 So for coming, we appreciate you coming out tonight. It's this is having a candidates forum on the school to prison pipeline is an important thing for our community. And we appreciate the candidates coming out, and we appreciate the community coming out. My name is Professor Vanilla Randall. I should say emeritus. And I'm a law professor at the University of Dayton, and I'm one of the co-founders of Racial Justice Now. I'm Maria Holtz. I'm also a co-founder for Racial Justice Now. I'm a parent of a student in Dayton Public Schools. I have a son that attends the All-Boy School here in West Dayton. And so we're working on this issue together because we care about the statistics and the issues that are happening, particularly for young black children within the school system and black males in particular. Let me tell you a little bit about the process. What I tell, I got to get out of this jacket. I say to people, I wear the jacket until everybody sits down and see that I, in fact, wore a jacket. But it's too hot, so I usually get out of it really quick. Dignity in schools is a national organization that has a national campaign for the last five years, I believe, on pushing children out, push outs. And we have partnered with them. We're the only organization in the state of Ohio, parent organization. There's one other organization that is partner. But we're the only parent organization that has partnered with them to do something. What we've done is the thing that we're going to do tonight is a candidate's forum. And what we decided to do is to ask questions, to use this as an opportunity to both educate ourselves and them and find out their position and to ask questions related to the school-to-prison pipeline. We, in fact, had a process that the questions just didn't, we didn't take them off a website somewhere. What we did is we sent out, for the last two and a half months, we've had a web page that people have been a part of and we have been kind of putting information up on that web page. And then we asked people who have been a participant of that web page to submit questions, which reminds me, could you cut off your phones, please? So over the course, we've got about 50 questions in total, both from the website and from people who email and from the weekly discussion group, not discussion group, but work group that worked on it. We got 50 questions. We obviously cannot ask 50 questions. We're gonna ask three or four. And the format is this. We will ask, the candidates have been informed of the format ahead of time. We will ask the same question of all the candidates. They will get two minutes to answer. When they're within 30 seconds of the end, the 30-second sign will go up. And when they're within, when at the end, they'll stop. I really plead for candidates to stop so that I don't have to get rude. It's important, I think, to keep things moving that everybody stays on time. So when you see the 30-second sign, that's the time to start pulling your thoughts in and wrapping it up. We will ask everyone the same question. In order, we randomize their names and so the order is based on so random number generator that I used. For the first questions, we will start with first the mayor, candidates, and then the commissioner, candidates. For all of the rest of the questions, it's just gonna be random until the last question where we will end with the mayor, candidates, and then the commission candidates. But even those, well, it's not too much randomness you can get with two people, but those are in random order. We have, we asked the candidates that for their first two minutes to introduce themselves, so we're not gonna take the time to introduce them, they're gonna introduce themselves and say whatever they want to say, but we asked them to make sure that they tie it in to the school to prison pipeline. So Maria, you want to start with the first question? Yes. So the first question, the school to prison pipeline, there's a, first of all, I'm gonna give a bit of background information and then we're gonna ask the question and give some definitions. The school to prison pipeline is one of the most important human rights challenges facing our nation today. The school to prison pipeline specifically refers to a national trend of criminalizing rather than educating our nation's children. With only 5% of the world population in the United States has 25% of the world's prison population. Nearly 50% of all state prisoners are locked up for nonviolent crimes. Blacks, particularly young black males, make up the disproportionate share of the US prison population. In 2008, young black men ages 18 to 34, were at least six times more likely to be incarcerated than young white men. The pipeline encompasses the growing use of zero tolerance discipline policies, school based arrests, disciplinary alternative schools and secured detention to marginalize the most at risk youth and deny them the education that they deserve and need. The question is, what is your opinion about mass incarceration and how the school to prison pipeline contributes to it? And generally, what do you think needs to be done? What role can the city play? And the mayor of Canada is in AJ Wagner's first. Good evening, I'm AJ Wagner. By the way, how many minutes do I have at the opening? You have two minutes, about the 32nd morning. Okay, thank you. I used to be a teacher. You know, I also used to be a judge. So I know a lot about mass incarceration situation. I used to be a Montgomery County auditor. I've owned my own business. I still own my own business. I've managed businesses and I've been a consultant to a lot of businesses because I'm an attorney. The school to prison pipeline, however, I've had a particularly good experience with in this sense. About 1991 or two, Allen Class School Academy, which was over on Old North Dayton, began a program to deal with the school to prison pipeline in a sense. They didn't know that's what it was back then. But there was a school there, Allen Class School Academy, that was suspending about 150 of their 550 kids, a total of about 750 times during the course of a year. They began a program called Word of the Week. And they asked me to participate by writing poetry for kids that would go with the Word of the Week. Kindness, generosity, citizenship, sportsmanship, words like that, first appearance. And so I would write poems that would go with each of those words. And the teachers would introduce kids and have kids say the word. If they said, you know, instead of saying here when they called their name, they would say generosity. And so that they drilled the word into them. They had bulletin boards, et cetera. Anyway, after five years of this program, those kids, those kids then experienced only 10 suspensions. Total, 10 suspensions down from 750. There is a way to do this. And I'm glad to be a part of it. Thank you, thank you. Nan. Good evening, I'm Dane City Commissioner, Nan Whaley. It's my pleasure to be here. And it's been an honor to serve you as your city commissioner for the past eight years. I decided to run for mayor because I thought we needed someone who was full-time and really focused around creating jobs, working on our neighborhoods and being an open and vibrant community. Since we have a question along with the introduction, I'll just go right to the question as well. I think there's lots of work that can be done to work to make sure that we have positive behavior in schools and it can be affirmative instead of disciplinary in action. The Ittings Foundation, for example, asked me to be on a committee to really follow best practices that have worked across the country to deal with making sure that we have positive reinforcements in our schools. So an example is when a child does well, they get a reward for following the rules in the school instead of it being based on disciplinary action. We've worked at this in many schools and it has done a pretty good job of really changing the culture in schools and making this culture be more open and welcoming to those students. So I think that is a great first step in that effort. I'm sure we'll have more questions about the School to Prison Pipeline and I'm glad to be here today. Joey Williams. Next. Good afternoon or evening now, I guess, it's little after six. My name is Joey Williams and I want to thank you all for having this forum. I've been looking forward to this one. This really falls right in line with the issues that are most important to me as I run for reelection this year. You mostly probably have my information. I lift your piece and you can see my entire blueprint. What I really want you to pay attention to is what we want to do around safety. And that's where I've been spending most of my attention over the past three or four years. It's what can we do to reduce crime in our community? What can we do to have our police and our community work closer together? So those are things I've been spending time on. As it relates directly to the School to Prison Pipeline, I think that's a very serious subject that we have to pay very close attention to. And I do agree that some of the zero tolerance policies that we see throughout the country, not just in Dayton, but throughout the country as it relates to our young people contribute to that. And that continues on up. We have zero tolerance policies as it relates to our police departments. So I think it's very important that we understand that people have to be looked at on an individual basis and we need more community-oriented policing. We need more community-oriented folks within the schools. So those are things that I'm going to work hard on. I do think we can make a difference here. The last thing that we need to do is just say that one side fits all within the city or one side fits all within the schools. Thank you. Thank you. David is writing. Two minutes is not a long enough to discuss this, but I'm going to tell you as many quick stories as I can. First off, for the last 26 years, I've been a big brother to an African-American male. He's done two tours of three years, each in separate correctional facilities. Very different experience in one than the other. The second one, he got a full year under his belt of a two-year associate degree with a 3.99 grade point. He did great. He comes back here. He goes to Sinclair in the very first day. He runs into one of the Sinclair Community College police officers. They run his name and they find out that he's got a warrant. From before, he went in for three years. They take him in and lock him up on his first day back to school. There is no excuse for that. If we don't clear the warrant, when he goes to the prison, we got a problem. And it bothers me greatly that this is the kind of response a felon gets. Secondly, I'm gonna bring up a story about my then 12-year-old who took some candy to school that she found that was adult-oriented. I'm just gonna leave it at that. It was found in school and she got a 10-day suspension. Her friend, whose mother was a teacher at the school, got a five-day suspension. This is the zero-tolerance rule. I hear two little girls getting sent home from school for 10 days because they took some candy to school that was shaped like a male organ. That's unacceptable. I know, because of my experience in working with Superintendent Ward and Mr. Lawrence, that that wouldn't happen today. The schools are working hard to stop that zero-tolerance nonsense. So that's two stories. But third and last, kids who don't have things to do, don't have parks to go to, playgrounds to play in, they get in trouble. They don't have coaches, they don't have activities. That's why I put up over 240 basketball nets in this community and I continue to do it. And it's a disgrace what we've let our parks and recreation programs fall into. And we gotta fix that. I've got more stories to tell, but we're gonna have to get to that later because my time's up. Thank you very much. Thank you, Jeffrey Nams. Okay, thank you. Thank all of you for being here. I got too many stories for two minutes. I got too many stories for two hours or two days even. But the issue that I think we have to address is what causes them to fall into this situation in the workplace. You oftentimes, you hear individuals talking about pulling children out of the stream, but no one goes upstream to find out why they're falling in. The issue has to be more preventive in terms of things that you do and things that you work at. I have probably 40 years of experience in terms of working with young people in countless programs. First T, Dayton Youth Golf Academy, Mentors Matters with the Y, Botillion, Capital League. I mean, I can go on and on with the type of things that I've done in my career because I see prevention as the major issue as opposed to just waiting for something to happen. Now we have some things that have to be changed. One of the big issues that our children have, even as some of our adults have, if you don't have a vision of hope, like some people say a lot of times, if you don't know where you are, then you don't know where you're going. Don't know where you've been, you certainly don't know where you're going. Our children, unfortunately, because of some things that are happening through the educational process, through no fault of this district or any district, that mandate certain types of curriculum that strips our staff and our parents of the opportunity to teach them about their history. If you don't have a positive self-concept, it's hard to get you to understand in terms of where you're going and that vision. When I talked with the police chief at one of the violence prevention programs that the city sponsored this past summer, one of the things that he said about the weapons, I'm gonna be real quick with this, that there are more weapons in Centerville and suburban areas and rural areas than there are in Dayton. The problem is that the Dayton citizens do not have the tools to handle their conflict without anger, violence, and rage. I'm gonna stop there because there's a whole lot more to this issue than what we've been doing in a couple of minutes. Thank you for your time. Good evening. My name is David K. Greer and I'm running for a city commission. I'm a candidate for the city commission. I have been working for the last 15 years trying to utilize the system that allows citizens to be involved in the decisions of the city government. However, I have deducted that it doesn't work. The system is the way it was designed. If it worked the way it was designed, it would be an excellent system, but it does not work the way it was designed. And that is synonymous with, if you look at history, back to even before we were allowed to get an education, well, it is tainted with curriculums that are inaccurate. It is tainted with the fact that there's double standards in the society. So there's a lot of things that were enacted into law, but it did not apply to a class of people. We grew up believing in these curriculums because we had the opportunity to get an education, not understanding that there was tools of brainwashing embedded in those curriculums. So as we went forward, that coupled with the lack of jobs, that coupled with so many other elements that society, through the process of implementation and doing for the haves and have nots, it has created a quiet bar for a lot of people, especially the people that are low to moderate income. So I plan on, as a city commissioner, exposing those inadequacies, making it visible and holding people accountable. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Zero tolerance policies, several of the candidates mentioned zero tolerance policies and they are a big issue. Ohio is one of the states that actually has a law that requires a certain level of zero tolerance. They're the first step in a child's journey through the pipeline. They often impose severe discipline on students without regard to the circumstances. In 2012, there was over 5,000 out-of-school suspensions for black students in Dayton and 69% of those were for disobedient or disruptive behavior. There's no evidence that zero tolerance policy makes schools safer or improve student behavior. And most of the research suggests that they're overused. There is a Senate bill going through now, Senate Bill 167, which would undo the zero tolerance law in Ohio. The question is, would you support eliminating, support Senate Bill 167 and advocate it for its passage and even if the bill doesn't pass, would you support a local moratorium on out-of-school suspension for disruptive and disobedient behavior? Mr. Williams, in the state. Excuse me, sorry. And instead substitute a restorative justice or positive change approach. Those are approaches that focus on the individual and the situation and what is needed to restore relationships. Mr. Williams. As I stated in my opening, I'm not a fan at all of zero tolerance policy. I think that that's something that we should be looking at not only in the schools but as a city. We have to find ways to look more at individuals, find ways to meet individual needs. When you look at schools directly, I can use my own personal son as an example. Little things like if his cell phone pops out of his pocket, they wanna suspend them for stuff like that. And what if there's an issue going on where there's a family member who's having a, it's hospitalized or there's a very particular issue and those things happen as you know, my son is suspended from school. Those type of things are going on right now. And so I do think that we need to again move away from the zero tolerance policies. Now I don't wanna mistake that for, we don't wanna have discipline. I don't wanna mistake that for, we wanna allow chaos in schools or in the streets. There has to be a balance. But just outright zero tolerance policies, I'm not a fan of it. And I would do things to try to end that and I already work on things to try to end that. Thank you. One of the programs I was involved in in 1988 and beyond was the New Futures Initiative, which was a $20 million grant that we worked on with this community to identify as many of the non-school problems that children had, primarily middle school, and then address those problems so that when they came to school, they would be able to concentrate more on the academic process. And as a director of that program, primarily working with Ralph Woodlite Kaiser, I entered a program called Evening Institute. So when children were doing things that they shouldn't be doing in school, I gave their parents an option as opposed to them being suspended for three days or staying at the school for three days, three hours. In those three hours, they got three things. First thing they got was remediation in terms of their schoolwork. The second thing they got was conflict mediation training from the police department on a voluntary basis. And we fed them. And the other thing that they got called community service, where they had to walk around with a custodian and clean up inside and outside the building. Now, 99% of the parents opted for that option because when you suspend the child and they get behind in school, then when they come back, they're still behind. Now, the answer to your question, there are a lot of options out there. Those options cost money. And as we have gone through the process right now where we are, well, in the fourth decision, some 17 years ago from the Supreme Court that said we shouldn't fund schools the way that we do, schools have had to readjust their budgets to address issues dealing with testing. That bill should be supported. And if not supported, we should work on the kind of things in this community that are going to benefit our community. The schools go along with the city. There's no great school system in a poor community. There's no great city that has poor schools. So if you think there's one that don't happen without the other, it ain't happen. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Mr. Brear. My sets of the so-called powers that be the decision makers, the policy makers. They have to be changed because their mindsets are set to where those same principles and practices of those standards you take an initiative such as zero tolerance and it's turned around and used against people. It's a facade for those that are chose to be left behind. The mere fact that there was a law called leave no child behind, it was really a slap in the face because they have a design to leave children behind based on the demographics in the areas they live in, the type of economics that are in certain communities. It's the mindset still goes back and it's tied into institutionalization and systemic racism. See, those components are the cancers of our society. And that's why I speak of visibility, exposure and accountability. We have to expose those things, have a dialogue about it so that we can address it as opposed to just pushing it under the rug and act like it doesn't exist. Communication is key. Holding people accountable to what they're responsible for is another significant ingredient and we have to commit to working together to implement these changes because until we do that, we will continue at the same pace in place we are. Thank you. Thanks to Wagner. You know, I'm not gonna get my whole story out about what happened at Allen Classical Academy. So there's a young lady back here in Marie. I wrote about it in this week's city paper. You can pick a copy up and you'll get the chance to read the whole story. One of the parts of that story though is that not just that the suspensions were dropped and suspensions were reduced but the big changes that happened in the school. When you're not suspending kids, kids stay in school and they learn. When they stay in school and they learn, they do better. Allen Classical Academy over that five year period went from testing on national tests in the 36th percentile to the end of the five years testing in the 62nd percentile. Now I fully support Senator Charlida Traveras's, I'm Senate Bill 167 because she has shown not only what is happening with her kids but she's shown that it just is not necessary to have zero tolerance policies. About 6% of our suspensions in Ohio are done on kids that have reacted violently or brought drugs into school. About 80% of kids who are being suspended because of act talk, disrespect or minor infractions that have to be dealt with but do not require a suspension. And unless we deal with those kinds of minor infractions in a more productive way, we are not going to be able to find ourselves keeping kids in school. If we don't keep kids in school, kids do fall behind and if they fall behind once, one suspension, if they fall behind, they will pay the devil to catch up for the rest of that year and probably for the rest of their lives. That's why we have to change the systems. Mr. Stiles. Realistically, the city commission is not going to be able to tell Superintendent Ward, Mr. Lawrence, what to do about this. This is their ballet wig, this is the school board's ballet wig. But what we have to do is work together to turn this into a true learning community and make sure that every Dayton Public School student, every young citizen in this city has the power and the tools to lift themselves out of poverty and the ability to grow and develop the skills that are going to need for this century, not last century. To that effect, I think it's time that we do some things that are innovative that are going to bring people back into this community and make them want to live here. Instead of spending money on speculative real estate or blowing up buildings downtown, we could invest in our students and get every one of them a digital device. We could build a Wi-Fi system throughout our entire city. They did it in Estonia in 2002. That's how far behind we are. You've just read that L.A. Public Schools bought everybody iPads and they're all worried about what the kids see online. I'm worried about what the kids don't see when they can't get online. I want to make sure every student has an opportunity to get online and teach themselves if they can't be taught in the schools. And to give you two examples of that, one, MIT just admitted a 16-year-old from Mongolia. How'd they find him? He maxed a class online that he took on circuit design. Not very many people got 100% on it. 16-year-old kid from Mongolia has a better chance of getting an MIT and better internet access than kids in West state. That's wrong. I think we can fix that. So let's look at things that we can do to make massive change. And one of the other things I've been working on with Superintendent Ward and a few other people is actually looking at a residential school, a boarding school type environment because some kids need to be out of the households they're in and be in an immersive environment. And that option is not available here in Dayton and I've got people working together and connecting them to make that happen. Thank you. I'm sorry, Mr. Stoddy. I'm sorry. I didn't quite question your answer. Will you support Senate Bill 167? Absolutely. Thank you. Not that we have anything to do with it. Yes, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Thank you. As I mentioned in my opening, I was on the board to look into the Iddings Foundation with positive behavior, PBC, that was mentioned in the question. And we found it was data-driven through five schools in the city of Dayton and we found that when those efforts happened that more kids were in school, they learned better, they had less school suspensions and the culture of the school was all around improved. Now to Dayton Public Schools' credit, my understanding is that they took this testing, it was data-driven and did this across all of the schools in the city of Dayton. And so they should get a lot of credit for that. It was an honor to serve on that and to learn a lot about what positive behavior change can do in schools. It's a good best practice. So I would be supportive of Senate Bill 167 and I appreciate the question. Thank you. Next comment, schools today rely on law enforcement rather than teachers and administrators to handle minor school misconduct, growing numbers of school districts, employed full-time police officers or school resource officers to patrol elementary, middle and high school hallways with little or no training in working with youth. These officers approach youth as they are adult perps on the street rather than children at school. The explosion of school-based arrests cannot be attributed to an increase in youth violence. The question is, what role should the city of Dayton police officers play in the safety and security? What would you support a Dayton police policy of limiting the arrest of kids at school to violent behavior only, Nan Whaley? You know, we have talked more about it with the Dayton public schools about how we can be more collaborative with Dayton police officers in the schools for people to see positive role models in the schools for us to really work to make sure that we can have some of our young kids think about being police and firefighters. And so that's the conversation that we're having not about zero tolerance but how can we really have some folks in there so that they can see and model that behavior for them to take the test and be thinking about being a police and a firefighter. So that's where we're really more focused on. That's the position that we've had conversations with Dayton public. Obviously, when Dayton public has an issue and they need police, we're obviously there to answer that, but it's really in the school's hands on what they need from the city of Dayton. So is that, no, you don't. Well, I mean, I think we would have to work with Dayton police and the Dayton public schools. I don't feel comfortable with us saying this is our policy without having the conversation with Dayton public schools. Thank you. David is right. Let's see. We don't have enough police on the streets, so somehow we're gonna have police in the schools. I don't think that's gonna happen. I think you just need to go down in front of our brand new school building, which we all call E.J. Brown, but they now like to call it Edwin Joel Brown, where we have a brand new basketball court. But we took the rims down. Took the rims down from a brand new basketball court because supposedly we had too many problems with fights and gangs and this, that and the other thing. That's not the school's problem. That's where we need police, where we can work with the kids, police athletic leagues, we need to have coaches, parks and supervisors. We need to have people out working with our children. That ain't happening. And when kids are left on their own with no structure, no programs and no basketball nets or no rims, that's what you have. You start having problems. We've got our focus entirely wrong in this city. We're busy worrying too much about vacant buildings and buying new buildings and building buildings for companies that haven't come and giving tax abatements to other buildings that we forgot about providing for our kids. When I go up to Hickorydale Park at the end of Hillcrest and I gotta go whine back on a road back behind a stand of trees where no one can see what's going on back there to find a basketball court. That's pretty sad. And when we can have the chain link fence stolen off the tennis courts with nobody catching it, that's even worse because we don't care about providing for our kids and giving them opportunities. We need to change that. We need to have, work it so that the kids feel comfortable with our police officers and that there's interaction, that they're not so busy running from crime to crime and they can spend the time with the kids. So, you know, let's talk about what we really need to fix in our community first. Instead of talking about paratheticals because that's what we're talking about right here. All right? We need more police officers on our streets. We need them doing the right things and we need our hoops up. Thank you. I would like to point out that we already have 31 police officers in Dayton schools, licensed police officers with the power to arrest and the power to that work within the school. So, That's a nice appropriation of funds. Oh, God, I just want to point out that it's not a hypothetical. Are you going to correct me at every chance you get, Ms. Randall? Yes, if the facts are incorrect. Well, if you give me that fact beforehand, Ms. Randall, we wouldn't have that problem. Would you? Okay, thank you. Go ahead. They're not police officers. Okay. Thank you. They're not police officers. The mere thought of these officers, some that have been retired police officers, creates the fear factor that exists in our society and has existed for a long time based on those bad apples of law officers that existed over time. So that has not gone away. We do not consider the moral ethics associated with cultures. And what I mean by that is that exists so to have a conglomeration of retired police officers who are arresting kids for minor things. We don't even consider the fact that until a child was 18, they were treated as a juvenile. We've gotten away from that. The mindset is that they're all criminals based on how we've been inundated and force fed through our media about our children. We have more children that's doing what's right than those that are not. But we don't hear about that. So it's a misnomer associated with whether or not a child, regardless of what the infraction was, should be arrested or some other minimal disciplinary action taken by our system, inclusive of those security officers that are in the schools. Understanding that because of things that have happened in the schools, we've got to have a certain level of security. I mean, that's a given. We have to do that. But we need to look at how many ex-police officers we do put in our schools. Thank you. Thank you. I need to really make a clarification. As an organization, we met with Dayton Public Schools two new heads of safety and security, both of whom are retired police officers. One is Jamie Bullens, the retired police officer from Dayton. His assistant is a retired police officer from Troutwood. And of that meeting, they admitted that all of the school resource officers are actually trained as police officers by the state of Ohio Attorney General's Office. So you have a different leveling of police officers while they don't carry guns. They are technically police officers. And that's exactly what we were saying. They are 31 of them in Dayton Public Schools. AJ Wagner. Superintendent shaking her head now. Okay, Mr. Wagner. Mr. Wagner, please. Thank you. We haven't finished. We're mixing them up. We're mixing them up. Yeah, we got you. We'll get back to you. I am confident that properly trained police officers, security officers, school officers can handle school situations without arresting and without sending every kid off to jail who has an infraction. I say that because I think that a well-trained officer understands these things and can do those things. Now, what you have to watch for is that officer who, well, it's the same, every, to a hammer, everything's a nail. And you don't want, of course, officers going off every time a kid's smartmouths them and saying the solution to this is to put you in cops and take you downtown. But with proper training, with proper restraint and exercise and care and understanding, that's not going to happen. I would hope that the officers are not just a pot of certified, or a police officer training academy certified, but that the officers who get into the schools are also trained otherwise with John's psychology and other courses that make them help them understand what kids need and what kids want. I happen to have a brother in law who took over as a principal for a high school that where suspended kids went to, and this was in the city of Pittsburgh, in the city of Pittsburgh. And when he took over, he told stories about how the school just punished everything and everybody. That if you were in trouble, they didn't give you your food. You were, if you got in trouble, your smartmouth or you caused some kind of look at somebody strange, you would get arrested. And what he found out was that he could work much better with the students. He actually took the police officers and told them to stand outside the door. Don't come into school. And he found much better results with the kids once he took away that intimidation. I don't know if that's a little solution or not, but it's a bottom. Thank you. Mr. Ma'am, you're next. I'm so apologize. I'm so anxious to answer that question. I won't be left out. Prior to my being on the dating school board, the district had cut out music, R.P. at the elementary level and all the high school sports with the exception of football, basketball and track. And I had to be on the board and then I'd become a board president, hired a couple of superintendents, this board was one of those. We looked at some data that clearly indicated that during the time that we had eliminated those activities for children, we had a 20% increase in suspensions for negative behavior, both at the high school and elementary school. Now the rationale that was given to the board at the time was that we need to save $180,000. When we also lost an additional 200 children at high school level, because they transferred out to other schools at $7,000 each, we basically lost $1.4 million in effort to save $180,000. Oftentimes the pressures on leaders forced them to do some things that they don't intend with the consequences to happen as they do. When we look at across this nation that three years ago, Ohio's graduation rate, or let me rephrase that, the dropout rate for African-American males was 40%, we break 49, let me rephrase that. We ranked 49th in the nation for African-American male dropout rate just three years ago. Now that's not a dating problem by itself, that's a state problem and mainly issues that we deal with are at the state level and some at the federal level. If you don't have the clout, the expertise and the issue in terms of understanding where those problems are coming from and understand that it is by design that they're not fixing school funding. There's no mystery that suburban schools do better, rural schools do better than that and then urban schools do worse because of the economic issues that are associated with us. If we as a community can't get our children ready for kindergarten, then we're behind about four years before they even start. Thank you. Mr. Williams. All right, thank you. Let me just state, I was not part of the school board that Mr. Williams was talking about to get that money out. That was not me, okay? Hopefully I can remember the question because it was a good question and the answers have been everywhere, so I don't know. Do you want me to repeat that? I think I'm pretty good on it, I think I'm pretty good. I think the question was, would we like to see dating police officers in the schools? And I think there's been some confusion on the question, but I would just say in terms of current certified dating police officers, that would not be my desire to see them in the schools right now. Thank you. That's not to say. I would like to see them in the schools though, to try to help build relations with our young people. And I think, I don't know how many of you guys are aware of this. I mean, I really believe we are at the beginnings of a real movement in the city of Dayton where Robert McCory is a part of that and some others, where we are trying to break down some of the barriers that exist between how our young people feel about the police and quite frankly, how the police feel about some of our young people. And there's a lot of work going on with that from block parties to just talking one-on-one, trying to get them into schools, trying to encourage them to want to be police officers themselves. And it's a tough job. I mean, we really have a lot of work to do here. So do I want to see police officers arresting young people? Absolutely not. Do I want to see young people in our schools try and encourage them and build that relationship up? Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you. Black students are disproportionately represented at every stage of the school to prison pipeline. African-Americans students are far more likely than their white peers to be suspended, expelled, or arrested for the same kind of conduct at school. In 2012, African-American youth made up 64, approximately 64% of the Dayton public school population, but accounted for about 80% of the out-of-school suspensions. The disciplinary actions, there are per hundred students, where 60.9 per hundred students for black students and 28.6 per hundred students for white students. These statistics indicate a substantial racial disparity in disciplinary action in Dayton public schools, particularly regarding black students. What is your explanation for these statistics and what do you believe the solution is to remedying this issue and what role can the city play? We know that a lot of the school board, that the remedying these issues is housed in the school board, but the question becomes what role can the city play in remedying it? AJ? Mr. Wagner. Thank you, Professor. If I'm fortunate enough to become mayor of the city, I want to work very closely with Superintendent Lord and with the schools. And if they ask for my help, I want to be able to help and assist them in any way possible. I don't, frankly, don't know how as a mayor, I would be able to interfere in the school's operation to that level, to that detail, in that way. Certainly, as complaints come in or people tell me about problems, I would relate those to the superintendent. I would relate those to the folks at the Dayton City Schools. But in terms of actually having a program other than the one I mentioned and that you can read about in the Dayton City paper right here. Other than that, I don't want to interfere with the operation of the schools. I don't want to run the schools. I want to run the city. I want to solve the city's problems. I would hope that Superintendent Lord will tell me if there are any problems and issues I can help. But she doesn't probably want to run the city either. So I would probably stay away from that. Mr. Malmuss. Thank you. That is extremely alarming. And again, unfortunately, it hasn't gotten better. And like I said earlier, for those who are making some of the laws, there's no intent for it to get better. When we look at how we have redefined education to be test scores, and at the same time reduce the amount of resources that school districts and communities have to make things happen for their people, then they have a hard issue in which they have to have to balance. The teacher evaluations are on test scores. The principal evaluation on test scores. And it's challenging because of the fact that a lot of the kinds of things that build the kind of character, hope, dreams, and visions that children need to have to move through the process have been eliminated. We cannot mandate achievement. And when children don't see any way of getting the head by doing something right, then unfortunately they fall into that trap of doing something wrong and therefore that data that you talked about begins to accumulate. Both of my children graduated from DPS. And both of my children are very successful because of the quality education they got in raising this community in this community. And both have more degrees than I have and they both make more money than I do, which I think is good, okay? They don't have to ask me for money. But the issue that I see after being in Dayton all these years, we don't have what our children need now that we had for our children 10, 15, and 20 years ago. A lot of the adults are afraid to address children and correct their behavior, even sometimes when it's minor behavior, because they're not sure how they're gonna respond. And then if you don't correct minor behavior, then that behavior gets to be major behavior. We don't trust each other the way we used to trust each other. I like to tell you that you see that and you know that every day. The issue in terms of those who have the responsibility for overseeing our community and our children have a multitude of challenges. And I say, in closing. Thanks for that. We'll get back to you. Treat our kids the way you want them to do yours. Okay. That's right, Mr. Williams. All right. In terms of those statistics, they are alarming. And they're not only at the school level, they're in society. If you go back to the 80s, I believe I saw a statistic. One in 53 Americans were in the jail of N-50 Penal System. In the early 2000s, it was one in 32. I don't have the most current, but I do hear the most current for African-American males. One in three have been in prison or been some part of the prison system. One in three. And so it's not just a school issue. This is a mindset that we have and it gets back to the zero tolerance issue. So I think if there's anything that we can do differently is we do need to move away from this zero tolerance mentality that's throwing people either, suspending our young people while they're in school or putting our young adults in jail. We have to get away from that. And so to me, it's all a part of us getting back involved and not trying to treat people like numbers. Data and technology is good on one hand, but the bad part is it allows people with decisions to sit back in a tower or a room and they don't get out and interact with people enough and they just look at numbers and reports. We have to get back involved with people. So one of the things, but just on a personal level, I enjoy being a city commissioner and certainly we have to make decisions based on policy and reports and numbers, but I really enjoy my most fun is getting into the community, being a part of the community. I still try to make time to coach young people, still find time to go to and give money and help people when they have to go to the debut times and bowtie and it gets expensive, by the way, but it's necessary. We have to be a part of that. We can't hide. We have to help our young people and they have to see us and we have to be visible and we can't treat everybody like a report and never get out and be a part of the community. So I think that's part of the solution. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Esradi. Let's see. When I went to jail, I was smiling when they took my mug shot. That doesn't happen for most people. I knew why I went there. I was standing up for my rights, standing up for your rights, your right to speak at the State Commission meeting and I learned a lot through that experience. I learned that we do not have a justice system. We have a legal system and that legal system is messed up. The big part of the reason it's messed up is money and politics. I'm sorry. When it takes $260,000 to get 5,000 votes in a primary to run for the mayor and the job only pays $45,000 here, something's wrong and we have to put an end to it. So here I am with my $10,000 campaign. I can't get bought out. I can't get sold. I've raised almost $9,000. I'm just like this close to $9,000. I'm gonna hit my $10,000 goal and I've also had people donate basketball nets and basketball rims of which three I put up at Princeton. But you know, we got problems in this country and they are not gonna get changed by talking about these statistics until we get to the real statistics that are the base root of the problem. Base root of the problem is Congress has bought and sold. Our governorship has bought and sold. Our mayoral candidates are running on money from outside the community and they're focused on doing things that are not in the best interests of our community. We gotta change that. We got so many people in prison because we don't stand up for our rights. And our rights should be equal access to things like the internet, to schools, to books, to have a neighborhood that's safe and secure and that has not been an emphasis that's been around here. And we're gonna go around and change that and we're gonna start out with a $10,000 campaign for city commission. Thank you. Mr. Chair. I feel the percentiles associated with statistics are just as suspect as those other things that we force fair, like polls. You hear the results of polls all the time, but I don't get called, they don't ask me, you know? So who are they calling? I don't know what these polls are, you know? So, you know, so that's the same principle as it's associated with the double standards that exist in our society. You know, with our kids, how are you going to let a one group of people come up with this equation that gives you some statistics that they have to meet in order for funding to go that way or in order for them to obtain a certain grade level, you know? It comes out of the air. It's no different to me. It's no different than the betting line that is published in the newspaper every day. You know, it's like, it's a game. You know, I don't get it, you know? How can you tell me that just because this company came up with these statistics based on benchmarks and other equations that goes into it to say that these individual children fall beneath where they need to be as far as being educated. Not only is it unfair to our children, it's unfair to our educators who, because they love to teach is why they're in it. But their hands are tied because there's so many different directives and parameters that does not allow them to teach the children like they want to with the love they want to teach them with. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Whaley. I think that Commissioner Williams probably had the best answer to this, that the mayor and the commission can lead by really changing the culture of zero tolerance and how we treat each other in the community. One of those examples we just saw this year was the Stand Your Ground Law and how it is disproportionately affects African Americans than whites. And that's a good example of how a law that's deemed fair isn't really applied fairly across the board. And to that end, the commission stood up and said we're against House Bill 203. We were the first commission in the state of Ohio, the first local government to send a resolution up. I heard Toledo just passed one this past week to stand up and say, this kind of action isn't right. And we want laws that will be not written to look fair but are actually fair. I think that that's really what's key. And that's what the commission and the mayor can really do is they can provide that kind of leadership and those kind of conversations in the community to make sure that we are actually doing what we want to happen in our community and our community to look that way. So I think Commissioner Williams had the best answer on this is that's how the city commission and the mayor can really work to make a difference in the suffer. Thank you. So one final comment is that there is no evidence that blacks actually misbehaved to a greater degree than white students. They are however punished more severely often for behaviors that are less serious. Minority students with disabilities are particularly vulnerable since many schools regard jail as a default special education, placement for poor and minority children, African-American students with disabilities are three times more likely to receive short-term suspensions than their white counterparts and more than four times likely to end up in correctional facilities. When we're getting to the closing comments part of this section and before we go into that I want to, we purposely planned it from like six to seven thirty to leave time so that you can meet individually one on one and to meet the candidates and ask them any kind of questions you want specifically. We have refreshments if you like cookies that we will put out. So once we finish the closing comments we'll break and then the candidates will be around for you to be able to talk to and answer questions. Before we do that I want to thank all of many organizations that help us put this together. We had the Adams Project which has been at the forefront of the mass incarceration for a very long time, the Black Men's Think Tank. I want to thank the students for my race and racism and the law class that I'm teaching this semester who helped with the questions and you're going to get your credit, huh? I want to thank the Wesley Center and but I especially want to thank the nation of Islam. We started meeting two months ago and the nation, at every meeting the nation well people came in and out. The nation of Islam was there every meeting with a representative to help us and so I really want to thank them for that. Thank you all for coming. Thank you for putting on this forum. It's really important. We all need to spend more time working on this very, very important issue. If I'm reelected and I hope I am, I guarantee you I will continue to work on this. This is something that's a really big passion of mine and I really enjoy working with folks in the community. I often say that one of the greatest economic development tools we can have, one of the greatest things that we can do to improve schools, one of the greatest things we can do to make Dayton a better place to live is to improve, it's improved, make Dayton a safer place and make it improve it from a crime perspective. When I talk about crime, I don't talk about it from that zero tolerance perspective. I'm not talking about it from a police state at all. I'm talking about it from a less joined together with police, other jurisdictions, community groups like the Adam Project, groups like SERV, group that we've started like CPC, all churches, individuals, this has to be a community-wide effort. And I think that from the city commission seat, that's something that we have some control over. I feel for the schools right now. I feel for some of the mandates they have to deal with. I don't know if you guys know about the third grade guarantee and if young people don't pass the third grade test, they can be held back. That's putting a lot of pressure on not just only young people, but our teachers and administrators and our superintendent. It's tough. But I do think from the city commission chair, what we can do is do everything we can to make sure our city is as safe as possible in the right and fair way. Again, not as a police state, not as a zero tolerance area, but as an area where we all work together and work with individuals, community groups, churches, not just a city of Dayton, but Troutwood, Sheriff's Department, all of us as we've been doing and we're seeing some results. And if I'm reelected, I promise you're gonna keep working those results. So please remember me, Jolly Williams, for re-election. Thank you for being here. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Estah. Let's see, there's three words I think that are real important. Pride, respect, and dignity. And by the way, if it sounds like I'm yelling, this is the command voice I learned in the army to use when I'm speaking to large groups. I wanna make sure everybody can hear me. So I'm not yelling at you. I'm not angry. I'm just making sure my voice carries. But pride, respect, and dignity. And I don't think those have been shown in our community to the people that live here. I don't think it's respectful when you have to wait for a police officer because we spent money blowing up a building downtown and we didn't have money for the police officer. Or at least we said we did. Or we spent four or $5 million collecting real estate for Kroger without a contract. Or when you've got a guy like James Kent who lives in my neighbor, who has a business in my neighborhood where he hires ex-cons and trains them to deconstruct houses keeping 80% of the material out of the landfill. And he sits there with his hands out saying, give me another contract that they're hemming and hawing. And in the meantime, making change orders for half a million dollars on a $130,000 contract to a company from Bellbrook. It's a construction company. Something's wrong there folks. These people right here that take all the big money from who knows where, landfill operators, demolition contractors, that's who they're working for. It's gotta stop. It's time to put a stop to the pay to play and the friends and family plan in the city of Dayton which has been ruining this community. You know what's happening. You know what's been happening. And it's got to stop. When we took South Park and we stopped worrying about the houses and we started worrying about the people building community and bringing our people together, our property values went up. People wanna move in. They buy the houses that have been destroyed and they fix them up. It is possible to bring our city back. But it's not possible when you've got commissioners that are more worried about raising money for their next campaign than worrying about making sure that you are taken care of and protected. So wake up people. Thank you very much. David, that's Ronnie. Mr. Manns. Thank you. You know me and I have a record in this community for addressing the need to this community. Primarily dealing with our young people and then moving forward. Been involved in a variety of things as I mentioned before in bringing 20 million dollar grant to this community. Being the chief lobbyist to bring 628 million dollars to this community to build all new schools. Working on the race to the top application to assist the cooperation between our teachers association and our school board and superintendent to make good things happen as far as learning from children is concerned. My concern is a commissioner. The same as it's been as a state board member. The same as it's been as a Dayton board president. The same as it was when I was union president. The same as it was when I was political action advisor in the how education association has always been to improve the quality of life for people especially little people. And those little people now have grown up to be big people. Joy Williams, one of my former students, Mr. Bogan over there. And I'm glad that I talked them well because I would not want to wrestle with them now. But the issue that I raised with you is that there are multiple answers to this very complex set of problems that we're dealing with. And far too often we talk about the symptoms of the problem as opposed to the problem itself. The issue in terms of how we create the conditions in this community that we want our children to grow up and experience how we create the conditions in this community say how would I want to be treated if a police officer stopped me? Okay. How would I want them to address my child, my friend, my cousin if they stopped them? So we have to work on creating those kind of conditions. Community policing, having police work in the schools as a collaborative person with young people not carrying guns, many with the wine who is the state prosecutor. It's not a good thing. Mike DeWine. Mike DeWine. It's not a good thing. However, he did agree at the state board meaning that we do not need to have weapons being carried by teachers or policemen in schools. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Mr. Greer. Thank you very much for all those who contribute to this forum being put on. I love you for it. The majority of you out in the audience, I've been working with you for years. A plethora of things that I've done, being the voice for the people. And because of the fact that we've got so many territorial barriers in our respective organizations it gets in the way of us keeping it real. And that's what we have to do. We have to commit to keeping it real and making the changes that are necessary, especially when it comes to our kids. Yes, you have to have organizational structure, but you have to also keep the moral ethics involved in it. You have to stand for what you believe in. Whether you're city commission or mayor, school board, you still have to keep the righteousness of what you believe in in the forefront of the mechanism that you're associated with. So when I'm elected city commissioner, I'm gonna work hard to make sure that those barriers and that the teamwork and working relationships with all the entities in our city works together without there being any type of controversy, adversity or anything with negative connotations. Because that's the only way we're gonna get it done and make a change. David K. Greer, November the 5th for city commission. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Greer. Thank you so much. Just want to thank the organizers for this event. I appreciate the chance to have a conversation specifically around schools. I have to be honest, I did learn a lot from your statistics that I didn't know as a city commissioner since we don't control date in public schools, obviously, but I think there is ways that the commission and the mayor can really work to provide leadership and collaboration with the entire community. And as commissioner, I've been proud of the work we have done, creating fair hiring policies for ex-offenders, working to really make sure that we have opportunities for jobs, for folks that have been on the other side of the pipeline, and we have lots of work to do. And it's not easy work, especially with the tough job situation we have in the city. So that's why it's so important that we work to create jobs. That's why I put together a jobs plan that's on my website at nandwaylee.com that works around our eight assets in the city to really work to leverage jobs. Because when we have jobs, it provides more opportunities for everyone in the city. It helps kids because their parents don't have to worry about getting food on the table. It helps those that give self-esteem, and it just makes the community stronger. So that's really something that I would really focus on as mayor. I'm asking for your support on November 5th. You can vote every day from eight to four right now at the board of elections at 451 West 3rd Street right at the county building. So please get your vote done, and thanks for this opportunity to come and talk about this issue. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Wagner? Thank you. You vote every day, but just do it once, okay? Um, you know, here's my lived experience as a judge. There is rampant discrimination in our legal system. My lived experience was watching young men, in particular, and young women stand before me, and seeing young men and women who were from the city, who were poor. 80% of those that stood before me were poor, and very disproportionately African-American. There are as many drugs in Oakwood and Vendalia, in Centerville as there are in Dayton. And I'm going to see those votes. We have discrimination in our capital punishment laws. Huge discrimination and discriminatory effects, just as we're talking about in the school-to-prison pipeline. We have discrimination in the way we enforce the laws. If we're serious about ending it, we have to overturn some of the laws that already exist. The worst decision ever made by the Supreme Court of the United States, the worst, was called McCluskey, and I don't remember versus who, but it was McCluskey. In that case, and it was a capital punishment case, in that case, the court basically said, we don't care about your statistics. We don't care about whether you see large numbers of African-Americans being killed through the death penalty, large numbers of African-Americans four times as many, as you'll see whites, proportionately. We don't care about that unless you can prove that in this particular case, these folks were deliberately discriminating. In other words, show us what's in their mind. And you can't do it. The only way you can prove discrimination is by the numbers. And that decision said you can't look at the numbers. You have to look at individual people in cases. We have to change our laws. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I want to thank you all for coming out. Thank you so much for coming out.