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HomeMy WebLinkAbout1993-08-13-FHC-min.pdf Fair Housing Committee Minutes, 8/13/93 Present Mary Haskell, Acting Chairman; Florence Baturin; Nicole T Herrmann; Marion Kilson; Oscar Liu; Leona Martin; Bob Pressman; Jolley Anne Weinstock; Renee Richardson, METCO parent; Jan Howell and Marcia Butman, METCO Advisory Council; Steve Baran, Fair Housing Director (recorder) Absent Jim Brannon; Peter Brown; Gerri Weathers, Chairman Minutes of 7/14/93 The Minutes of 7/14/93 were approved Fair Housing and Human Relations Committee Draft Charge The Committee made corrections, additions and revisions to the draft charge These included highlighting the Committee' s primary concern with diversity and adding to its responsibilities the encouraging of diversity in all Town departments On Monday, 8/16, the Committee will ask the Selectmen to adopt the Charge It was suggested that the approach be positive with the Committee demonstrating how adoption of the revised charge would essentially be a legitimation of a course that has been supported by the Selectmen in the past Strategic Planning Julia Novak had advised the Committee to get in touch with Jay Kaufman in order to discuss its participation in strategic planning Florence Baturin reported that strategic planning would be underway in the fall and recommended that the Fair Housing Committee seek to be represented Fair Housing Plan Tabled Diversity in the Schools METCO parent and Advisory Council members commented as follows 1 Treatment by the School Department which may have seemed prejudicial to a METCO student may have been in line with METCO guidelines as enforced by the METCO coordinator 2 As to incident which led to School Department action, the singular treatment afforded by the Minuteman did not seem appropriate 3 Staffing to reflect greater diversity did not seem to be Fair Housing Committee Minutes, 8/11/93 Page 2 pursued with very much vigor by the School Department A recent meeting to encourage diversity in staffing with school administrators earlier in the summer was unproductive Lexington' s lack of success in recruiting a diverse teaching staff was at odds with successful experiences in Newton, Brookline and Boston It was not clear who did the recruiting, whether the recruiter travelled and what kind of budget existed for recruiting It was agreed that there was a need for • travelling to areas where more minorities may be located, e g , Atlanta; • recruiting minorities for Lexington teaching assignments as interns and eventually as teachers; • networking (within the State) through minority organizations, e g , NASW minority committee, association of black social workers, etc 4 As to how conducive the Lexington community climate is to diversity, while there is a supportive core group, the broader community could be more welcoming and more appreciative of the richness and wealth that can come through the diversity of students from Boston Students could be supported by • seeking change in rules as in soccer and Little League that bar students who live outside of the Town to compete (originally created to prevent "ringers" from biasing the competition) ; • making it easier for METCO students to travel after participating in after-school activities (since it is very difficult for METCO parents to come out of Boston to pick their children up; • changing meeting times of PTA from nights during the week to make it more possible for Boston parents to attend; • creating policies that recognize the principal of reciprocity (as at Bowman School with considerable sharing between Lexington and Boston parents) ; The matter may be pursued by presenting a recruitment plan to be formally adopted by the School Committee A the same time, before the School Committee can adopt a plan, they would need to recognize that there is a problem 5 As to the climate within the schools, there is an occasional lack of sensitivity as reflected in the incident of a bus driver who insisted that a Black student go on the bus to Fair Housing Committee Minutes, 8/11/93 Page 3 Boston not realizing that the student lived in Lexington Training for all School Department staff was seen as a remedy Follow-up on diversity in the Police Department Cost for paying overtime were all police officers to be trained is $3 , 391 96 for four hours Gerri developed a list of leads for looking into diversity training for police officers while Steve is investigating hiring procedures through a contact in the Boston Police Department Arlington Fair Housing Process Steve Baran traced history of creating a Human Rights Commission in Arlington as related to him by a member of the Arlington Fair Housing Committee The activists responsible for moving the adoption through Arlington Town Meeting had sought strong powers for such a Commission It was not possible in the end to obtain such powers and considerable resistance developed with several votes required before the Commission was eventually adopted Also, there were anti-semitic incidents that took place during the process