When Mayor Greg Ballard appointed a task force to examine the problems negatively impacting Indianapolis African-American males, I wrote that I wasn’t “optimistic about what this task force will accomplish.”
After reading the task force’s report, I take back those words. Let me substitute them by stating that the group hit a home run!
Co-Chairs of the Your Life Matters® Task Force, Indiana Black Expo President Tanya Bell and Indiana Civil Rights Commission Director Jamal Smith with their 14 Task Force members and 23 sub-committee members have presented to Mayor Ballard and the full Indianapolis community a detailed, substantive report outlining a plethora of problems negatively impacting African-American males age 14 to 24 in Indianapolis.
The 102 page report, 49 pages of substantive, detailed narrative and 53 pages of detailed data, footnotes and citations is stunning in its breadth and comprehensiveness.
The report makes 44 specific recommendations in six areas – overall, youth employment, mentoring, justice and re-entry, juvenile justice, education and health.
The report deals with education at length. There’s strong recommendations regarding the disparities and disproportionalities in punishments and abuses of special education by schools; including not informing parents of their rights and not treating special education students, who are disproportionately Black, with respect under the law.
State regulations require schools to state why students receive out of school suspensions; but the largest category of these suspensions are in the vague categories of “defiance,” “attendance” and “other.”
That’s right; schools like Pike, Perry Meridian and Ben Davis throw students, mostly Black, out of school for attendance issues. Arlington, North Central and Warren Central throw out scores of students without giving specific reasons. Absurd.
A shocker was learning state law requires Juvenile Courts to notify schools when a juvenile receives a “true” felony finding. That’s the juvenile court equivalent of “guilty.”
The problem? Schools expel students with a “true” felony finding; even if the offense didn’t occur at school. In the juvenile system a student could have their felony expunged if they complete probation and rehab. But the school doesn’t reinstate them.
The report strongly urges Indianapolis to adopt a robust youth employment program, underscoring the benefits to employers and businesses.
A stronger emphasis on mentoring is encouraged in the report, as is strengthening the quality of education for suspended students and changing state law to make alternative education required if a student is expelled or suspended.
A surprise set of recommendations dealt with health of young Black men. The report challenges the city’s medical community to be more aware and sensitive to health issues impacting young African-American men, including violence. It also challenges the medical community to begin to market their services to Black men; a group usually ignored by hospitals, clinics and health organizations.
If there’s any weakness of the report and a potential magnet for critics, is that it doesn’t mention parental responsibility or outline steps and best practices to engage parents and provide parents with resources to deal with their troubled children.
So, community servant/leaders like me have another colorful report for my file cabinet. What happens next is a major issue with this report. Bell, Smith and Task Force members don’t want this report to sit on credenzas as so many Indy reports in the past.
The Task Force’s job ended with delivering the report to the mayor and public at a hastily organized and poorly planned summit handled by the mayor’s office.
What should’ve been a substantive, widely attended event excluded many from our community who should’ve been there to hear and discuss the Task Force’s report.
The mayoral minions who planned the summit forgot it conflicted with the legislature’s Organization Day. A major error since seven of the report’s recommendations requires state law changes and it is imperative that Democratic and Republican lawmakers immediately are engaged in the report’s recommendations.
Many of the report’s recommendations can be immediately implemented at charter and takeover schools supervised by Mayor Ballard.
Other immediate steps?
Mayor Ballard could convene a meeting of all Indy school superintendents and board members to discuss the report’s recommendations and see what districts could do to implement them without waiting for the legislature, Indiana Department of Education or State Board of Education.
But I fear the mayor won’t do the bi-partisan, multi-layed outreach necessary to implement many of the report’s recommendations. So it’s gonna be up to our community to step up.
For a couple of years, the Your Life Matters® slogan was used by some of Radio One’s 55 stations across America to help their community deal with problems of violence. Radio One allowed the city to use that trademarked phrase.
When I start interviewing mayoral and council candidates, they’ll be asked their positions on Your Life Matter’s recommendations.
The Task Force has provided a road map. Now it’s time for all Indianapolis institutions – government, business, civic, philanthropic, schools, and most critically our African-American community – to follow that path to make sure that everyone’s life matters!
See ‘ya next week!
You can email comments to Amos Brown at ac-brown@aol.com.
