Transcription
Really bringing to light the disabilities that overlay some of the difficulties that lead to the school-to-prison pipeline for a lot of, uh, of our Latinos.
Nearly one in five Latinos and African-American students in this county, um, have a documented disability. That means that one in five will probably not get support. Um, be called out on behavior, will then discourage them, um, from committing to further studies, which may lead to an absence. And, and some of that we're already seeing with the chronic absenteeism throughout all of our, uh, school districts and the higher expulsion and, um, suspension rates, as well as the higher, um, enrollment in continuation schools. Not throughout all of our county, uh, through some parts of our county.
Our children who have the kind of disabilities that are either, um, dyslexia or ADD, um, they are not as valid as some of the physical disabilities that we can see and that actually teachers can understand and be compassionate around.
How can we integrate the dismantling of the discrimination and marginalization of the disability community through our school county collaborative and recognizing that we had, we didn't get it right? We're not always going to get it right the first time, but we're, um, correcting it and, and trying to, um, um, really move this forward.
What AXA is now building out, um, for the African-American community and what has already been built out for the Vietnamese American community. And I want the same for the Latino community is to have a system built out for them. I want us to be able to have this larger, uh, goal, even though we are in very difficult times, that we are going to, um, do the impossible to address the needs of the Latinos who, um, are really overwhelmingly, uh, and disproportionately, um, representing, um, uh, a lot of utilization and need in our systems.