 So, I wonder if you can just keep an eye on that I'll keep it I'll try to keep an eye on it to Jennifer. And I just am asking Yvonne if they can make it. Before we get started. Right, let me see if I can find Dr. Shabazz here. He's here. He is. Oh, okay. I'm promoting him now. Perfect. All right. Good. Hi, Dr. Shabazz. Hello, I may be rejoining by my computer looks like we might have worked the work the kinks out. Great. Okay. Excellent. So let's go ahead and get started then recording is going. Welcome everyone to the April 4th meeting of the African Heritage Reparation Assembly. Pursuant to pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021. This meeting will be conducted via remote means members of the public who wish to access the meeting may do so via zoom or by telephone. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted. But every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time via technological means. So, before we recognize some folks that are here with us, I'd like to just go through and make sure that everybody can be heard and can hear us and Thank you. You get me on that one every week. I think I think I got it right last week. So let's start with you, Dr. Rhodes. I'm here. Excellent. Hala. Yes, thank you. Excellent. Ivan. I'm here. Thank you. Yep. And Alexis. Here. Dr. Shabazz. Right now we can't hear you, Dr. Shabazz, but I know you're having some technical difficulties. So we'll, we'll check back in with you. And Paul. I'm here. Thank you for inviting me. Thank you. And that's what I want to start with is welcoming you, Paul. Thank you for being here. I would like to recognize a couple other folks as well that are here with us. We have our new Crest director, Earl Miller is here with us. And we also have Jennifer, could you just say quickly what Abdallah Galini does. If they are also here with us. Yes, he's our implementation project manager for the Crest program for the Crest program. Excellent. And then we have our council president Lynn Greismar here. And let's just quickly. So thank you for, for joining us. Just wanted to recognize those folks. And since we are moving pretty quickly here, we have designated an hour for this meeting and we do have another item to cover. Right into our first item here, which is a presentation. We're very excited about this. This is a presentation coming from Kerry Spitzer and Susan straight of the Donahue Institute, and they will be presenting the results of the black African American census that we've contracted with them for. So I'm going to bring both of them into the room. I do see Kerry but I'm not seeing Susan, but let's bring Kerry in and then we'll ask. There she is. Hi Kerry. Good afternoon. Nice to see everyone. So Susan was intending to join us so I, but she may have gotten stuck cut up in some other work so if it's possible for somebody to keep an eye out if she does have the ability to join us. Absolutely, I will keep my eye out and I do not see her right now but I will promote her if I do see her. Okay, I'll send her message to. Okay, great. Thank you, Kerry. I want to recognize that Kerry is a former school board committee member and resident of Amherst and now working at the Donahue Institute. And we've been working closely with her and her team. And so I'm going to just go ahead and hand it over to you unless would you like to wait a minute to see if Susan can join us. No, I think we should go ahead. Right. I think you need sharing screen. Do you can you do you see the ability to share screen. I believe I do so I'm going to, I think I'll just start off with some introductory remarks I did not prepare a PowerPoint or anything but I do have the maps available to share with everybody so I was going to focus more on how to use the tools that we created so I'll just step back a moment introduced myself. My name is Dr. Kerry Spitzer I'm a research manager at the Donahue Institute. For those of you who aren't familiar with the Donahue Institute we do a lot of different things but I'm in the economic and public policy research group, and within that group, Susan Street is senior program manager for the population estimates for the state data center for census data from Massachusetts. So we were approached. Actually, I think a little bit before actually joined the Donahue Institute by this group to help share the 2020 census data, because we know that you're interested in better understanding where the black and African American population in Amherst lives, and also how that intersects with the student population and oh Susan had a confusion about the time start so hold on. She should be jumping in right now and it was probably my fault in telling her it was a long time. I'll get her thanks. Alright, so she said she's going to jump on now. So sorry for getting off track. And so today what I'll be sharing with you is the result of that project so we are using two data sources one is the 2020 PL 94 census data. And the other source is the American Community Survey data which also comes from the Census Bureau, but unlike the, the decennial census data it's survey based so it's a five year survey based estimate for the population. So I just want to kind of start off with some basic data about Amherst and then I'll be sharing with you the kind of more smaller lever geography, geographic analysis that we did. As everybody here probably is aware, Amherst has a population of about 39,000 individuals as of 2020 and about 23,000 of those residents are students either in college or graduate school. And according to the 2020 census data 16,000 of those residents lived in college storms, which by the census they've often refer to those as also as group quarters. Now, for all residents in Amherst overall black or African American population, either alone, meaning that when, you know, when you're asked on the census to check a box for your race either checked off black or African American alone, or in combination with any other race. So for the purposes of this project, we were looking at the population of the residents. And identified solely as black or African American or in combination with any other race so for all of the cases where I'm referring to the black or African American population that's the population I'm talking about so it could be in combination with other races. And so in Amherst there 3450 residents or about 9% of all residents, including students who identified as black or African American. So of those, we estimate that about 1500 live in blocks that are at least 90% or more college dormitories and obviously there are many more who are living off campus in student housing, or in rental housing. So what I'm going to do now is start by sharing the the tableau maps that we shared. And I was in conversation with Michelle that these can live on the African heritage reparation assemblies website, and also they will be hosted on the Institute's public tableau website. Alright, and I also share these by email with the folks whose emails I had so hopefully they can be circulated as well. So people can look at at home at a later date. So what you're looking at here this is the finest geographic level. This is block level data. So we have two maps here on the left. And please interrupt me if anybody has a question or make this a little bit bigger by any chance. That's what I was just wondering. I can definitely zoom in as we go like to specific levels and, but I'm not sure I have the ability to make it. Okay, that's looking for my zoom. So you made this full screen on your browser with that it is a full screen. It is okay. Yeah, that's okay yeah if you can just zoom as you go that would be great. So on the left. And first off to start this is all the census 2020 descent decennial census data so I'm just keep in mind this is two year old data but so what you're seeing here is at the block group you can see very clearly for anybody who's familiar with time these dark areas this is the Hampshire college campus. The Amherst college campus and then you can see UMass over here. As you zoom in you can select any one block, you can see the total the count of the population in college housing and the total population so for example, over here you can see that over 90 or 98% of the population is located in college storm you can see the tracked number and the block. And the nice thing is if you click on one of these it'll then bring up on the other side, the, the share black or African American alone or in combination with another race so you can see in this block here. Individuals were counted as being black or African American alone for in combination with another race out of the total population of 391. So the share is 7.2%. And as you can see, you know you can see the map layer underneath with details about where this is in town. Like on the home button, it should be bringing you back to the full map but sometimes I find actually need to refresh to get the full map. But as you can see on the college campuses are often darker shaded areas so if you look at Hampshire college right here, you can see that it is 14.7% of the populations living in dorms on Hampshire college is African American or black. I will know so one of the things to be wary of if you were like me and you decide to zoom in on your senses block and look at the population in that area, you're going to see numbers that potentially aren't what you expected and this is because the senses uses something called differential privacy to protect the identities of individuals and so they introduce noise to these estimates to allow for to prevent people from being able to zoom in on the, for example, the one African American family they know on their block and be able to connect that to other data potentially about their household status or their income that the census also collects. So this differential privacy may result in counts that are not what you necessarily would anticipate so I'd really encourage anybody using these maps to look at the patterns they see in the data, rather than to focus in on the exact counts that you're going to see in the data. The other thing I caution is that since Amherst, you know, is not the most densely populated town, you will notice for example up in this corner with the total population of 10 individuals and six identifying as black or African American alone. 60% of the population categorized as black or African American alone, or in combination with another race. I would just caution that at these extremely low population counts these numbers aren't that reliable so I would look at the patterns overall in town, and that should be more informative. I've also sent the team, all of this data in tabular format so all of the underlying data is also has also been delivered to the town, but I think one of the things I'd focus on here is that the population is fairly dispersed over town so I'm not seeing any areas that are particularly given what we know about segregation in the United States I'd say that this is not an extremely segregated map in terms of you're seeing the patterns over town. I would say that we are seeing a concentration of the black and African American population on the college campuses, but then some of these other areas where it's particularly dark from very low population counts so I would say again because of this differential privacy issue that I wouldn't necessarily have much weight in that though there are clearly areas in town with a higher share of the population, and it also said that there are places here that are represented it's having zero population as black or African American and it's very likely that there are actually folks who identify as black or African American living in these areas because of that differential privacy issue. So, this is the finest grain level of data and at this level. A lot of the other measures that people are interested aren't available so we also did block group level maps and combined this census 2020 data with data from the American Community Survey which is also put out by the Census Bureau but is survey data so there is, there is. As you find with any survey there are margins of error. And these maps represent what we the analysis we did at that level so the indicators that we were asked to look at how to do with again because there was a focus on trying to understand how the black and African American population over slapped with the student population one of the measures we looked at was the share of the population enrolled in college and that's on the extreme left. There's also an interest in looking at constant, excuse me concentrations of poverty so we use 200% of the federal poverty line as our measure. We also looked at the median household income in, and this is in $20 21. And finally, again, all the way on the right we have the share block or African American alone or in combination with another race. So here this is a larger geographic area so we have more people, but I would, again, make the same statement that this is survey data so there is some error. So I went it again I would not focus solely on the counts or the percents but more about the patterns across town. That's what I would really focus on. So again, you're going to see the college campuses really easy to point out we've got Hampshire, UMass and Amherst College and one thing I'll point out for that people living in group quarters. The census doesn't calculate a poverty rate for those individuals and doesn't collect their income data so that's why over here you don't see a poverty rate for the college campuses and you also won't see the median household income calculated for those areas. But one of the things the part of the reason we wanted to bring this data into is that one of the things that happens in Amherst is because we have so many students who are living off campus for whom the poverty rate is calculated. It can often make the town look like it has a higher than anticipated level of poverty and this is true in other college towns as well as something that's been well documented that college towns often appear to have much higher levels of poverty than comparable places. So again, I think you're going to see when you when you're looking at these maps again the higher concentrations of residents represent identifying as black or African American on the college campuses. But then again you can see here other parts of town. So if you just wanted to zoom in. Michelle and I were looking at these earlier so this here right above Hampshire College, which includes, let's say Long Meadow Drive, Glendale, you know this, you can look here and see the share is 14.6% so that's higher than the town average of 9%. And you can also look at slightly higher poverty. And a fairly low share of the population enrolled in college only 3.2%. So, depending on what your group schools were you might say like this looks like a neighborhood where we may want to do some extended community engagement, reach out to folks living on these streets and you were going to target the African American population who's not non student population living in the area this might be a good way of kind of identifying a neighborhood that you don't want to focus in on. Does anybody have any questions I'm happy to. I think the big thing I wanted to point out again is just that with these maps and as with using this and stand in general, you know it's, it's the best data we have but it's not perfect so I see questions I will let you call on folks though I know and. It doesn't matter but yes I saw first Dr Shabazz and then I saw Hala, and then I saw Dr Rhodes. So, let's go in that order. Thank you very much. This is one of these accounts since it's causing problems but I am looking at roughly speaking in the day in data from the from the three institutions of higher ed that has as roughly about 1000 students who identifies black African American. If Hampshire College has roughly 75, let us say that identify as of African heritage black African American and Amherst College and say 180 something 180 that identify that way. That's roughly about 1300. Now, for sure, not all of that 1300 lives in Amherst reside in Amherst, but that's a sizable number. At the same time the census data is telling us that the African American population of Amherst is about 2000, a little over 2000 people. So, I'm really trying to get at it. Anything from what you have so far helps us to understand how much of the 2000 or so listed in the census are year round residents are actually reside year round in the town of Amherst, and how many are students because right now by my look at it, more than 50%. Close to well over 50% of the number could be students who are not long term do not necessarily would not count as long time, long time, long term Amherst residents. Is there, is there any takeaway from what you've looked that can help us distinguish it on that account those that are residents, part of Amherst vote here are taxed here, and those that are not that live here more or less nine months and do not but do not consider this where they reside. And I think the one one point of clarification, because I think that's a really good question but I wanted to make sure because I my numbers are going to be a little bit higher than yours when I talk about the black or African American population and that's just because the, the numbers I'm using here are those who either checked off only the box black or African American on the census or in combination with any other races so if I checked white and black or African American population alone. I would have, I would have included those folks here so I have an estimate of 3450 residents in Amherst to identify as black or African American alone or in combination so, but then when I also look at so what I did. And then as we looked at the data on residents who lived in group quarters because I think that's the easiest way to kind of pull out those students who are living in dormitories, who are clearly, you know, not considering this their permanent residents they dormitories have been over the summer so there's no way that they're spending the summer here. And so roughly 1500 of those 3450 residents are living on dorm, in dormitories either at Amherst College Hampshire or or UMass so I think you're totally right that we need to, you know, it is a little share of the population that we're talking about who are students. Now I think beyond that I'm not and I look to Susan if she has anything to add here but I don't think there's much we can say about whether or not the folks are, you know, from the census data I don't think there's much we can say about their intentions You can look at who's enrolled in college or graduate school, and again it's about half it's it's we get at that same kind of ratio so I think you're right that about half of the residents, counted by the census are students and their connection to Amherst is, you know, I can't really comment in any more on that other than to kind of call out those who are living in dormitories and I think are clearly not year round residents. So do you want to add anything to that before we move to Dr. Rhodes or to Halana. No, well, maybe only that. The different sources never quite fully match up which is very frustrating for people trying to calculate it all out and trying to get very specific. The closest you can get from the census side is using that American community survey data. And what I would typically do is kind of look at the college student age groups and say you know what percent of these are enrolled in college or graduate school. You will have some overlap I mean there might be kids who grew up in Amherst who are also enrolled in college or graduate school in the community. To add to that additional confusion. Some college students don't fill out their form in the proper place they might fill it out at their parents home, which could be somewhere in eastern mass, even though technically they're living in Amherst most of the time so they're, they're all these kind of like slivers of overlap and confusion but I do think it is worthwhile to kind of do that second check as you have and kind of say now what are the administrative data sources tell us and just kind of look at them all lined up together and say like, is this giving me a reasonable picture I think that's very smart. Since you have that data. Thank you Susan and Hala. Yes, I'm not sure if this is a Donahue question, but I know from my. I lived experience that on the there's under reporting for the census that we use and then NBR also came out with a report. So, with the patterns. Dr. Spitzer you keep talking about would that help us to find the families that did not collect official census. Do you think. Yeah, and so I think the census has, has reported that they do under count black or African American populations along with, you know, other other demographic groups and over count other groups and so it's it's it is a it is a concern with the data. I mean, if you assume that the people because I think a lot of the undercount comes from folks. Some being unwilling to report to fill out the census but other reasons you know just people who may be more likely to be renters and therefore moving around or unless likely to be counted but Susan again is expert on this, but I guess what I'd be saying like from a perspective I guess if you assume that that on the likelihood of not filling out the census is evenly distributed across the population of African American or black residents and I do think this would kind of guide you on where to go now if it were concentrated in certain geographic areas then and then it wouldn't necessarily be a good use and I don't know if we have data to say whether or not to say which one of those scenarios is more likely to be the case. And I would say, you know, if you have local administrative data, telling you otherwise, I, you know, I would use that as a rich source of data. So some of the data sources that you might look to would include. If you have school enrollment data by race and ethnicity to do kind of like a comparison. If you have specific program enrollment data that you can look at. We've already heard about administrative data from colleges and universities, because, because certainly there is an undercount among that group. But then if you compare that against, you know, the census count is also used as a control total for the ACS. So you won't get any further comparing the ACS to the census data. But it, again, just if you if you have better local knowledge to use then that that would be recommended. It's just sometimes getting your hands on on those local administrative data records because as they should be these are also confidential and protected. Thank you. Susan and Kerry, I really, really appreciate this information. It's extraordinarily helpful for my end. And even when I look at the data and I said, well, if I use an error rate of 10, 15% is still extraordinary in relationship to the number of students. So that brings it back to you a question because I missed it, Kerry, when you were going through it in terms of the town as a total. How many residents are there and out of that number of residents, how many of those are students. Sure. So, um, the decennial census count for the census was 39,000 to a 263 residents in 2020. And the, I'm getting the American Community Survey for the number of students because that's the source we have so again these aren't totally apples and apples but that was about 23,000 college and graduate students in the town of Amherst. So over half. Yeah, that's an extraordinary number. By any means, and I think that most people in Amherst would find that shocking. But it is something that we really need to be aware of now. I think that, you know, given I've been in Amherst a long time that when there, there was a time where for economic reasons. Amherst wanted to count those students in and in terms of our total population for state and federal reasons. And those reasons still remain very viable in terms of why that occurred, but it's still something that is interesting for all of us. To be cognizant of is the tremendous amount of impact that the students have here in this town. And obviously, with that comes the impact, the positive and negative and also in terms of the contributions that they make to this town. We are student town. I do want to give Paul the opportunity to ask any questions he might have, but also checking in with Yvonne and Alexis. Do either of you have any questions. At this moment, the, you know, maybe still processing. Okay. So Paul, did you have any specific questions while Kerry and Susan are here. No, I think, I think Earth Plan is really important that the census numbers are important to the town in different ways, but that we need to understand who we are in terms of who we are as a town. We don't discount students because they are important part of our community. And so I think it's always important to recognize that. And also, I just really, you know, it'll be helpful when to see the numbers on the paper and to see the maps a little bit closer. I think that will that's important for me to really grapple with what you're coming up with. So thank you for this. Ivan. Yeah, I wanted to say that the data is thank you so much for sharing the data. It's, you know, it's, I opening actually I was ready writing some of the numbers and stuff down but you know my personal experience is that a lot of black and African American students come and they stay. And so they're enrolled, and their kids go like my like, which is what happened to me I moved here my, you know, I got married my kids went to school I ended up being a resident even though I would be enrolled I would have come up as enrolled. I'm at the time at Hampshire College so and I think that there's a difficult way. There is no real way to get at that, unless you're doing a special survey, and you know kind of gleaning information in that way that Susan talked about which was a local local knowledge. And some of that is just happenstance knowledge, you know, like, like, which would I mean if we did it as a committee if we did that kind of serving as a committee then it would be about figuring out a way to read that data and have it be clear enough, you know, concise enough, you know, like we're actually getting at some, but then again would it be worth it like how many how many people could we you know how how what a what a big impact would it make on the data that we already have. You know, so I think those are the kinds of questions that we need to ask is it, you know, would we be able to glean any significant impactful new information by doing anything that would be local. Yeah, and I think at our next meeting we'll have the opportunity to talk about what we want to do with this data and maybe put a list of questions together that we might have for Carrie and Susan. Before I go to you or I just want to recognize that a member of BAM, which is the Black Assembly of Amherst, Massachusetts Kathleen Anderson has joined us. And I also want to recognize that BAM is initially sort of the body that developed this idea of doing the black census for the town so I just wanted to acknowledge that. Err, please go ahead. Some things I really, it really would be helpful to have a summary of these findings, along with the added commentary in terms of the issues that could be attributed to the data so that people could look at. In other words, the limitations of the data but put put in summary form. We all can go through and summarize it and do it ourselves. But I think that when we put it out to this town, to the larger population, we really need to have a summary of it. So everyone can see it at a glance and then put down the limitations of that data. Secondly, I was struck by the fact that Carrie, when you were presenting some of the information, the neighborhood in which I live, Long Meadow Drive. And that whole area up there. That the numbers of African American that live there and that is largely single family homes in that area, except for a couple of apartment complexes, which was very interesting because that's something that because I walked in it was and I lived there so long. I've seen these changes over the years. And if anyone came in our neighborhood and walked it, you would be able to see that because we have a number of African Americans who live in that area who are single family homeowners. And it's something that I think was nothing that I was surprised at, but I think that a lot of other people would be surprised at that number. Thank you. Dr. Shabazz. So I'm on the data you institutes tableau for Massachusetts municipal summaries for Amherst and just wanted to come back to the way you got at this 3400 three over 3400 numbers so that's adding what you list as black alone with two or more races where one of those checked in that category of two or more race was was black or African American, and as well as some other race. No that was that's alone. So basically it's from the black alone, and the two or more races alone where black was one of the two or more. Is that where you came at you got to a 3400 number. That would be so if you're looking at the Donahue municipal summaries. Yes, and those are the, the races alone as as versus the races alone or in combination that they're because race alone, as I see it is 2382 is that correct. Black alone count. If you're viewing it on the website yeah that it would be right I don't have that number in front of me right now but whatever's on the Donahue state data center. Yes, summer. And so what we did. Sorry. And then, and then you're correct so then if you. So the person filled out their census form, and some people only checked off one block, you know whether. Sorry one check box whether it was black or Asian or white. Maybe they checked off more than one box. Maybe they checked off black and Asian and white. And so those get counted in the black alone or in combination. And then in the dashboard that you're looking at. Yes those those should have fallen into as, as you're deducing those should have fallen into the two or more race. So where it's where it's, it's, I'm looking at so at 2382 black alone to get from there to 3400 seems is telling me that the two or more racist count of 3636 that the black that that those that have black in that two or more racist count is a pretty substantial part of the 3636 in fact, at least half more than half of the 3636 to get us at 3400 from from well close to close to 50% maybe not. But but but a good chunk of that two or more races must actually have checked black as one of the, one of the races. Let's talk about right. I should probably review the way that the census Bureau did their race coding in 2020 again because that they've changed it from 2010, like in ways that might not be very intuitive, and a lot more people ended up in the some other race category as a result of it this time but but logically, the way you're describing it makes sense and, and the other thing to remember is that those are race alone or in combination groups for any particular block, they're going to add up to more than 100% of the people in that block. You might have, you know, 30% black alone or in combination. Plus another 50% Asian alone or in combination, plus another, you know 60% white alone or in combination and you know you'll look at that and be like hey that's more than all the people but because of all that the crossover in the self reporting. One other thing in terms of the, in an earlier discussion about the possibilities of this there was this idea that we could see by different districts or groups I don't know the exact term but within the map. We could begin to see where there might be different populations. So again, we may not see anything like Evanston in terms of its African American population being heavily concentrated in one particular district, but by virtue of the different areas that the Amherst, I like to think of it as a rectangle but the little Amherst rectangle. You mentioned that we might could see in different areas was it is there anything there where for this 2,400 black alone or 3,400 black plus others that we can, we can see some areas that are that are more heavily populated to know where we could direct postcards mailings or something like that. I think so. So, first off, you'll see the college campuses are clearly areas of concentration of the black or African American population. I think what, and I was highlighting, you know, that neighborhood in South Amherst on off of West Street as another area where the population is higher now where the only place I'd give caution is if you're looking at a block that has a very low population I just think I'd be cautious there but in some of these other blocks so I could share my screen again and I want to be conscious of the time to but And Carrie I recall you saying that you might have to leave what time did you have to leave by I probably should leave a few minutes before for just to pick up my son from school but so I love would be good but But so if you look here. I guess this is where Dr votes, he was saying, oh, it refreshed on me. And, but you can select here for example this block 4003 off of West Street has a 88 people counted as living here who are black or African American out of a population of 428 so share 20% and that's about the town average and might be worth conducting outreach in that area. And I would know, you know direct caution if you were going to go up here to this area that has a total population of 10 I wouldn't necessarily say that you should send out folks there. But I think if you go if you go across the town and you look at areas where the population is a little bit higher and you're seeing these dark so the darker shading indicates a higher share of the population. So hopefully that'll be useful. And final thing I'm just looking at one thing. Another part of your summary, where you talk about percentage point change and population share by race and ethnicity. Do I understand it that the. So, white. Not alone non Hispanic. We're seeing a percentage decrease in the overall population, but with African Americans were also seeing, or can you talk about increasing or decreasing from 2010 to 2020. Are you looking right now at the at the Donahue's website. Yes. Okay, so those estimates I think Susan's group put together. So maybe I'll let her to speak to those. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, and I actually just want to catch up to where you are. Do you mind if I share my screen so everyone can see what what you're seeing. Here. Okay, so are you on the few different things going on here on the municipal summaries. Yes, but the bar branch. Okay, so if anyone hasn't seen this is a great. Thank you for this segue to let me showcase this. We have put together summaries looking at population over time. Here's Amherst total population, population by race group. And when we say percent point change. So let me just see page two comparisons is probably where you are. There we go. Great. Okay. So, um, percent change in population share by race and ethnicity. So, um, not that the black alone non Hispanic population increased by 0.9%, but that it went from, let's see where it was before. Talking about its share. Talking about the share that went out so the share is here. 6.1% of the population in 2020. So what that other graph that Dr. Shabazz was pointing to that 0.9% increase in share, that means that it went up to 6.1 from whatever I guess 5.2% in 2020. And then, if you wanted to kind of dig a little bit deeper, you can look at it in a table format to get back to 2000. Here is the, the count. Count in the senses black alone on Hispanic. And do we have the shares here. Maybe not we also have a map like a statewide map that you can look at where you can look at Amherst on the map and that's one of the, I can get back to that. Here's one I had it pulled up so here you can look at the, look at different years. From 2010 to 2020. Kind of you can look at it statewide. These are these are the race alone groups. So you can look at it here. And I mean one thing that kind of jumps out about Amherst if we choose. Like what just to kind of do the reverse out. You know, where the darker blue is white alone population you can see that Amherst is, you know, one of the more diverse towns in the region, just by looking at this. And while I'm here, do you mind. Carrie talked a little bit about differential privacy, and how you can't. You know, if Dr Rhodes knows how many neighbors live in his block and wants to count them and then look at the census and say they got it wrong. You know just to remember that it's scrambled. And we put a dashboard up to hopefully make it a little bit easier for people to get a sense of, like when you say it scrambled like how scrambled. And we have comparisons by race and ethnicity because for large population groups maybe it's not scrambled as much as a percentage as some of the smaller groups. So looking at total age. If we wanted to look at block, which is what the maps are based on. And here's the the mean absolute error. So the difference between the scrambled count and the actual count using census 2010 data which is the only demonstration data that the Census Bureau will release to us. You can see that you could be two minus 19 people in a block. That's the total the range, and that the average range that you're going to be off by is 2.6 people. But there could be if you see a block of 19. You know, individuals reported a lack alone. So if that could be, that could be differential privacy kind of interfering with this, which is why I think to Kerry's point, you know, if you can move up to kind of a higher level. And now I wish we had put block group here we didn't, but we do have tracks. You can look at that too. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for looking at our dashboard I appreciate that somebody into it. And Dr Rhodes just just I'm going to pause for a second to say Kerry if you need to leave please feel free and we'll follow up with any questions. Also, follow up with you about getting everything on to our engage Amherst website and our HR website. I think what Irv said about an executive summary and limitations of the data might be good things that we that I that we can work on so. Together I'm based on our conversation today just highlighting the points I made today I'm happy to and I do apologize for having to run but the conversation was very good and I'm available you all know where to reach me I think at least many of people. So feel free to reach out. I'm here and Susan thank you so much and I also want to do a shout out a lot of this work was done by Mike McNally our research assistant on this project so he deserves a lot of the credit. I will take care of everyone. And so I see, I know Dr Rhodes you have a question I also saw that Paul's hand was up previously so I don't know if your question was answered Paul and the process there. Yeah, it kind of was I think Susan talked about I was going to ask about ground truth and some of this information but you did address it in terms of like if Irv walked around his neighborhood and said I know what the number is, and you answered that so I appreciate that. Okay, Dr Rhodes. So Susan would you go back to the that these bar graphs, in terms of the town and, and the ethnicity is what was interesting to me was the shared a population and relationship to the white population from the last census to now, in terms of that, decreasing. So help me find the space that you're thinking about here. You go back up to the bar graphs that. When we were talking to a male car. You hear, yeah, you're coming up on it now right there. The percent point change. Right. Well, so yeah. What I found interesting was the decrease in the population of whites over that period of time. Yeah, and that's, that's a phenomenon that you're seeing all around the state and perhaps all around the country and a lot of it is going. A lot of it is ending up in the two or more races or that the some other race. So it doesn't look like it on this, on this particular graph, but around the state you're seeing in a pretty significant increase in the some other race alone which is everything to do from the new way that the Census Bureau is coding responses, and also people attribute it to like the increase on like people taking, you know, DNA tests and, you know, self reporting, maybe a broader range of heritage, and also just set up the census, census population by race changes from decade to decade, even if the people don't change, because it is self reported and people self reporting also changes over time. Interesting. Thank you. Alexis. I feel a little bit embarrassed asking this. What is it? What does it mean some other race? What is, what is that? Can you explain what that even because I see, I see races listed here. And then I guess I'm like what in, because I'm even confused and I guess someone who has grown up confused about the boxes that you have to check, you know, what, what is the right answer. And then maybe there isn't one but like what is, how should I know if I should check other. Well, again, this this is like self identity. And I think, you know, one of the things coming out of the fact that some other races increasing. It's not that people are getting it wrong. It's more like the Census Bureau questions and the OMB categories aren't capturing accurately what what people have people identify themselves. So they're, you know, people will write in another response. And if the Census Bureau doesn't have it kind of, you know, a category kind of for that. They'll put it into some other race. What's very strange about the coding this time is that, for example, there's and the Census Bureau has a blog on this I wish I had that pulled up but I don't right now. But it gets into the, the very detailed on how the code was done this time around and you'll see that like if somebody put white and Cuban. They could have been put into some other race, or two or more races. They would be put into white, white plus some other race. Whereas I think historically they might have been like, Oh, well, the Census Bureau might have said well, you're, you're white so we'll use white as your race and then we'll use Hispanic as your ethnicity because they think of those two separate categories. Whereas this time around, you, you became white and some other race, therefore two or more races. So it's, it's a little bit hard to disentangle, but it's a good question but I can, I can just tell you that whatever you're writing down there's there's no wrong answer. You know as you identify. Right, but I guess, and this is the last thing I want to say but I guess it's like kind of like to what, to what extent is it the reality and then your personal feelings like my mom can't like she might feel, which is not the reality but like she can feel whatever small percentage of white she is but like that doesn't change her like how, how she navigates politically and so I guess I'm wondering like is it, is it purposeful to entangle ethnicity and race, or is it simply that that you want that there is a desire to like broaden what those things mean or like kind of like combine the two like I guess I'm wondering like what to what to what point and like to, like to what benefit. Is it to label Cuban as a race. That's a broad, that's a broad question that I don't know if I'm the person to answer, you know, for the OMB categories or the Census Bureau categories as, as, you know, or the lot the logic that you know these long standing institutions have put up or have put up you know, and then I do know that they're, they're doing research and they have been doing research to kind of keep questioning those categories. I mean, it sounds silly but like in 1850, you would choose which state of Germany you came from on a census form. Basically that doesn't that has no meaning today. As, as the race categories that we're checking off today will probably have very little meaning in the future. So it's just always in flux but then there's this kind of, you know, there, there's the human identity that where it begins and then there's these kind of, you know, administrative institutions. Kind of catching up and lagging sometimes by decades so, so that's a very fuzzy answer to a, you know, a question that I can't, can't completely wrap my arms around in a sound bite. Thank you for trying that Susan. That was a complex question. And, okay. Yes, Yvonne, and I am aware of the time I know that we had talked about this meeting being one hour we still have another item to cover and we do have to do public comment. So I'd like to go to Yvonne, and then maybe we will thank Susan and wrap this up at least for today. Yeah, I'll be really quick because I wanted to comment on what Alexis is saying and just for us moving forward as far as what this sense of data meet data means and how we can use it. I mean, this data, even though it's for purposes of tabulation is also a very political issue. And in lots of ways, I would say, you know, I'm, you know, similar to credit reports, which is also another really political system that can often support systemic racism. You know, you know, meant to not maybe it's not meant to do that, but it can be that. And so I feel like when we're reading this data, going back to what I said before about like local knowledge as well and being able to, I mean, often, you know, people of color are not available to fill out the census out there. Maybe they're not the ones filling out the census, you know, they're not even in the tabulations. You know, I think that it's a difficult process for us to figure out how we get at the folks that we want to get at and using this data, just keeping in mind that often this is skewed against the people that we're trying to reach, you know, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. So it will be good for us as as an assembly to really talk about how we want to use this and sort of those layers that have been brought up. So Susan, I want to thank you for being here and for presenting and also for answering questions, and we will certainly follow up with any additional questions that we have. Thank you. Happy to happy to help and thank you. Thank you for all of your questions and for looking into all of this. Thanks. Okay, thank you. All right. So we are, I'm going to go to public comment right now before we move on to our next agenda item. Paul, feel free to stay or go whatever you need to do. I know we have a big meeting tonight. Thank you so much for being here. And so I'm going to read the public stop comments statement. During the public comment period, the chair will recognize members of the public when called on please identify yourself by stating your full name, pronouns and residential address residents are welcome to express their views for up to three minutes at the discretion of the chair based upon the number of people who wish to speak no speaker concede their time to another speaker. The chair will not engage in a dialogue or comment on the matter raised during public comment but we will be listening intently. So if you have, if you would like to make public comment please go ahead and raise your hand and we will bring you in. So not seeing any public comment but thank you to all of those who attended today we really appreciate your support and being here, and please continue to join us when you can. So, let's go ahead and move. Just a time check we talked about this meeting being one hour. I do want to be sure that we have at least a plan for the mass humanities grant because it's due. It's going to be due soon. So we need to make sure at our next meeting that we've finalized it. And I just want to say a huge thank you to Hala for putting together the draft that you've put together. I hope some of you have had a chance to look at it it's in the packet. I'll bring it up in a minute but I just really want to thank you for that it was so helpful to see all of the questions, what was being asked of us, and all the thought that you put into it so I think we have a great foundation to begin with here. And so, Alexis, I see that your hand is raised. Yeah, thank you, Hala so much. You look fabulous by the way. So I was going to work on it in these next like two days and add things to it but I guess I was wondering how do I share this without violating anything. Yeah, so we can't. We have to make a decision about how we want to go about this. So it's now been posted in the packet, what how drafted has been posted in the packet. So I think we have a couple different options. One option is if we want to work on it between now and our next meeting which I think we need to. I think we'll want to schedule a meeting. And I'm going to let Jennifer speak to this but I think we'll want to schedule a meeting. I don't know that you can work on it. I think you can what you can do is you can send your comments to myself and Jennifer and then Jennifer can send those out to the committee but Jennifer please speak to that. We could do it that way. I mean the other thing that could just happen is that everybody could make their comments and send them in and we could try to create one working doc and then have a meeting about it and then move forward from there. I think that would be a great idea so we, we had talked about two pieces. So, yeah, this one being a piece that we're all trying to contribute to, and then the community survey questions that we were all going to be contributing to to put together a document so because what do you think are you comfortable with sort of putting together your thoughts and ideas and even even editing a document if you want you can use a track change or whatever and then just send them to myself and Jennifer, and we'll incorporate everybody's suggestions into one document and we'll make sure to give credit where each person's, you know, feedback came from. I think that works. Okay. Yes, that sounds good and I have to bounce so okay. Thank you. Thank you. Hi Alexis. So, and holla. Is there any I just wanted to turn it over to you to talk about this document if you'd like to. I can pull it up. I think I have items that you wanted to just sort of get us to weigh in on or that were in particular challenging. So would you be okay with me sharing it on the screen right now. Okay, great. Hang on one second. I think I have it here. Let's see. Okay, I think this is it. So, I'm going to turn it over to you holla. Um, I don't know if that's necessary. I will say, I mean it's fine but I've never done this type of thing before and it really got me thinking about how we can further deconstruct some of these institutions that are like this feels like a gatekeeping thing not understanding and having to Google it and then finding this other document, but that's off the point for now but eventually I'd like to make some of these more accessible things that more accessible for the community at large. I'm at an 80 acre school right now so I apologize for the background noise. I just did what the best I could I made up a budget but that's not a real budget. I was just, they said it also doesn't have to be completely known for the letter of intent they're like you could just have you're not going to have some ideas about this type of thing. So, if anybody sees a whole like I know Ivan is amazing at this type of thing. So I would love her and Alexis especially but I know everybody on this committee has done some of this work too. So, just know this is my first go. I was happy to get my feet wet and I appreciate all the feedback that will come forward to make this a great letter of intent. That's okay. Thank you so much. Yeah, you've gone. Hold on. Am I going too fast here I can wear. Can you hear me. Yes. Yeah, it's hard to see the mute button when you're sharing the screen. I read through it and I think it's fascinating. You know, Holly, you did a great, great job. I think it's wonderful. It's so clear. And what what the goal is of the part. The only two goals that I see are the things we should discuss. One is that they're going to ask who the people are and how we're getting at the people that we're interviewing. Because they're, you know, you're talking specifically that that this is for honorarium to people for sharing their story. So then the logical question is well who are those people and how are you getting at them. You know, is there a public for people to is there an interview process. Focus groups are there, you know, so I think we might not going deep into it just maybe a comment about how we recognize that there has to be an equitable way at getting at the stories that we're including right. You know, and I think the other one was about money. The what what the how we broke down the money. Is that the budget piece. Let's see. Yeah. Because if I get through this, that's what I would ask. I'd be like, so like, who are you interviewing and then. Oh, also, there was a little bit about whether it was a presentation or a video. There's a little gray area about whether and what the end result would be. So maybe we want to flesh that out more and maybe there's more than one product. You know, like, are we applying for a video or we're applying for a presentation. Is this something that's going to be made available to the public after it's put together, or after it's done. Yeah, how are we going to how are we going to impact the rest of the community with this thing that we create. Yeah, that's a great question. And I wonder how it has a response to that. I also see that Jennifer's hand is raised, I believe. Yeah, I just want to say so one of the problems that the CSWG ran into was when we wanted to give folks gift cards for participation of the survey and the town cannot do that. And that ended up happening because we contracted out with seventh generation, seventh gen, and so they were able to do that and that was included into their contract fees, but I just, I 100% believe that people should be compensated for for contributing their stories and their life and their experiences. But we just have to find a way that we can do that. Okay, that's a good Paul question and I can talk to him about that and see. I had thought that the age friendly and dementia survey included a gift card but they also worked with a consultant so there's some yeah. Well, that's a great, we need to ask that question so I'll note that. And how I don't know if you had a response to what Yvonne had mentioned about sort of the impact piece and being more clear about that. I had just sort of left it open because I thought we were like still figuring it out, even like just throwing in the honorarium because I do think our labor compensation but yeah. I thought we were going to do a documentary, but then I was like, Oh, maybe we would have a presentation of the documentary. But yeah, no, I just, I was drawing some stuff on there that we could then discuss which we're doing now which is awesome. And the budget doesn't add up to the total amount because I don't. This is an Alexis thing maybe she'll know more about cost, because she works in that industry. And you too. Absolutely yeah. And I think what Dr. Shabazz had suggested last week that we had consensus around was instead of sort of Alexis had brought up the macro micro. So instead of going for the macro documentary right now doing some of the micro work. So, focusing on these oral histories maybe for residents or former residents of African heritage and then letting that be sort of a foundational piece of the bigger documentary piece. But I was saying documentary. Yeah, it was a little piece, a little documentary within a bigger documentary. I wasn't meaning the whole. It was just the oral history part of the documentary. Got it. Okay. That's helpful yeah. All right, so what I'm going to ask is that if there aren't any other comments or questions right now on this if we could send in and think about this, you can send in bullets, you can send in a fully, you know, tracked document with suggestions, you can send in a narrative, whatever is your style, whatever works for you, whatever will encourage and motivate you to send the feedback in please consider that and we'll want to at our next meeting and we'll just talk about that briefly in terms of timing. We'll have to really solidify this so we have basically a week. We had talked about at our next meeting also reviewing survey questions. So now the homework has doubled, which means if you haven't sent in survey question ideas. Please also send those in in any way that works for you. And even if it means calling myself or Jennifer. I know Jennifer's plates full as is mine but I'm happy to take a call from somebody with ideas and I can, you know, I can jot them down and put them in the packet so whatever works. So we can tell you our feedback and every question so we have to email either you or Jennifer. Email both of us just so that we both get it and then we'll work together to put it into a bigger document the same with this humanities. Yes, exactly. Okay, both both would be great. I just want to clear something again because part of it was somebody had come in so I didn't hear the full conversation about the honor ania honor I always say that wrong so don't. But if it's coming through a grant and that's part of the grant then I think that's different. Okay, that's good to know. Alright, so if we receive a grant, then we can include that is what you're saying and just make sure that's in the budget. Okay. All right, good. So we had talked about meeting next week at 3pm. Is it possible and I'm sorry to do this my son has an every other week doctors appointment. And so would it be possible to do 315. Next week for folks. Any objection to that. Okay. All right, so we'll do 315. Jennifer and I will get an agenda out and but you basically you know that the agenda is going to include a finalization of the letter of intent for mass humanities, and the beginning of developing the survey questions for our community survey. And minutes and minutes we will get to those minutes. We'll add some more. Great. Did you have something to ask. Nothing to ask. Something to add. But to say that the age, needs to understand that with this information that's forthcoming, and that we've received and reviewed today from the Donahue Institute that that information is a first for this time. Because it's not only was important in terms of African American community, but the community at large has never seen this kind of data. There have been large segments of the community have always asked the question, how, what is the impact of students on our population, how many students are even counted in our population. This is the first time this is ever going to be made public when this goes up on our dashboard on our website. Yeah, thank you for really like bringing that into full awareness because it's absolutely true. I can say that when I have talked about it, and in particular, and I'd love to share more details about the reparations conference I went to in DC this weekend but this is a model that other communities can use and can learn from. Our process isn't going to be perfect and I really just want to thank you Dr Rhodes for initiating the contact with Carrie and the Donahue Institute and sort of realigning us when we needed it and pushing us forward with this because I do think that it's a really fantastic piece of our work and and as you said something that has not ever been done. Right and the Council, the Council will applaud us for this work. Good. Well I'll let them know tonight I've already, you know we had counselors here today which was really nice. I got to mention that on a devlin devlin goffier was with us. She had come in a little bit later after I recognized, and also Dorothy Pam was here today so I'm really happy in addition to Lynn and Paul that was great to have those folks with us. So. Are there any other questions or comments. Okay, then I'm going to move to adjourn the meeting at 424pm and thank you everybody for everything. Thank you everyone. Bye. Bye.