When then-President Barack Obama rolled out the My Brother’s Keeper initiative in 2014, his call to action addressed specific issues faced by young men of color. Many people in the Las Vegas community heard his call, and continue to answer it.
“Going back to 2014, I was excited for his announcement,” said Lisa Morris Hibbler, director of the city’s Department of Youth Development and Social Innovation. “It was long overdue. We know communities of color don’t fare well and not all students have the same opportunities to succeed.”
Though policymakers, teachers and social workers already had been looking at or working to address the disparities, Obama’s words brought them together.
“I think the principle behind this had already been embedded in the community,” said Assemblyman Tyrone Thompson, D-North Las Vegas who co-chairs a subcommittee of the local branch of My Brother’s Keeper. “We were able to come together and rally behind the vision.”
Under a united coalition, the Las Vegas My Brother’s Keeper Alliance recently formed with the goal to address three issues: making sure students are reading at grade level by third grade, keeping students on track to graduate, and addressing the school-to-prison pipeline by reducing racial and ethnic disparities related to disciplinary policies. Only 57 percent of black students and 68 percent of Hispanic students in Las Vegas graduate high school, according to an impact report from the alliance.
“We also know that, even to this day, African-American students are overrepresented in the juvenile justice system by 300 percent,” Hibbler said.
The alliance report shows that blacks comprise only 10 percent of the youth population in Clark County, yet are 30 percent of all those referred to the Department of Juvenile Justice Services.
“This is not an anomaly,” Hibbler said. “We are seeing the same numbers across the country. But I believe Las Vegas and Clark County can be better than that.”
Hibbler sees My Brother’s Keeper contributing to that, and noted the progress already made.
Focusing on elementary schools such as Matt Kelly, H.P. Fitzgerald, Kermit Booker and Wendell P. Williams, the group strategized ways to increase the quality of education. It helped promote programming focused on areas such as early-childhood development and STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and math). And looking at the number of students with frequent absences, the alliance went deeper with UNLV to pinpoint schools with the highest numbers.
“We wanted the data to be a guide so we could work with those specific schools,” Hibbler said.
Instead of a one-size-fits-all plan, the targeted approach helped make solutions school- and even student-specific. That included giving awards for attendance, purchasing alarm clocks for students and facilitating a “walking school bus,” for which parents already walking their kids to school helped others in the neighborhood make the bell.
Addressing the density of blacks in the juvenile justice system is complex and very much a work in progress. Hibbler said one of the toughest parts is overcoming people’s hesitance to discuss it.
“It’s a touchy subject when you’re talking about race and how specific races are disproportionately affected,” Hibbler added. “A lot of times, people are uncomfortable with it.”
Department of Juvenile Justice Services Director John Jack Martin said because of that, it’s an accomplishment just bringing people to the table and convincing them that not everything they do exists in a vacuum.
“It’s getting policymakers and school personnel and law enforcement involved and having them realize their own system can have an impact on another,” he said, adding that there is no simple answer to why the disparity exists, because contributing factors range from people’s socioeconomic status to the setup of the court system.
Nonetheless, My Brother’s Keeper has had those conversations, which is why it changed its approach this year. Starting in February, the alliance gathered more than 200 people from a cross section of the community — including elected officials, law enforcement, education administrators and the nonprofit sector — to discuss the school-to-prison pipeline. Instead of just talking within the group, participants were able to hear from experts from across the country. They discussed topics such as better ways to identify and address students’ underlying behavioral problems instead of relying on punitive measures.
The group also took a deeper look at how trauma can affect a student’s behavior.
“And we know that poverty is trauma,” Hibbler said. “Instead of focusing on selected schools, we wanted to focus on larger policies that would have an impact.”
Three committees came out of the process: community engagement and mentorship, law enforcement, and educational inequity.
Thompson, who co-chairs the mentorship and community engagement subcommittee, called it a natural reflection of Obama’s vision.
“Every child deserves a mentor,” he said, adding that often mentors can help make the difference in keeping students from being on the wrong side of statistics.
While each group has smaller tasks, one of the bigger goals of the alliance is to conduct continual training on implicit bias, which Hibbler said every person has. Martin said it’s also about recognizing how our history and past policies shaped implicit bias.
“We had a society that once sold human beings,” Martin said. “If you don’t think that would have a long-lasting effect, you’re delusional.”
Instead of a one-and-done training for different entities (whether it’s law enforcement or the school district), Hibbler hopes to do continual training to continue the conversation about implicit bias.
While Obama might not be in office anymore, Las Vegas My Brother’s Keeper Alliance is determined to honor his legacy by continuing his work.
“This is not a program,” Thompson said. “It’s a movement.”