Noble Wray is currently the Chief of Police of Madison, Wisconsin. The Madison Police Department is a diverse department with an authorized strength of 398 commissioned personnel and 92 civilian personnel serving a diverse community of approximately 224,000 residents. Joe Gothard is the principal at La Follette High school. La Follette High School is home to approximately 1760 students located on Madison’s southeast side. Andre Johnson is the social worker supervisor for the Dane County Neighborhood Intervention Program (N.I.P.), supervising 6 programs that work with adjudicated youth. N.I.P. provides opportunities that enrich the social and educational experiences of youth in Dane County. Barbara McKinney coordinates Madison Area Urban Ministries’ Circle of Support Program. Madison-area Urban Ministry, Inc. (MUM) is an interfaith social justice organization that has spurred social change in and about Dane County for 35 years.

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Successful Strategies to Dismantle the School to Prison Pipeline Panelists:

Ronald Lospennato is the director of the Southern Poverty Law center’s School to Prison Reform Project in New Orleans. The Southern Poverty Law Center is internationally known for its tolerance education programs, its legal victories against white supremacists and its tracking of hate groups. David Lerman has been a prosecutor with Milwaukee county District Attorney's Office for 21 years. He currently coordinates the Restorative Practices Program in Milwaukee Public Schools. Catherine Yonsoo Kim is a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, National Legal Department where she works with the Racial Justice Program. The ACLU Racial Justice Program aims to preserve and extend the constitutional rights of people of color. Dan Farbman joined Advancement Project in 2008 as a Skadden Fellow. The Advancement Project is a policy, communications and legal action group that advances universal opportunity, equity and access for those left behind in America.

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Workshops Include:

Intercultural Conflict Style Workshop
Presenter: Mitchell Hammer
The ability to recognize and appropriately respond to cultural differences in conflict style is critically important in effectively managing and resolving disputes. The Intercultural Conflict Style (ICS) Workshop increases participants’ competence in resolving disagreements, improves team cooperation, and enhances individual and organizational decision-making and goal accomplishment around diversity initiatives. This workshop is based on the Intercultural Conflict Style model and Inventory developed by Dr. Mitchell R. Hammer, and it is appropriate for anyone interested in attending; however, law enforcement and school personnel may find it of particular relevance.

School to Prison Reform Project
Presenters: Ronald Lospennato and Daniel Farbman
Students across the country, particularly students of color and students with disabilities, are being systematically derailed from an academic track into the juvenile justice system. Students are not only being denied class time during suspensions but they are also being directly fed into the juvenile justice system by school-based arrests. Further, in some cases, schools use school discipline (e.g., out-of-school suspensions) to dispose of children that they believe are not going to pass standardized tests (thereby bringing down school performance). Participants in this workshop will learn more about the School-to-Prison-Pipeline (STPP) that contributes to the disproportionate number of students of color and students with disabilities coming into contact with juvenile and criminal justice systems. Contributing factors to this problem and a variety of advocacy strategies to address it will be discussed, including leveraging special education rights via group administrative complaints, systemic litigation, push-back strategies in juvenile courts, legislative advocacy, organizing tools and other approaches. This session is open to anyone, but would be of particular interest to attorneys and school personnel.

Racial Wealth Divide
Presenter: Amaad Rivera
This workshop debunks myths of wealth creation, and explores how government policies and subsidies lead to economic, educational, and incarceration rate disparities. Drawing on participants’ family histories, the workshop reveals governmental actions that boosted white families, while keeping people of color in a cycle of poverty and incarceration. Hopeless? Not at all! Knowing that government action makes the opportunities that turn work into wealth, we can create new policies that get everyone on the economic and social escalator.

Moderators:

David Pate is the founder and co-director of the Center for Family Policy and Practice (CFFPP), and he is an Assistant Professor at the UW-Milwaukee, Helen Bader School of Social Welfare. CFFPP is a nationally-focused public policy organization focusing attention on the barriers faced by never-married, low-income fathers and their families.

Pearl Leonard-Rock is the Coordinator of Programs for Diversity and Inclusion at Edgewood College. The Edgewood College Center for Diversity and Inclusion is a resource designed to inspire curiosity and involvement in multiculturalism with the intention of preparing students to serve as builders of a just and compassionate world.

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Summit Materials:

Summit materials can be downloaded here.  Electronic copies of these materials will also be distributed at the Summit.