thank you rich for giving us up so much of your weekend to doing such a wonderful job each year jack lyons in the school custodial staff are always there to help many of today's servers and volunteers are members of the belmont team club our high schools community service club led by alice mark mellman cough who deserves a special mention for coordinating all the high school volunteers every year and we bank th benedictus and our american sign language interpreter interpreters here with support from the disability access commission and i apologize if i mispronounced any names a few necessarily children to head out their exes to the building for the main do worse and emergency exit back here on the table by the kitchen door you can find some decaf coffee and tea there will be people coming through to see if you need refills or regular coffee you may have noted that we minimized plastic this year with paper to paper table covers so please recycle our forks at the end don't throw the forks out resident dr your brown of our supporter and president of berkeley she was awarded best gospel artist of two thousand and nine best r and b finalist two thousand and nine best female r and b artist of two thousand and eight and two thousand and seven by the new england urban music awards and she is critically acclaimed for range diversity and prolific music musicianship a graduate and now faculty at the berklee college of music  internationally certified in music and education she won showtime at the apollo three times and has recorded vocals for internationally acclaimed artists michelle has sung the national anthem for the new england patriots the boston red sox the new england revolution and the boston celtics she has starred in hip plays such as cinderella sister girl another moment in black history and how will you get in a flat and she will be accompanied by mitch henry so we bank michel so now i have five minutes as we ask the children to head out to see mr somare those who are six to ten who wish to join the activities go to the lobby now and follow the high school in tears to the upper g m and children under six should be taken by a parent to the child care room across the hallway if they wish to join childcare so we'll have five minutes take a  break and share some fellowship say hello to friends and in the spirit of community please reach out to someone you do not know and say good morning this is a great time to meet and greet each other and if you so good morning my name's john robotham and i'm a member of the belmont board against belmont against racism board of directors and i will be moderating the next segment of our program and it's a panel discussion on the past present and future of the meth coke program we are really fortunate today to have such a wide range of perspectives represented on our panel will start with a system wide perspective from met co executive director sheen mcquire and there is no one more knowledgeable about belmont's met coke program than our own director and w and finally we are very grateful to have for recent medical graduates who are fit to reflect on their own experiences in the metro program now to make sure we stay on schedule and give a ample opportunity for you our audience to participate i may step in the times and ask others to offer their thoughts and opinions so to the panelists and audience i apologize in advance if i may appear to be putting new a little bit short on your remarks but i'll try to be judicious about this while respecting everyone's time so without further ado let me ask belmont medco director diane wiltshire to provide a few opening remarks and introduce our featured speaker diane thank you john good morning i had thought about my history with gene mcguire a great deal when i remembered that jr but his university the first time i ever heard of gene apply as she was on television she was she was a member of the elected boston school committee and the court ordered busing had just gone into effect and it reminded me her life being threatened constantly reminded me how much sacrifice has taken place in order for united states citizens to obtain an education she why of was dynamic she was under close security every day so where her entire family to protect the rights of children to get an education i was so blessed ten fifteen years later when i was hired by the mint go program in brookline but now i got to work with this woman and i have learned so much about not only our history of obtaining an education in the  but then how do we carry out the dream of dr king every day lives to make sure that children have equal access to education this was so important for me to introduce jean this morning and i know you will enjoy particular if you get a lot of kids until a parsonage that has two bedrooms and you get a kid so you all sleep and beds and if you have known kids they give you this big barn to eat on your mind silly little salary that you get from the plate that goes around now you have  a salary that's guaranteed by the diocese but when dad was a an opposable minister it was you had to heat the church and do everything with the money that came in on the play on sunday so we were creative but what we always had was access to the local public library and my father would take us to the store library that can't live very and because he was a clergyman he had courage of his privileges and usually you can only get two books so he can get all the kids so we would lord of the trunk of the car with all these books and because this was before television and there was only one radio in the house you got your introduction to the world at large through the but i find that the one thing about the medco program that's so interesting is it forces people to interact in ways that they wouldn't if the children didn't get off the bus every day and you wonder about boston and the seattle metropolitan areas which are the most racially segregated housing areas in the united states and how much of an impact matt colie have had upon the disk different systems housing transportation education that surround them some of the principals in boston public schools now on that go graduates many of our graduates our university professors around the country there are almost twelve thousand kids who went through mexico and about ten who graduate some leave from latin schools some parents moved around all what can go something like that or they leave the state but most of our students get a very good education and of course because they come out of the city every day on the bus they get a perspective of a metropolitan area that most young people don't hear one day my brother michael who lives here in belmont and who's a flight instructor in part of this life took us up in his plane early in the morning so we could see the traffic medical students growing up on these really empty highways and then these traffic jams are coming into boston so that's why medical works where everybody is coming in here to work we're going out where they live and when they go home and night we're coming back home so it's it's been interesting patent but the failure here is what she thought because we started out of the fair housing group and boston that made it freedom house that we would have integrated housing within ten years now this is a nine hundred sixty six with mexico began well we're still waiting for it and that's the  more fun and they find out we can spell and we find out they can all play basketball so there are some other learnings socially emotionally intellectually that go on with what we have to worry day educating the children of belmont about the real world and if this doesn't let us so much a color of the background of the children that you're teaching what really matters is the caliber of your teaching staff because a lot of us are who we are because of the teachers we have i can remember the names of almost all the teachers i ever had and we moved a lot i remember them all because before television they were the people outside of your parents who you saw every day and they made a difference in your lives and i'm certain if they still  medical program would require what we call affirmative action in the hiring of staff from customs bus drivers right up to superintendents and principals we have one african american superintendent in lincoln he later went to i think cleveland cincinatti to be a superintendent but i'll let him that in an area that has fifty four colleges and universities we haven't changed on hiring practices except where judge garrity forced the boston school system to hire twenty five percent of its teaching and administrative staff to be people of color we need to address what that means because every year graduates that you should be going to come back and work in the belmont school system some day i'm certain that you have local residents who sometimes come out here to teach or to work in some capacity in groom the generation of young people to expect to work together to learn together to discover things together to challenge the world together because that's how you really grow strong to take that class of seniors and juniors and i don't know what you call it here but some towns when i was a kid have the future teachers of america clubs because no kids want to teach we don't want to be a teacher we want to be  an astronaut or a doctor you don't hear kids have grandiose ideas of what it takes to be an adult in the real world and have to study like they don't want to do while they're in high school but there's a possibility if you groom and you work at inviting students to do some what they call they have students in brookline who come in and work and there's a kindergarten about high school and the students go in there and a lot of them decide they want to be teachers of young children my brother who's here in belmont taught first grade in the cambridge school system even though he's an electronic engineer his wife was a teacher and she sucked at him into  a big big pay drop believe me but it's it's you're all growing home you'd like to have to be a part of your faculty and that includes custody of his bus drivers the people who  libraries those who buy your books everybody who's a part of what it takes to make a morning school system successful you need to integrate it it was hard enough that when i first started education isas zimmerman was the only woman superintendent in massachusetts that was in the game to medical in seventy three she was the only woman i know who was a superintendent massachusetts course now we are  and tear it apart but somebody has to be a leader like martin luther king was in have to remember you don't do anything by yourself you're in the mills you're or you're a part of a long line of people that not only all persuasions in all colors and all incomes who wanted change in america and it was a part of the kind of continuum that went on with all the people who were fascinated like lincoln people were shot at out front it isn't just in wars the wars where the guns are out in the open but the worst that take place when you want to change society and that's what schools about you study and learn how to get the language and the ideas and the current chairman the encouragement of your teachers that when you get out there you can change this earth to better place to a better place for us to be  always give credit to all the people who made me what i am my parents my church the public library where i had all we will not talk about overd books and fines in my house my daughter never returned books on time the people in the libraries the people in the neighborhood centers where we would go and play they were neighborhood houses have block parties during world war two and everybody would come in damn they close the street off they will do that anymore i don't think but there were times when we all got together during world war two where we celebrated each other supporting our troops overseas all of us in school used to knit little afghans to send to the u s so when we all of the boys we come together and send them out and we collected socks and soaps and we had he was sold package but now many wars later we're still educating people hopefully to make this world a kind of place that martin luther king dreamed about and work toward thank you for inviting me playing with the white kids across the street until their parents moved away and then he was told he couldn't play with them and again and in the end it's mostly around the family together what made him what he was his strong family and his support in his father's tour it's a wonderful book to get for your children to celebrate it was something that's more permanent my brother martin a sister remembers growing up with the reverend dr martin luther king by kristin ting farris in its only six dollars at borders so we'll have a chance to hear a little more from jean and diane when we move to the panel portion of the discussion thank you very much jane scurry so what we'd like to do now is to  introduce the panel members and we're going to have our belmont medco alumni come up and i'm going to ask each one in turn to introduce him or her self and describe one or two things that they remember most about being a map coast student and going to ask them if they can just come up one after the other and when they're done they can take a seat at the table and then when we're all done well ask diane  also come up and then we can have our panel discussion and so what i'm going to do now is we're going to ask them to just commute this podium and then have a seat when they're done as you wish for morning first off i want to say that i'm one of the lucky ones i actually had a chance to have june roberts as my wholesale it she was like another mother to me you know if i got in me a very diverse person with the ability to go out into the world and interact anybody not just people of my race my color but anybody when i want to interview they asked me what was the biggest challenge i face growing up and i said well i came from the medical program so i really faced a challenge that you know being a younger kid you know a little boy getting on a bus in a morning having a come out to beaumont at my day would start a five o'clock in the talk to her i feel like i just talked to her yesterday you know it's like it never skips a beat so if there are any other younger medical students in here just take the time to cherish what you know life right now is all gold connections and you're going to need to add these connections later on in order to develop i just want to thank everybody again i want think the town of belmont for allowing me to come back years later to talk about my experience and what i so in july asked me to come back and speak i was like yeah course i do i just walked in the school last night but i come back and give back i think a lot of things that marcus said are definitely true i think a couple of my most transportation at six thirty in the morning every day coming back at five six seven i played three sports here too so i know what it's like having those long days and i think probably one of my other favorite memories is i think i think the seventy the seventy or seventy five is the bus that drops the public's i mean the boston kids are in front of you and there's a long strip that you have to walk up so usually you have to leave it like two forty five to get memorable moments probably like the running to knowing that in the morning every single minute comes you have to have the first train at six o'clock to get to school and i probably got to school on time belmont on the map in boston so that's something that we were extremely proud of people used to say where who where you guys going and after we came out and we have to really think the school was supporting us because initially it wasn't recognizes or it would have to go out and play golf with everybody else fight with the police in their business and that wasn't working we really really fought hard and made that somewhat of a business plan that was one of our current business plans the right approach the school they supported us all the way and from there it was just an extra something just to put on the we were here academically we were here socially we were here in every sense like the kids come here from five in the morning so at night we don't have a school bus like a lot of the high school students so public transportation including their employees dealing with us and we dealing with well all of our the shaping our lives i feel like i can go anywhere right now and be fine i can go to utah i could go to california i go to spain i feel comfortable dealing with different races different ethnicities different age groups just because of the fact that you were thrown into that situation every day of your life sink or swim it was which made of it so if you were a student like myself i was in student government class secretary twice u ncontested i'm proud of that too but those are the things i could put on my resume my college application that opened doors those were things that i could speak on paper before anybody saw my face or heard my big mouth and then the rest was just you know confirmation that i came from somewhere where i was challenged early and th what i'd like to do now is to ask both diane and sheen if you can come up and join us on the panel and a quick round of applause while we're waiting for everyone we will be focusing this medco discussion on lessons learned what works well and what should be improved and with the past is prologue we'll be encouraging our panelists to help us formulate a vision of what medco can be at its best and as they share their hopes and dreams for the future for its future so what i'm going to do is start with a few questions myself and then i'm going to invite audience members to join in if you want to ask a question of our panelists just please raise your hand and i'll come and bring the microphone to you and that way everyone will be able to hear so just to start off i thought i would ask gene one or two questions first i got to get myself a little organized so gene i'm can you point to some specifics where medico has achieved or even exceeded its original vision and also maybe a few places where it may have fallen short and what improvements would you like to see on the record program with an answer to the last question what i'd like to see improved funding this is up front money makes a big difference not only for the transportation which is about a third of the cost but the cost of just running the program this the mountain runs the medical office in town we have we keep a waiting list down now to about ten thousand people for the two hundred sixty five seniors that w be place every year we have to prepare the parents on the waiting list for what they might face when they come into mexico or a lot of them are alumni we try not to take more than fifty percent of the people on the waiting lists who are already have had members of their family in the program so that you always have new people and we have a percentage of students who have english not  their first language you know your english language learners and that becomes a problem because only certain school systems have the support system say like new we should have framingham but we drop them because they're twenty five percent latino already we we like to see what started that call in the first place eliminate us and that is the work that the fair housing in the league of women voters were doing back in the sixt to integrate naturally our neighborhoods our towns our state you know eventually all the parts of the country where that doesn't really happen you know outside of the lantern it's quite different from going into and friendships that come food programs like medical it's very interesting because i listen to still lose get on that bus early and come back late not that many of our students tend to live in the suburbs here they do in other places they live in colorado and she said california they live everywhere but in the suburbs of massachusetts most people seem to move to places like grokked where housing is affordable and where there's a maybe more of a supportive neighborhood but that's something everyone can work on i lived in a town where we've been the only african american family and i never paid much attention to it because we will good  school that was not a failure was not an option in our house you get a cab a's and b s you report car you would be in trouble that was just a given and it was before television you know and i have to tell you what i raised my kids without a television set  there weren't any black people on television who really really weren't that many women are dagmar and that was not my ideal of womanhood so i raised my kids without that sort of the images that they saw for the world were what was around them in their family but it was television is a marvelous tool now if you use it wisely a radio listener because i drive a lot and i turn on the car radio so i'm used to that and tapes but i think the interaction real people with each other is what makes the real difference in this program as are still those former students said you get comfortable you meet new situations and you don't even bat an eye because it's something that you've already experience and you by independent studies to be a very very successful program and yeah it does struggle almost every single year in order to get funding from the legislature and i was wondering could personally comment on that this is martin luther king day and the things that he faced the issues that revolve around the race certain class are still with us and gender those are challenges that we all have to face and issues of we can say ages i'm whether it's very young or very old like me i'll be eighty two this year so i'm beginning to realize what faces you should get although my dad lived to one hundred i have a relative in chicago who's one hundred twelve she stopped working at one hundred seven and she has shoes from the turn of the last century black women like shoes  has and she has hats and she's now retired and one hundred seventy and she's one hundred twelve she lives with her great grand nephew in the suburbs of chicago but in spite of the support that we got originally we still face the issue of the fears that are named in the name that people have about race and class because it's not just race it's class also it isn't this isn't money his people have money but when i go to towns i get i get the monographs every year from massachusetts and i turn to the when i go out to a school committee meeting or a town meeting i look at the mormon graph and look at the figures hobby males how many females what the income ranges how many african americans have at their lapin knows how many asians and then i kind of know what i'm faced with and i look ten years i kept them from one thousand nine hundred on used to be free by the state but now you're buying and i go look and see what the changes from sa nineteen ninety or two thousand to now and gives you the decades kind of roll by and you'll begin to see the creep call and others who are starting to move into some towns they hasn't changed over here you get to dover and when you get down to west where the trees get tall make it's dark has got lots of tall a ridge you know new england trees that must have been there with the pilgrims and the indians but when you go out you can see where realtors have made a change now westwood is right next to west roxbury there's not many other people of color live and they are sometimes it has to do with your fair housing groups the illegal women voters or you know junior chamber of commerce somebody in the town has an initiative so a lot of it's up to public action and enlightenment and work it's a lot of work and sometimes it's not always comfortable answer this question i think i don't see any of us being terribly shy so far so speak up we're wondering you know what was it really like to be a boston student coming to a suburban school you know what were what did what was easy what was difficult know i guess you know you didn't really realize what the difficulties were and so you got older and i can you were younger child when i was younger i really kind of just makes a mangled i didn't really see color but then once i started in middle school and then high school then you start to realize like wow you're really surrounded and you know there's only like a handful of you know people that look like you or your minorities so you know i think all of us here we did bring a pretty good job of adjusting to it because we're here today able to speak to you about it i mean it's it's like i said this challenge that we so called a parable i think we are going off and doing our own from day one like i said i was here first grade on to twelve and i was a lot down my children's first experience as seeing an african american around speaking to anything and so i get into first grade i had beads in my hand my mother always kept as you can tell me if we had a million in the bank oh i dollar in the bank we always left my mom we always went up to carried me into the middle school you have a backpack three times the size of anybody in boston public school everybody is like what is wrong with you did you rob the library or something no this was my homework load my mom took her back out to be that having i'm worried about her spine later again these are things that to some of us they were nothing that's what you were used to but then when you got back home after that time you'd realize smack ok that's not what everyone else is going to i'm going to do something different those are the things that prepares you for life later you get to a situation in college maybe you don't have funding but this may be needed that i made very resourceful but it also made you patient and made you more apt to absorb before you analyze the situation is happening a lot of patience and critical thinking but i didn't know i was different and because the town was honest about that whether it was up front or by mistake we got to deal with those issues and as i got to middle school things easier to get to high school so piece of cake i mean you get into college you're golden but you have to deal with those things we were different some of us and we were different we were treated different but when you honestly face those things you can get past those well i just going off to everyone i said i actually spent kindergarten to twelfth grade in mexico so i think for me kind of realizing a different is when you're younger you don't really realize that you you can just get on the bus and you know if you're going to i never had to explain this to anyone else that you know but i mean it teaches you to grow so i think it's like little things like that it's a little different to the psych noticing that a lot of houses have warrants or like there's a lot of trees in this neighborhood  thanks very much those are great answers so let me open this up now for some audience questions why so that's definitely one of the largest parts of mexico i feel like we all grew up with friends that either came into the program a little later than us for whatever reason they came in at the same time but for whatever reason they just couldn't hack to answer your question for my opinion i think it just has to do with the support system you have a home versus the support system you have in the school or the area you go to second whether that's friends family  person like june who can open up her house to you and then third i think is your mindset so it's a commitment like i said i've played sports all throughout my whole time so there were times when there was no way and there was no way because i wasn't going to get on public transportation so my mom had to get off work and come out like you have an eight thirty nine o'clock seven o'clock you know and bring you home and it's things like that it the kids we don't really have that kind of support system at home or someone's house or they can just go to and wait until they have a basketball practice or something or a musical show after that's what kind of makes it a walk hard medical counselor as well as with my teachers to have time to deal with those things they would have come a little bit into my work as well as my home i because i have the open communication at i can take my time when i ha situations at school that will bother me or teachers and i can explain them to my mother we can house those out and then come to an agreement and then take that and level of like teacher with open communication to the school as well as the school do that and the other direction when they don't have level children we are so much more aware of what we're dealing with than what we're given credit for a lot of time to sheltered from situations because we're too young to do you know if you do it in a healthy manner that that you can take from that job what they really need it will help both sides and that way you can get that child through twelfth grade we had a lot of kids come in high school the culture shock was it was meticulous but that i would not want to experience i came across that first grade the challenges with that were different again communication expectations but both sides need to come to hold the common family of agreement as to what they want the child and then communicate that and stand firm with that with that child in the child rise to your expectation these it is a struggle when a student feels as though they are not they will be the only african american in the class  and that takes staff that's a staff who are aware of the bass and who will console and guide them with the support of their their team their team of teachers their guidance counselor their administrator their medical staff person and to address what jean talked about before in terms of one of the challenges is the funding because in fact there should be those students there should be social workers and counselors and they should be academic staff one thing i've noticed with the medical program is when there are the medical program they subsequently become faculty and staff in the school district we have former medical staff members who have become principals assistant principals teachers in the district and that really makes a huge difference in the diversity that of the teaching staff the guidance staff and the administrative staff coaches occasionally we get caught and we have to leave unfortunately to go to mansfield jane can you take one more question big conference but we would get the students together and we have a club we had dances every two weeks i had to have ten parents chaperone was only a block and i stopped it when the cities not just here but everywhere but basically we always developed a social interaction city and suburbs my host families son literally lived in roxbury and went back to us to brookline on the medical bus his mother and father were lawyers they didn't cook and so chris stayed with us a lot in his mother would send his dirty laundry in the kids wore similar clothes because we had a dry but i think it's a two way thing and you have to work on integration whether it's by gender  and the same thing holds happens here that we now have more and more that go students and honors and a p classes so that they are not alone but that takes a substantial amount of conscientious work working out from elementary to middle school into high school so that they're really coming in prepared to go into honors level course to go into a p level courses so we do we have about right now i would say over half of our students are at least carrying an honors level course if not more but that kate through twelve i'm the only staff person here the medical staff of belmont used to be eight to ten staff i mean it so that's why  we had a black student we have a black student movement in schools that sometimes blossoms when they have a conference together remember they live often in neighborhoods near each other they go to different schools  mexico it's like if you have children go to brown and nichols on noble in the green or milton academy they live all over the place you live in concord and they all get together they're part of that school you don't necessarily live with the kids the kids go to school with you don't mess with live on your street so school is a kind of a melting pot of kids from a lot of different backgrounds and i think that's the richness of the program but we do try to give in each town students support to the kids i wish we had more money so we could do the dances were great they were great everybody got respectful of time and i want to be respectful doing driver's licenses she doesn't have to to  i'm glad we've got you lot here now specific attention i my first teaching job was in north carolina in one thousand nine hundred sixty five which i don't know if you know was the first year of federal desegregation i taught in a little probably my biggest downfall where i just was just ready to give up is you know when i found out that i had some type of a learning disability where i wasn't processing information do near and if i can face these challenges i wouldn't be where i'm at a day you know so just that courage and the support that i got from them that just kept pushing me on and just didn't let me quit and i wasn't able to quit in life you know your mom saying this or going you know you chinese hit your mom or you know your dad oh those words kind of hurt a lot because you're still trying to find out who you are and i definitely think that was the hardest part to deal with  i think for me i think it made the turning point was right around where i was hidden people really hurt my personal experience i kind of i got i had two completely different worlds so i spent a lot of time in boston whether i was playing sports i had like a lot of friends and all our kids a lot of people i grew up with a must read around my neighborhood and then i also had the same thing about mine i had a lot of friends i could go to their house pretty much the same situation so for me i felt like a lot of time i was juggling two completely different worlds and that's all well and good when you're younger because it's easy but i think for kids especially as as a young man trying to find his own identity when i probably thirteen fourteen you start seeing your friends and wonder where you are because you're not around as much you're not hanging out you're not there all day you're not there after school you're not going to some sort of pizza shop or whatever you know i mean so i think for me it was kind of hard so that my situation was different than all the kids are grew up with and lived around and looked like them so i couldn't be around hanging out with them all the time i couldn't be there all the time and i think the first fifteen fourteen fifteen are all that's hard that's hard to grasp that your best friends that you grown up with all the time are kind of going off and doing their own thing they're forming their own kind of groups of friends and in it's a maturing process because you can't just sit back and in read about it you have to be mature and do the same thing in your direction so i think for me the hardest part was are a lot of times i'll wake up and wonder why i couldn't walk to school down the street or i couldn't go to my friend's house right after school or things like that that me really made me kind of question if i really wanted to be a makeover a lot of the life if they're not really going to support you to do something like that you know we need to be in your life so i think it's i think it was a good process but it was hard it was definitely hard trying to get through that so i say that was probably the biggest thing for me years everybody becoming some people less actually active some people are some people are engaged in their schoolwork some people aren't some people want to be captains of teams some people just want to get in the morning get back out in the evening in it's so hard to find out figure out where you fall in that and some of us is that you have to create your own age which is even harder i was social from day one and i was and have been about just being social but then no one will want to stay this level of social and this hou to the elementary school and mental i got to be cool with those kids taken all that time when in school work militantly had to buckle down home in school i don't always make that decision i watched another friend of mine who came in ninth grade they have social challenges that they don't need to use and how can you help them if you don't know what's going on with them but that kid who like she said was in the corner crying with that kid who just didn't do good on their last test or their teachers find it hard to communicate with them or they're coming to one christian writer who's in the fifth grade my question is first of all i'd like to thank you for coming out and sharing your experience with us christian as i said is in the fifth grade right the connections with the belmont families out here so that way if you're a son desires baseboards you don't have to worry about him taking the bus or the train or ten o'clock at night you know where you can go stay with the family that you trust and you know you can leave him there now we have to worry about anything happening you know i think that's one of the big things you know all of us kind of added we were able to fall back on a family so we didn't have to go home late late at night or one of our parents could come pick us up but it's  know it's just but you know i stayed warm and i didn't get sick so you know kid i just think i don't think it's all bad that he's doubling to be in for some adventures you know that i learned the whole train just system like the back of my hand so for now for me to travel i mean i have my own car now but sometimes i just like taking the t just because i know how to you know and i'm just like i would she said there's going to be certain situations he's going to be he's going to want to be aware of you know sometimes clashing with some of the boston public school kids on the different parts of the train and things like that and just kind with him at certain times ok what train station are you going to be at least i can meet you here are you going to be at this bus stop at a certain time just kind of keeping tabs because it's a big city so i think after school transportation what a perfect segue to the next section of our discussion and so let's give a really great round  who has been our president mubarak now for a few years and you know it's welcomed them probably one of the oldest on the eyes if not the oldest one here and haven't heard just stories and lived in many of those experiences it was very touching to know that you all become great individuals who have aspired to be to do and bring greatness into other people's lives so thank you and it was a great honor to hear gene back then was miss mcguire because he was a household name at my house quite regularly so it was just great but i'm going to move on today we gather to celebrate the legacy of dr martin luther king we continue to do this through our m l k breakfast that has been in existence for nineteen years this practice allows the boston about mark community to become unified having this opportunity for this unification reminds us how dr king's work is still and center just it is up to us to continue to carry on his work in many ways one of those ways is through your continuous the poor to the belmont medical program which benefits all of our children whether they live in boston or bellmawr the medical support by and has been a true blessing to me as a medical parent it continues to cover the cost of transportation for high school students like my daughter who remains after school for activities or it's an academic assistance this past year it has also helped get medical students to occur to a career fair and use conference it allowed teachers to get training on issues of diversity and discrimination the fine also contributed and providing an opportunity for a great student to take a class trip to the boston black heritage trail the high school rugby team also received help and funding their trip to spain which consisted of children of different ethnicities none of this would have been possible without  in generosity which we lying on the china i'm here to ask for your specific help in two directions on your table you'll find an organization the m l k breakfast has been very successful over many years but that does not mean that it should always continue in the same format or under the same sponsorship there are only a few of us on the bar board and we recognize it is time for some fresh ideas and new energy there may be better ways to honor dr king and his legacy and their baby other individuals and organizations in town to motivate motivated to carry this forward it is important to hear from you before making any decisions so please take a moment to fill out the brief survey and contact us if you would like to take a more active role in the future planning process and now i do encourage you to make a contribution to the belmont support fund to help us carry on the mission and i  you we're always committed to closing via love and to get you out of here thank you for being here with us now we have darlene when many of you have heard in the past and james early in her accompanist darlene is a former wel three you heard her daughter this this morning she's a songwriter and recording artist singing gospel since the age of three darlene has enjoyed a highly successful career which is included to international tour and featured appearances with numerous renowned artists over the years she has appeared with artists which include leontyne price at symphony hall others at heinz oratory the fleet  has also done numerous workshops television and radio commercials and was a featured soloist for the two fifty voice mystic corps out for three consecutive years recently she completed a much anticipated so alum album called the gift of song so darlene and james who is a graduate of the new england conservatory of music in middle school math teacher for thirty five years so we welcome them for our two songs in the end she darlene will close with a song that we all participate in thank  you everybody doing so good to be back so good to see that all the familiar faces i see this i am a proud proud proud former support and for what you've done my daughter to this day is still friends with her host family and i am so happy and proud about that and i just i thank you guys for all that you've done i have a fourteen year old who up until this year he was a student in the he was in the cherry so i do thank you guys so we've been around for a long time and i'm hoping to keep this to gether thank you june in the committee for always asking me to come back worship song that i wrote so i hope you guys like it it's a simple song and when i sing it you'll kind of put yourself in a specific place it's like my favorite place in the world to be on the it i said it's a good thing he's still young enough to enjoy going to believe me thirty five years teaching middle school but he's a great teacher a great musician and a keeps me on my toes thank you darlene endgames so now we're getting to the end a few minutes late but before our final benediction i'd like to first encourage anyone with a few minutes to stay to help with the end with a quick cleanup i don't like to thank the members of the board of directors of belmont against racism they don't need your applause they need your checks for the meco find and and your participation join us we have great monthly meetings we'd love to have more people joining us  want to thank the girls basketball team i heard a rumor they were here i heard the town administrator our new town administrator david callas here principal dan richardson the entire belmont high school staff thank you our ho wonderful relationships with and to annette with michael's mother will most on morale when you're sitting at a meeting talk to someone invite them to your homes sometimes it's easier for parents to invite than for the kids to invite but but really encourage the invitations because it's a wonderful relationship antoinette's here today you know just just broke you know i'm just so proud of these kids when i hear them speaking and thanks to all of you for supporting this breakfast and for coming out now i'd like to invite reverend mike clark from the belmont bordertown united methodist church to close our back breakfast so with a benediction and after darlene will meet us often will lead us all and one final song thank you before we take leave of one another let's reconnect for a moment with the source of all that's good in our lives and in the life of the world gracious and loving god he was only thirty nine he was only thirty nine and now forty five years on we admit with each passing year our memories of him grow dimmer and we need your help god to keep them fresh and clear he was a person of faith he was a person of vision he was a person of courage who struggled mightily against war who w faithfully against injustice and stood always right to the end with the poor we had middle god there with each passing year our world seems to grow more complex and the challenges sometimes threaten to overwhelm us and we need your help oh god let us experience something of his clarity in seeing what must be done and his courage in tackling the most difficult issues that confront us we admit that with each passing year we are tempted to address only the things that are easily within our reach and we need your help that we might go forth from this place today strengthened and renewed commitment and encouraged knowing that while the road it may be rocky the company will be good and it is your spirit that will move us forward  i think we're going to do first one and verse three that's all we have time for everybody know the battle of the battle of battle