 Hi, good evening everyone and welcome to the first discussion of our community conversation series racism and reforms which is being held by the town of Arlington and co-sponsored by the Arlington Human Rights Commission. Tonight's panel discussion will be centered around calling out the issues and opportunity for town leadership to address community concerns and provide insight into how the town is responding and what initiatives we have already been in place and how we can work together moving forward to address racial equity as a community. I'm Jillian Harvey, the town of Arlington's first diversity equity and inclusion coordinator, and I'm one of your moderators for tonight. Working with me in co-moderating is Alessa Michelle, who is a diversity equity and inclusion community consultant and founder of Powerful Pathways. I do want to say we have received an overwhelming response from the community, which is wonderful. And although tonight we won't be able to get to all of the questions that were submitted, they will be dispersed and address in the additional components of the series of conversations. I will also be working on a document that will later be shared to address those questions as well. So we're going to get started and just go around to let you know who our panelists are. So we've got Adam, who is Adam Chapter Lane, our town manager. Also with us is Chief Jillian Flaherty of Arlington Police Department. And also with us is Dr. Roderick McNeil Jr., who is the assistant superintendent of the Arlington Public Schools. Okay. And then Alessa is going to start us off with some community ground rules and guidelines. Good evening, everyone. Thank you, Jillian, for that introduction. For those who are not familiar with me, my name is Alessa Michelle, and I am an artist, an urban planner, a policy advocate and an equity and diversity inclusion consultant. I'm the founder of Powerful Pathways, and we have been engaging with the town of Arlington, and I'm very happy to be with you all tonight. I'd like to start by one reminding folks that there were so many really rich questions, but there's only so much time today. So we're not going to get through every question, but folks are going to try to answer as many questions as possible. We also have upcoming sessions in which we'll continue to explore this ongoing issue, because of course as we know, the many topics and discussions that we'd like to get through tonight, we can only go through so much but it's an ongoing issue and it takes constant vigilance to achieve racial justice, and we're all in different stages of learning and growth. To that end, I'd like to also remind everyone that this meeting will be recorded, so it will be posted on the town website and the transcripts will be captured as well. That also being said, we want to just make sure that the process that this process is going to be as smooth as possible. That's obviously going to be very challenging and to try to manage very different opinions and voices, certainly even harder still to do over Zoom. So we're going to start by doing a little bit of ground rules. Our first ground rule is that we have, we all have the responsibility to build and respect each other and build on the strength of diversity of the town provides. We all are making a commitment that we're going to promote diversity and support the opinions of our friends and neighbors. We will engage in polite and constructive and productive dialogue and feedback. We will respectfully agree with the disagree with each other and respectfully agree with each other, but most importantly to respectfully disagree with one another. We ask that unless you are a designated representative of an organization, please take note that your opinions are considered your own. When sharing a question, please be short and to the point. We want to use this moment as also an opportunity to take time for reflection and to take some space to make sure that we're taking into account all the many events that have happened here in the town and around the country. We want to acknowledge those realities. And we also acknowledge that there is a lot of different energies and emotions that have emerged from this process and rightfully so. And so I'm going to invite everyone to take some deep breaths and to again reinforce that this is one of many conversations. So I'm going to take a moment for us to take in a deep breath and out. Thank you. And I'll pass it back to Jill. Great. Thank you. So we're going to start by explaining what's happening around the country. So right now over the course of the last few weeks, we as a community in a country have witnessed a massive shift in conversations on racial justice. This shift is global. And we're going to address aspects of systemic racism that show up in town. So at this point, I'm going to turn it over to Adam to discuss some of those different things and give him an opportunity for us to call out these issues. Thank you very much. Excuse me. Thank you very much, Jill. And good evening everybody. I wish we, I wish we could all be in town hall and another forum tonight, but the fact that we're under this pandemic is just another reason why we're all, you know, frankly under the stress and upset that we're that we're dealing with on multiple fronts right now. So I suppose I want to start by saying, I am even under these circumstances, so pleased that we are now tonight taking this step to open up these community wide conversations. And that tonight is by no means a ticket punch or a one and done tonight is an opening conversation to try to acknowledge and call out the areas that need attention that need reform. We need acknowledgement and start to chart the path forward and also to give us an opportunity to begin listening, because I think we understand in town leadership. And I know I can certainly speak for the select board that we know we have to learn from various viewpoints across the community, most certainly from people of color, and but other viewpoints as well about where we actually are as a community and where we want to be. I'll start by saying by addressing what is clearly to many, if not all interested in issues of race and equity and justice in Arlington, what could be described as the elephant in the room. And that's the matter of Lieutenant Padrini. It's an issue that has been top of mind, top of newspaper fold and topic of conversation in this town for nearly two years. For understandable reason, writings that were despicable racist, and really inexcusable, and I could go on but they were terrible and a dark mark on the Arlington Police Department that they they were published and continue to be today. I don't want to spend more time than is allotted to me to talk about it but for those sort of coming to this conversation now. I do want to take future opportunities to talk and share more about the process we went through and trying to address this Lieutenant Padrini situation. The obvious lack of success in achieving the harmony that we had hoped to achieve via the restorative justice process that we used with Lieutenant Padrini. But I also want to use Lieutenant Padrini matter to hopefully focus a greater number of us on the types of reforms that I hope we can and should start to focus on. And I think in Massachusetts, we have severe limitations from a statutory perspective on how we hold police officers accountable. I think those limitations start in civil service and translate through collective bargaining agreements and into the arbitration process that most police officers in this Commonwealth are afforded. It makes it hard to discipline and even terminate police officers who likely need to be disciplined and potentially terminated. I hope if not tonight in future conversations we can start a dialogue and hopefully an effort of advocacy to talk about these issues with our state lawmakers and our state leaders so that not just in Arlington but statewide we can make real strides and efforts to addressing police accountability. Because I think addressing it is long long long overdue. I think another issue that I know we'll talk about tonight is housing and zoning. You know, obviously, you know, you feel like these are the hot button issues that are talked about in town, even if you're not focusing on race. But if we're going to have a talk about race in Arlington zoning and housing is probably the number one topic we should be looking at. We'll dig into it more as this conversation goes on tonight, but we have to look at why our communities demographics are what they are and educate ourselves is to understand why it didn't happen by accident. We're not a predominantly white community by accident. And that's not to cast blame on people that are here tonight or even some of the, you know, our forebearers in Arlington. But there are things we need to look at and acknowledge and understand that if we want to provide more housing opportunity and an opportunity to diversify Arlington, we need to have a serious talk about zoning. And beyond that, I think we, we need to have more analytical and in depth discussions within our town departments in our town functions and start to look at where there is either instances of broad systemic racism or potentially even just institutional racism within Arlington town government as an institution, whether it be our application forms that unnecessarily ask questions applications for permits and licenses that ask questions regarding citizenship. Or if it's even just the manner in which something is structured or how it's accessed or where it's advertised. These are all things where a weird that we need to look at, and we're prepared to start doing the work to look at these things. So with that, I want to once again say and acknowledge tonight, tonight's a first step. It's not a, this is an opening of a door, not a, not a closing of a door. So we're, we're happy to be here. I'm happy to be here and happy to engage in the dialogue. Thank you, Joe. Thank you. Great. Thank you. And so now we're going to start to get into some of the conversations. So, like I said, we've had an overwhelming amount in response to the conversation series. So we created a word cloud out of all of the questions that will help us visualize the concerns and topics, community members want to hear about. And if you will look at the word cloud, you can see that there are a number of themes that emerged. There's a lot of questions that came up. That has focused on police officers on the town around grace, but also around systems and institutions as well like housing around violence departments at the education and the school department zoning, and all of these things are interconnected. And as we know, there is a deep intersection of issues of race as it relates to access to wealth generation as it relates to access to housing access to job access. And so I think the questions were were right on point that folks have raised. Great. And so I'm looking at this word cloud where also after we asked some questions of our panelists were also going to allow some time towards the end of the session for our panelists to share with you what the town leadership is and has been working on in order to address issues of racial equity. And so we are going to get started with the first question. So this first question is going to be directed towards Adam. So we're going to start with a combination of questions that are centered around housing currently zoning and housing policies have played a significant role in segregating Arlington into a wealthy overwhelmingly white community. Historically this includes blocking the expansion of the red line connection can connecting Arlington to Roxbury. And there's a quote that Arlington devotes 79% of its residential land solely to single family homes. Single family exclusionary zoning was enacted in Arlington and across the US in the 1920s as a tool to keep out people of color and other undesirable groups, which was once explicitly racist zoning, which got overturned by the Supreme Court in 1917. And so the question that's being asked is, how should we change our zoning to make Arlington a more diverse inclusive town and right the historic wrongs. Thank you Jill. So I know I know I'm going to have the feeling that every question could be a whole hour and a half unto itself in discussion but I think the details of zoning proposals are up for debate, you know exactly what the town should do is something that our redevelopment board and our town meeting and other residents should have a voice in. But I think globally speaking, we have to look at expanding housing opportunities. Like, you know, it's not an Arlington specific issue, almost every suburb in the greater Boston region has what planners and otherwise, you know, zoning experts would describe as very restrictive zoning. Very hard to rebuild a home very hard to build new homes very very hard to build apartment buildings, based on so. So finding the right way to expand housing opportunities, I think is an imperative for Arlington. The challenge is that the way the market works right now, you have to find a way to build market rate units to then generate affordable units, so that you are actually creating housing opportunities for all. That's where the rub often comes in that people say well I don't want to build more luxury units for people that's not that's not going to increase our diversity or meet our goals of maintaining a balance of socio economic backgrounds in Arlington, but the economic reality is you have to find a way to expand housing opportunities. One thing that I have been an advocate for as I know the Metro mayors coalition which is 15 cities and towns in the Metro Boston region has been an advocate for is the housing choice bill. It's a bill that would reduce the quantum of vote that's necessary to approve zoning changes in cities and towns so instead of requiring a two thirds vote, you'd only require majority vote. I think that's a starting point for people in Arlington to start thinking about that. So that when zoning proposals come before town meaning again, well vetted thoughtful zoning proposals that take into account a wide range of issues that should be accounted for when we're thinking about the physical use of space in Arlington. But I think we need to make sure we don't have systemic or institutional barriers to making those changes that can improve housing opportunities. And frankly, I don't know if Arlington is the type of place we're talking about eliminating single family zoning is a conversation that people are ready to have. I know other parts of the country have had that conversation but I certainly know that would be a struggle here, but I think people, people looking in the mirror and understanding that allowing more multifamily housing opportunities can serve as a means for housing opportunity and housing diversity and the diversity of population is really a plea I would make to Arlington residents. Think, think about that think about when you say things or when you hear people say things like I want to protect the character of this community, or I want to protect the feel of my neighborhood. That's coded coded language or dog whistle language for I don't want people that don't look like me walking around in my neighborhood. I mean it when you say it but that's what it is. And I think we need to have those hard conversations in Arlington, so that we can start to think more broadly about how we become a more welcoming place for all from a housing opportunity. Great. Thank you, Adam. And we also do have a map just for reference as well of the history of redlining so what Arlington looks like so the component to the left hand side. That's Arlington and there are no red blocks there so purposefully keeping out communities of color and this slide this mapping resources also going to be shared at the end of the presentation as well. And then I'm going to send it over to Alexa for the next question. Thanks Jill. So this question is for all of the panelists. This is a question that was submitted for everyone. Systemic racism is a powerful concept, but its meaning and practice is sometimes big. Can you make it more specific as it applies to Arlington. As we move forward, what specific indicators of systemic racism, will you be monitoring and paying closest attention to so that we can be as clear as possible about what the extent of systemic racism in Arlington about what is the extent of systemic racism in Arlington and our progress towards reducing or eliminating it. Would you like me to go? I'm going to jump in. We're free. So I mean I think I'd, I jump right back to civil service right civil service is a statewide system. Arlington is a civil service community. And if you think about it as the way we hire and promote both police officers and firefighters and think about the fact that the system has residency preferences. Right there. I don't even think I need to go any further and pointing out that if you're a community that has a history of redlining and has a history of restrictive zoning that has reduced the diversity of the community. And you're only hiring certain town employees with a residency preference. You're, you're right there that I think that's that's easy bake systemic racism right there. You can't access and give opportunities to people that don't already live in your community. So I think deconstructing civil service is something that we should be talking about. I think that when you look at again I'm going to probably sound like I'm beating a drum tonight but when you look at arbitration and you look at collective bargaining rights that are given to police unions in Massachusetts not just in Arlington. Maybe initially these things weren't put in place for racist intent, but they allow for racism to become pervasive and remain. So I mean I'm going to continue to beat that drum tonight about civil service in the arbitration process that I think again needs we need state level help. I think going beyond that. Looking at looking at housing and zoning very again very specifically what type of opportunities are we making available and what type of growth. Are we making available to people to be able to move into the community but again I want to really underscore if you want to you want to clear cut policy example of systemic racism look no further than civil service. And I can jump in from the school department I think when you talk about systemic racism you have to look at various pieces of data that you need to focus on in order to see what the symptoms are. And in the school department, we look at various data points and something that has come up recently as you were looking at the discipline data and the disproportionate number of a percentage of students of color who received discipline consequences we also look at, you know state test scores you look at the MCAS and and then we look at attendance and then we look at the curriculum and and looking at you know how our curriculum has been constructed over the years and what type of voids are within the curriculum that we need to fill in order to have a multicultural perspective and reflect the students who are within our schools and also you know congruent to what Adam was talking about when you look at the diversity of the students that's going to have a direct result of the people who live within Arlington because you know you're looking at the residents and having access to the school system. We do have Metco, but Metco is based upon the number of seats we have available for us, you know, that are available from students who aren't taking those seats that are residents. So we look at the various pieces of data that we're collecting. And we have to make sure that when we're collecting that piece of those pieces of data that we're desegregating it and looking how the various subgroups of our students are performing. So, since I've been in Arlington, when I give my MCAS report to the school committee, I always break it down and look at the, I break it down by ethnicity, race, gender, whether or not students are on an IEP 504 so I'm able to present that type of data and then have discussions with building administrators and curriculum leaders to talk about the trends that we're seeing and to ask questions why the trends are happening if we have, and we do have an equity gap in achievement. So we have to look at what are the things that are contributing to that. And so we have come up with some conclusions as it relates to the training that teachers need in order to address various issues that may come up throughout the day. And so we have invested in implicit bias training. And then we look at the curriculum and we look at the curriculum and see how what we're presenting through the curriculum and, you know, when I first came, one of those things as an example was colonial day where students dressed up as colonists and in order to celebrate and to as a end of the unit celebration of the things that they learned about colonists and in their immigration to America. But what we saw is that there was a void. The Native American perspective was not presented and also the freed Africans during that time period was also not explored so we took some steps in order to broaden that perspective. We did eliminate students dressing up as colonists and we inserted and expanded that perspective so it includes all the perspectives of the people who lived in this area and we started to focus on local history. So that's just an example of how we have made adjustments in the curriculum. So, you know, going back to the question, we look at various metrics in order to understand how the systemic racism has impacted the things that we're doing within the school department, and in order to address those issues we have begun to and not begun but we're building off the examination of the various, the various points of that we want to study and disaggregate that data by ethnicity, race, gender, you know, all different types of ways so that we can understand how to support our students. Great. Thank you both. That's really helpful to hear. So we're going to move on to the next question, which is for Chief Flaherty and possibly Adam. So the question is stated in this form. So Chief Flaherty and Adam Chaplain advise community members that they intended to take Lieutenant Rick Petrini off administrative assignment after he addressed the community signaling according to the town's definition completion of the restorative justice process. Is it still APD's plan to return him to full parking assignment after the August session? Given there are ongoing concerns from the community about his continued employment and especially in the wake of the recent nationwide and local protests for reform, will APD reconsider this decision? Thank you, Jill. I don't have any plans or intentions to move Lieutenant Petrini from his current assignment and his administrative duties are tasks and activities that are part of the daily operation of police business and that's what he currently does. He has been in this position for over a year. He oversees the traffic unit. He falls under my supervision as well as a supervision of a police captain and he's responsible for the overall supervision of the department's traffic and details units. Some of the tasks that he's assigned to was to ensure safe transportation in town. He develops safety traffic plans and education programs and he plans traffic rerouting and directing and participates in planning and events. Again, I have no current plans to change his assignment at this time. Thank you. And Adam, did you have anything to add? Only that I'm in total agreement with the chief in that regard. I know the commitments I've made to the community are that he would not be reassigned to a non administrative role without there being dialogue with the community and I maintain that commitment and I know the chief does as well. Thank you. And so, let's gonna follow up with the next question. Thanks Jill. So this question is to all the panelists. Do you support the creation of a citizen review board with the authority to review cases of police misconduct and publish annual reports on police misconduct. Resident complaints, detailed statistics and information related to those complaints. Race of people who are pulled over and who have interactions with police, etc. Please explain your response. Thank you Alinta. I think I'll start off by saying I believe that the change and reform the community is seeking will be difficult to achieve with the police department and without the police department in the community working together. This is why several months ago I proposed the creation of a residents chiefs advisory committee. And I'm working to bring that to life despite the setbacks placed on everyone due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The committee would be a diverse group of people that represents a cross section of the LinkedIn community it would be made up of residents, students, business leaders, different members of community of different committees in town. And we'd be tasked with discussing training current events, community complaints initiatives that could be pursued by the department and more. I believe this structure would be more successful than a civilian review board as it would allow the police department and the group of community members to work together and discuss and determine how to address concerns. And I think now more than ever a partnership between the police department in the community is necessary to move forward. I am open to discussing citizens review panels and I'll continue to move forward with the residents chiefs advisory board, which I presented at the select boards meeting back in February. And I believe a lot of time researching best practices and studying President Obama's task force report on 21st century policing and I believe this type of committee would be most beneficial to the community. My goal is to further our mission of building and maintaining community relationships, building trust with the community and increasing transparency. The board would consist of 11 to 13 community members that would provide a forum for discussion and present the chief of police with a diverse spectrum of viewpoints. And the mission of the committee would be to foster open communication and cooperation among the community members and the police. The board would be tasked with advising and reviewing and making recommendations to the chief on policies and procedures. Things like recruitment training, police culture and programs and would work with the chief to identify areas of focus, including homelessness, the opioid crisis, immigration, police safety and wellness and best practices. Jill, I think when I gave my response last time, my mic was muted. No, we heard you. Oh, you did. Okay, because I saw in the chat that somebody said that they didn't hear me. So I just wanted to make sure that everybody could hear me. Okay. And does anyone else want to provide feedback around the citizen for people. So I would say I, I agree with the chief's approach in the citizens review board. I think she should follow through in her commitment to put together the residents advisory committee and she just outlined. And I also think we need to have an in depth community dialogue about a citizens review board. So I think, and I don't think they're mutually exclusive. So I agree with the chief in that regard but to the point of the data sharing that Alensa mentioned, the chief and I were actually talking about data earlier today. We've been approached by a group of residents who have experience in putting together data portals who want to work with the town to look at how data can be accessed and then shift public. And we've also been approached by the Boston University Metro bridge program that worked with us last year with a number of students being supervised by a professor on some transportation issues. They actually specifically reached out to see if we'd be interested in working with them on an open data project. So what I'm going to try to put together actually later this later this week or early next week is a conversation between myself. Chief Flaherty, the folks from BU, the residents who are interested in see if we can find a sort of a very collaborative innovative way of putting this together to be able to share data with the public. And Dr. McNeil, did you have anything to add regarding the citizens review board. No, I do not. Okay. All right, well, we will move on to the next question, which is also directed for you, Chief Flaherty. So what work is being done to defund the police? How is this being negotiated in a legitimate way knowing that the police unions and police department are likely to oppose these measures? And how can we rise above their influence to do what is best for the community? And additionally, how can we learn more about the Arlington police unions? Well, I think the defund notion is misguided and in my opinion, wrongly places blame for all of society's problems on police. We're an easy target, of course, because we don't say no. If someone calls 911, whether it's a domestic dispute, suspicious person, a child in need of care, a hoarding situation, a drug overdose, an active shooter, we don't close for the evening. We respond and we have to go into every dangerous situation that you could possibly envision and we have to try to make it better. We usually succeed and sometimes we fail when we fail, people get hurt or people die and it's not an easy job by any means. I'd like to use the example of the opioid epidemic. We didn't ask to be part of this but we stood there for years and we watched many people die. We watched sons and daughters and moms and dads die usually from not their first overdose but from their 10th or their 12th or their 15th. And we had to go to every single one and try to bring them back to life. We had no other choice. We could arrest the mom or dad or daughter or son and bring them to court and hope that the system helped them or we could bring them to a hospital where they would possibly detox and then promptly go back out and overdose again. Until one day we saw too much death and the police department said enough is enough. And a nationwide movement started in the Gloucester police department and in the Allington police department and spread to nearly every state. Thousands of police officers now referring people with substance use disorders directly into treatment, no arrest, no criminal records, just a person helping people. We didn't ask for this but our last two presidents from both parties recognize the role of law enforcement has played in turning the tide on the opioid epidemic. We're not the responsibility but we have no choice whether it's an overdose, a homeless veteran or a hoarder or someone with a severe behavioral health crisis. Our society truly lacks the systematic means to help our most vulnerable people. You're not going to solve these problems overnight by taking away a portion of the police budget. All you're going to do is hurt more people and take away those safety net programs agencies like ours have created. These programs are not all permanent solutions. They're time bias and it's society's job to determine it the permanent solutions. Thank you. Thank you clarity. So the next question is for Dr McNeil. Can we or are we collecting data on the following. How suspensions associate with student GPAs, i.e. does an eight grade student drop to a B grade after a student's suspicion. If kids with disabilities or IEP show any disparity in discipline rates. In school suspension rates and detentions, etc. Elementary students sent to the principal's office or other discipline tactics used with our younger students. Can we or are we collecting data on the following. Yes, we are. So, as I mentioned, and I can only speak from my experience that, you know, since I've been come into the district, and I've come into the district. And I entered and we had ways that we're presenting various pieces of data. And we've expanded that. So, and one of the my priorities and part of my position is to help us to continue to build a data culture. And which we use various data points to construct a comprehensive profile of students. And we also use the above information. I mean, the information that you've mentioned, like looking at GPAs and how students are impacted after receiving discipline consequences. Also looking at the disparity of, you know, of students on an IP receiving discipline consequences. And also looking at in school suspensions and detentions. And I will say, since I've been here, the annual report that our secondary principals give to school committee. And breaks it down by race, ethnicity and gender. And in fact, this Thursday, the secondary principals and myself were giving a presentation that's going to talk specifically about detentions during the school committee meeting. And that starts at 630 of Thursday, so the school committee meets every two weeks. So that's just an example of how we are, you know, taking the data, we're looking at it and we're trying to disaggregate it in order to see the impact that it has on students. Along with the data that has been mentioned, we also use the vocal data, which is views of climate and learning. And the vocal data is collected after, you know, during, during the time that students take the MCAS. And specifically, students in grades 4th, 5th, 8th and 10th grade respond to questions about their learning environment. Once that data is collected, it's organized by the state into the following categories, engagement, safety and environment. Under engagement, you have cultural competence and that asks students questions about how the adults and their learning environment value diversity. So we look at that data and that data is also disaggregated by ethnicity and gender. So we look at that data as well and we try to triangulate it with the data that we have collected ourselves in order to get a full picture of what the student experiences within our schools. Other things that we look at is the time is the number of times that students visit the nurse for non-health issues. Again, looking at that data to see whether or not students are going to the nurse because of anxiety or something that they're experiencing within the classroom. So, you know, I agree that we have to utilize multiple data points in order to get a comprehensive picture of the student experience. And one thing I do want to add that has been happening recently, especially at the high school, is that, you know, I would like us to also explore having listening sessions with our students, especially our students of color in order to get their experiences firsthand in order to understand what they go through on a daily basis and, you know, address the barriers that they perceive that's not allowing them to reach their full potential. So again, we want to build a data culture within the school system in order to utilize these various data points in order to address those issues that our students of color are experiencing within their learning environment. Great. Thank you. The next question is going to be directed towards Adam, but other folks can answer as well. So, the question is, what is the town's overall personnel policy about racist comments and comments inciting violence made by any town employee while representing or identifying him or herself as a town employee, whether or not that employee is working that day or not. So, pretty straightforward answer comments of a racist nature would be in violation of the town's anti discrimination policy. So they would be in violation of a policy that's circulated to every employee of the town every year. I suppose there could be a situation where, you know, an analysis of the manner in which the comments were made depending on they were working or not working would require investigation but the straightforward answer is such comments are a violation of town policy. Does anyone else have any comments around that question. Okay. We can move on to the. Okay. This next question is for Dr McNeil. Will staff at other schools besides Arlington High School be trained in collaborative problem solving. So, let me adjust. There's a couple of various parts to this question. So I will start off by discussing the collaborative problem solving. And that is something that Dr. Jainer, Janger, excuse me, the high school principal has initiated over the last few years at the high school. And the purpose is to train staff in order to help build better relationships with students and to recognize the various skills that students need to build upon in order to, in order to respond to various situations within the classroom. So it's, it's giving those teachers on the staff an opportunity to think about the relationships they're building with students and a more positive manner. Since then we have seen a drop in discipline incidents since the training has taken place at the high school. However, currently we have we are not planning currently to expand that training to the other schools. What we're focusing on at the elementary and the middle school is focusing on social emotional learning. And we feel that that's a great place to start for students, especially at the elementary level, in order to build a foundation. So they can focus on certain skills, such as becoming self aware, self awareness, self management, promote responsible decision making, and have social awareness, and also building positive relationships. By integrating social emotional learning into our academic curriculum, we want to be able to address those skills that students need to build upon in order to have positive relationships, not only with their peers, but also with their teachers and hope and with the hope that that will also help to prepare them to be successful in their learning environment. So one of the things that we've done is focused on implicit bias training throughout the district and focus on cultural proficiency and focus on cultural proficiency training as well. Last November on November 1 we had a district wide training, which was the third year that we have implemented this type of training district wide. In order to, and it was a day where the students weren't there. And so staff participated in that training throughout the day. So my focusing on SEL and focusing on implicit bias training and cultural proficiency training that's where our focus is right now at the elementary and the middle school and the high school to go along with the collaborative problem solving. So I feel like those are great ways that we can address, you know, the various issues that may come up as it relates to our students of color and prepare our teachers to be able to respond to various situations build that confidence. So when things do happen throughout the school day, they feel confident and have the knowledge in order to respond to it in a positive way. And also to help them build there and understand what their implicit biases are as they try to establish relationship with students that may not look like them. So, and I didn't I didn't address the inclusion day, let me say the inclusion day, the conclusion day is a day at the high school again this was in place when I came into the district where students take the time out and they have discussions about race they have discussions about sexual orientation, and they talk about, they have various workshops, and we and Dr. Jenga brings an outside facilitators to leave those discussions, as well as staff. Great. Thank you. So we've had a number of questions come in during the session. And so we're just going to depending on the time we do want to get to the other parts of the session but there is one that I'm going to ask and this is directed to everyone and I'm going to expand upon it a little bit more. So the question is, how can we ensure that candidates from diverse backgrounds are given equal opportunities to be hired in our public schools. I think that should be expanded to not just the public schools, but for the town in general, including the police department. And is there any kind of outreach for diverse candidates currently happening, and if so, for what types of positions. So we can start with school. Dr. McNeil if you'd like to. Sure, I mean that is a goal for us to hire more people of color. I was hired three years ago we also hire Dr. Bodie hired our CFO who was an African American man. So he's come in so we also just hired a woman of color to be the principal at the Gibbs school. And to be honest with you, I mean this is part of what my doctorate work revolved around how to support recruit, you know, candidates of color in the public school system. And, you know, one thing that leads all the way back to the professional training, the schools that provide professional training, the educational schools that provide the professional training to prepare people to enter the education where the enrollment is down. And it's also down for people of color because as you look throughout the history. Education was a field that was represented heavily by people of color but as you know other fields opened up that are actually more lucrative, you know people of color started to branch out to those other fields. But we still want to make sure that we're focusing on this. And, you know, but looking at from a historical perspective you see that other people and other fields opening up to allow people of color to advance in careers. You know that you know pay a little bit more than education that's what people, you know are attracted to. So I think our plan has to really focus on the informal networks that we have. For instance, when we're looking for people of color for certain positions I reach out to other my colleagues of color and ask them do they know of anybody who would like to apply for a position within our district. So we have to again continue to utilize and leverage those relationships and those informal social networks that we have. Also, I believe that if we were to present education as a field to our students in the, you know, at the high school and try to promote the educational field we can get more students to actually select that as a career option. So, you know there's various ways that we can address this. It is a complex issue and it's very difficult to address but we are definitely doing all kinds of things we have a coffee for candidates of color that we host every year that our director of human resources puts together. And he does this by going out to various hiring fairs that focus on recruiting people of color, and then we take down their information and we invite them to our diversity coffee. So we're continuing to explore various ideas in order to expand a candidate pool to include candidates of color I know that we have a lot of work to do in that area. You know, based upon you know the research that I've done 80% of and this is on a national basis 80% of the teacher force is represented by white women. So, you know diversity when you talk about diversity you're not only talk about diversity for people of color but you're also talking about gender, and in other ways as well so we're always trying to reach out. And figure out and leverage those other ways that we can attract people of color to come to Arlington and it's just an ongoing effort and we're going to continue to do that. And, you know, and hope to be able to reach our goal to have a more diverse staff. Thank you. So I, Jill I would say, this is an area where I fully acknowledge we need help on the town side of the shop. I know myself and our human resources director have for years worked with our equal opportunity advisory committee. We've worked with the Mystic Valley NAACP and trying to learn how to better attract diverse candidates for town jobs. But we haven't made the strides we want to make. And I think this is an area where I am. I guess I'm happy to say I wanted need help. I, you know, I think as a town we need better strategies better guidance for how to recruit attract recruit higher than retain people of color in the town of Arlington so I'm not going to pretend that I have the solutions tonight. I can speak for myself that I have the desire, but I need help in trying to meet that goal. I also want to add that at this, you know, within the school department we also belong to the mass partnership for diversity and education which is a consortium of different districts with a common goal to have higher more teachers of color. So we belong to that and we had to attend their hiring fairs as well. I just want to add that. Thank you. I would like to add that it has been my goal, and I've been very vocal during the process to appoint a police chief that my goal has been to diversify the police department. And as Adam spoke about earlier we are a civil service police department and we hire mostly police officers that are Arlington residents that have signed up to be police officers and have taken a civil service test and we've received that list. Mostly of Arlington residents. If we were no longer a civil service police department, we would have the ability to hire a more from a more diverse population and in higher offices that would represent the community. Thank you. And so a lot of the questions that were also coming through as this discussion was going on, kind of circled back to one of the questions that was asked about defunding the police. So just to elaborate on that. So, Chief Larrity, you did discuss all of the duties that the police department has taken on. And so I think part of that follow up question that we'd like to hear from anyone or all of you is in order to reduce those other tasks and those unwanted burdens of responsibility. And what can the town do to transfer those responsibilities to other departments. And who would be viable to be able to take that on. So I guess I'll take the first stab I've received a lot of emails about defunding the police and have been sending a response and I think it's, you know, it's challenging because I have two thoughts in my head that seem conflicting. I think the Arlington Police Department, as Chief Larrity laid out a little while ago, is a model for the whole nation. I think it has the policies in place that should have been, you know, that most departments should have in place. You know, we had seven of the eight can't wait policies in place before that became popular in the past few weeks and the chief moved quickly to put that eighth policy in place. I think the opiate awareness of the opiate overdose program, our homelessness outreach program, our community policing program our jail diversion program go down the list of the appropriate community oriented policing aspects of the Arlington Police Department. I think the Arlington Police Department is excellent. But I also simultaneously think the defund the police movement makes good points about needing to take an introspective look and and ask tough questions. Right. I know the chief and I have already had some tough conversations about this and I know they're going to continue and with the community as well that you know does everything an officer does or everything that an officer does do they need to have a firearm with them. I asked that question not knowing the answer but I think it's something that's at least worth talking about and then providing an answer to the community. So I think that's at least the framework under which I'm thinking about this defund the police idea. I also know that in talking with leadership of Health and Human Services that there are many crisis situations that the police department goes into and also brings a social worker. I think it's important. I, you know, I forgot to mention this that the Arlington Police Department employs, I think one and a half social workers. Maybe we should talk about increasing that, but there are many crisis situations where that social worker wouldn't feel safe going there alone. So simply shifting that social worker to the Health and Human Services Department might not be as clear cut as it seems. But I think that's the framing of the discussions we need to have nationally statewide locally is, you know, I don't think that starting a conversation with somebody and saying that we want to just eliminate you all together is a good way to have a good conversation that achieves mutual outcomes. But I think, again, having hard conversations about, you know, what is it that we want the police to be doing? How should they be doing it and digging into the realities like the realities of, you know, let's, let's look at calls. Let's look at how police officer handle calls. Let's look at what type of danger might have been present for either the officer or the people that were calling the police in the first place and figure out, you know, are there changes to the model that should be considered that reallocate either or reallocate work out of the department or change the way the department delivers the work. I'd also just like to add to that that the police department will still respond to calls. Defunding the police department will not take away the police department. What it will affect is the community programs that we're known best for and that we've modeled for the country. Citizens Police Academy will no longer be held. All of the programs that the town loves and attends are operation success where we tutor students with the school department, we won't be able to fund that. We wouldn't be able to fund our health recreation and cops camp. So the programs will be lost, but we will still be responding to police calls. Great. Thank you. This has been really helpful. We've got again a number of questions. And we're going to be compiling all of them so everything that's been sent in through the chat or the Q&A segment we have all of the questions that are still coming through my inbox right now that I can see. We're going to be compiling all of them so that we can best address all of these questions moving forward and some again will be addressed in the future conversations that are still planned. So right now we are going to switch gears and I'm going to throw it over to Lenza who's going to move us into the next next section. Thank you. So I want to invite everyone to take a deep breath because that was a lot of content and I also want to thank our panelists for your responses and your honesty and in your responses. I want to remind everyone that these questions will be documented and we're going to transition now to spend a little bit of time to talk about what the town is doing in more detail. Our panelists have shared a lot of content around what they're working on in their respective departments and divisions and we're going to send a little bit of time to share some other things that are happening around racial equity in the town. So I'm going to pass it to Adam and I'll have to talk a little bit about that. Thank you Lenza. So I'll start by talking about a program we kicked off in January in the town. So we started a partnership with the National League of Cities, race, equity and leadership division. We've been talking to them for a long while. But finally in January we launched what was intended to be a multi part training for just about 65 town staff. We had head's supervisory staff across all town departments. There were police leadership was there fire leadership DPW across the board. And we had our first training a day long training for town employees and actually the evening before that we had was basically a half day training for our select board on racial equity. And we did the 101 which is the basics of you know creating a common understanding of issues of race and setting a baseline where we want to go with this training is broadening that base and then eventually turning it to the organization of a racial equity toolkit so we can go department by department and analyze ourselves and figure out where our instances of institutional racism are and work to weed them out and remove them from the institution. Many things. COVID-19, put that on hold to more to training dates that were supposed to be held. During the past few months have had to be put off we're working with the National League of Cities to figure out how we can offer the training remotely. I think, given everything that's happening in the country right now. They're getting a lot of phone calls so you know where we're still focused on it we're going to do it but that's really I feel so proud that we're doing that work and that day we spent with folks from all town departments was a really powerful day and I think it was a really informative and educational day for just about everybody that attended and I say just about everybody because I think some people came in with a great background, but I know a lot of people came in and they left with a ton of learning and have been much more engaged in these dialogues sense. We coordinated with that joining gear, the government Alliance for racial equity that I believe Alensa you actually were the one who recommended that we look into doing that we took that recommendation didn't we join gear. And, and that's been, that's been so far a good partnership for us, and that in gears actually, as I understand it the institution that put together the training that the National League of Cities race equity and leadership division uses so there's a cohesion in the way we're approaching this. It's important to underscore probably should have led led with this Jill that you know we created this position of the diversity equity inclusion coordinator we were very lucky to get Jill. I don't know if Jill knew exactly what she was getting into, but she's in it and she's doing a great job. But I think that's important we've made a commitment as a community to funding this position and in supporting this position and you know and I think we're going to have to look at doing more as things go forward. I'm probably leaving something out from that but I know those are definitely the big things that we're doing the race equity leadership work, the gear work, Jill and all the work that she's doing. Oh, I guess I'd also add. I'm representing the town on the Metro mayors coalition again which is that 15 member city and town group in Metro Boston, and we've been working with the staff from the MAPC and putting together a multi page document of principles for addressing systemic and institutional racism generally, as well as how we'll specifically work on addressing issues of race and policing. And there's a set of principles, a set of state level items that we'd like to advocate for, and then a menu of items that we recommend all communities look at for policy changes in terms of their in terms of policing. Again, I'm very pleased that Arlington is almost entirely all the way there if not all the way there for those menu items but I'm trying to take Arlington's work and engage with the region so that again we're not just operating in the vacuum of Arlington but instead having conversations with all of our neighbors. Thank you, Adam. Chief Lerde. Thank you. So I'll start off saying that the professional policing has changed and evolved drastically over the course of my career and justice all emergency services including firefighting EMS dispatch and of course public health have grown and changed as the needs of the community changes. So in terms of systemic racism, exist in society and it exists in the criminal justice system. I've worked for decades to treat people alike in my community, race, religion, gender, sexuality, sexuality, gender identity, those things shouldn't matter to someone who wants to protect life, or to even give their own life if necessary. So the Allington police department has taken several steps to increase accountability and to increase transparency within the department in response to a lot of the discussions that have been taken place in the community. I announced two weeks ago that we have begun our initial research into body camera into a body camera pilot program. And I have appointments with three different vendors this week. We also updated our use of force policy to include some of the factors that are already required under law but had not been specifically in our procedures, such as the duty to intervene. And for those of you who are not familiar with the eight can't wait policies. There are eight use of force policies that study show reduce police violence, and they include, including in your policy on use of force ban banning choke holds and strangle holds, requiring de escalation requiring warning shots before shooting, requiring that a police officer should adopt all alternatives before using force, the duty to intervene which we recently added to our policy banning shooting at moving vehicles and requiring a use of force continuum and requiring comprehensive reporting, all of those policies we had within our use of force policy. In addition, we'll be launching a news blog which will be a central location for all of the Allington police department news policies and information. The site will include news and updates available community resources, some of our department policies and a page for people to submit commendations or complaints about police officers. And the site will be available in several different languages and will also allow anyone to describe subscribe to receive news from the department automatically via email. We seek to provide public safety services and a fair and impartial and transparent way and I'll continue to listen to the community concerns and I'll determine where we can make additional improvements. These conversations are a good way for us to connect with and hear the concerns of the community and I and I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has submitted questions. Today, some of the questions that that had come up was regarding regarding some of the equipment that the Allington police department uses. And specifically if we have any type of military equipment at the Allington police department which we do not. Each police department is equipped with a ballistic helmet to protect police officers from being shot in their heads. Our offices are trained to respond to active shooter situations whether they're in a school, a house of worship, or any type of business and those helmets are deployed only for this type of situation. We do not have any other military equipment and we have no future plans to purchase any along the same lines for the 25 years that I've been an Allington police officer. We have never used tear gas in Allington and we have never purchased it and we've never trained our offices to use it and we don't have any plans to purchase it. As well as a taser, a taser is a less lethal, less lethal, less lethal tool that many departments issued to their police officers as a less lethal option. We've never purchased them we haven't issued them to our offices and we've never trained our offices with trade with tasers. Again, I'm working on developing the program for body one cameras and I'll have more information about that soon. One additional question that I wanted to touch upon was a question of why we have a school resource officer in the public schools. And we have assigned one officer as the school resource officer, which is in compliance with state law requiring at least one police officer to be assigned to the town schools. Officer Brian White is our school resource officer and he was appointed to the position in August of 2019. And replacing a school resource officer that had been in the school for many years. He was selected following an in depth application process and interview process that included some community members and school administration. He was selected for his ability to develop trust and relationships with people of all ages, which is his primary role as a school resource officer in the Allington schools. As part of his assignments, he also enhances school security and insists assists with investigating incidents or completing reports. He's not involved in any discipline regarding general school rules. And I just wanted to make that clear. Thank you. Thank you chief clarity. Dr McNeil. Yeah, so we have specific district goals that we implement every year. And then at the end of the year we look back on the progress of those district goals and then we update them and we present them to our school committee. Some of the goals that we've had over the past year has been focused on hiring more people of color so we can diversify our staff. Like I've indicated before we've utilized various strategies in order to do that. We understand that we have a long way to go. But I do feel like we are eager and we have the will. And we just need to continue to follow up on that and make sure that when we are putting together our interview teams that are our interview committees are also diverse. So that when people of color do come in you can have a different perspectives, you know when that interview process takes place. So that is something that I know that we're you know dedicated to doing and I work very closely with our director of human resources, who is also very committed to doing this work. This one of the other goals is professional development that we have. And that is to make sure that we are providing the proper type of professional development for our administrators and our professional staff. And make sure that we're doing that throughout the year. In addition to that we look at the the merging of social and emotional learning with the implicit bias training to make sure that our students have the foundation so that they can develop relationships and understand that that that we need to use our differences as a source of pride and utilize those differences in an effort to also engage in our curriculum and promote our curriculum so I think that you know us continue to focus on the SEL training and the implicit bias training throughout the year is a focus right now we have a standard of having all professional staff engage in eight hours of implicit bias training throughout the year. One of those times is also the district wide training that takes place in November we've done it three years in a row. And we've had a lot of success. And one of the training specifically is given by the ideas group. I don't know if people are familiar with ideas but it stands for, it's an acronym. It's an acronym for initiatives for developing equity and achievement for students. We have staff members within the district, including myself who are trained presenters for ideas. And so we have offered that training just recently in the spring we offered it to our mental health professionals and various staff members, so that they can understand and explore their own implicit bias. And so we did it over the summer for administrators and professional staff. And my goal is to have that be offered every semester, and then offer other classes that are that are offered by ideas in order to continue and build upon that initial class, which is an anti racism course. In addition to that, we have been looking very closely at our discipline data over the years this is something I want to continue to build upon the reports that we give the school committee as I indicated before the discipline statistics are always broken down by race and gender. And then we we look at other data points in order to understand how the discipline is impacting our students. And I think that's going to be an ongoing thing. Of course, it has to be an ongoing thing. Like I said before this Thursday, we're having a presentation we're presenting to our school committee our secondary administrators, as long with myself about the detentions, which is not required by the state to to to really track that type of information the things that are required by the state include out of school in school in school suspensions and expulsions. So we want to definitely look at the discipline data as it relates to detentions, and also at the elementary level looking at office referrals so that we can disaggregate and the data and see what what student population is most impacted by being sent to the office and how we can intervene and provide the intervention that students need in order to feel supported. Also building the skills of this teacher so they feel supported supported as well. We're also I've hired an outside consultant. And I want to recognize the AF Arlington Educational Foundation who has provided the resources for us to do this. So I hired an outside consultant to do a review equity analysis of our K 12 curriculum. And I'm expecting that analysis to be complete by the end of the summer where we'll have a comprehensive report, and then we'll, you know, definitely act upon the things that are found by the consultant and also invite the consultant within the district so that she can observe instruction to add on to that document review that she has completed. And I also want to take this time to announce that the school department is going to have three forms throughout the summer. Get the dates right the first one will be July 15, the second one will be July 29, and the third one will be August 12. Jill will be the moderator in a similar form such as this one. The first one we are going to talk specifically about the discipline data. And I've invited the secondary principles and elementary principles to be a part of that. Dr. Bote will also be there. The second form will be a listening session. I did have a parent make a request to me to have a listening session for our parents of color. It will be the second form on July 29 for the secondary and that elementary building administrators myself and Dr. Bote will be there to listen about the experiences from our parents of color. And then the last one we will, you know, try to put together some things that we can focus on for next year as goals, based upon the information that we that the data that we've already collected and the various stories that we hear from our parents of color. So those are some of the things that we're that are going on within the district. You know, those are the goals that we focus on. And so, you know, I know that it's going to take time for us to get to where we want to where we want to land but I think that we're on the right path. You know, I appreciate the opportunity tonight to listen to parents and to, you know, hear the questions and be able to respond to some of those questions and I look forward to having more conversations with our parents and our students. Great. Thank you, everyone. So we have heard and gained some insight from our town leaders tonight as to the direction Arlington is going to be moving in. And the surrender that coming up in the series will also be discussing the visions in diversity, equity and inclusion climate assessment of the Arlington police department that's going to take place in two weeks. And that will be sent during the voices of people of color and the elevating suppressed voices session. And lastly in August, we will be closing that circle with lieutenant for draining. So just to reiterate, as we said before at the beginning, this series is just the beginning step for opening up spaces for these types of conversations and dialogues. We are trying to move forward as responsive as possible. And every week, every other week true story theater will be holding their theater for dialogue sessions that will offer additional space for community members to attend and reflect on the issues brought up from these conversations. And we also have a resource that are available. If you resources that are available on the town website if you're looking to act now and make change. We invite you all to connect with the civic groups that are organizing community meetings, community gatherings. And just as a general note to everyone to take time to get to know your neighbors and understand what individuals needs are so that we can center community programming around those needs better and it's it's going to take everyone not just the town leadership. It's going to take all of us to come together and take steps to educate ourselves and to make some changes and build community. Great. And right now we're going to show you some of the resources so that you can act now if you would like to. So we'd like to thank each of our panelists for joining us tonight and all of you for attending and doing this conversation and for submitting your questions suggestions and feedback. We'll be answering many of these questions throughout the summer series and that the series doesn't end here on these conversations are going to continue and then we'll be sending out essentially an FAQ following up with all of these questions. And so I just want to remind you that the conversations are being recorded and they will be posted and you can follow them on the town website or through ACMI. So with that being said, thank you for coming and we will see you soon.