Hodges joins White House effort to aid minority males

Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges joined White House officials Tuesday to offer her support for a program aimed at improving the lives of boys and young men of color — an effort she said is needed in this city.

Hodges joined U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro, Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx and Deputy Secretary of Education Jim Shelton on a conference call to explain the next phase of President Obama's My Brother's Keeper Task Force.

"This call to action could not come at a more important time for the city of Minneapolis," Hodges said. "The challenges that children in Minneapolis face are stark, and the stakes for our children are high."

Minneapolis is one of more than 145 cities and tribal groups that have signed on to participate in the program's community challenge. It is one of four in Minnesota; the others are St. Paul, Brooklyn Park and the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa.

Those communities will review local programs already working on goals like improving dropout rates, helping young people find employment and keeping teens out of jail. They'll collect and share data and come up with a plan to sharpen all of those efforts.

"While we are one great city, we are not a great city for everyone," Hodges said. "And we need everybody to be able to contribute to, and benefit from, our greatness."

The mayor offered a handful of statistics as evidence: One in four African-American boys in the city is suspended from school at least once a year, fewer than half of American Indian and Hispanic students who graduate from Minneapolis public schools continue on to college, American Indians face a 27 percent employment gap as compared to white workers.

Jane Eastwood, education policy director in the office of St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman, said the city is still working out the details of its participation with My Brother's Keeper. But she said it's likely the planning will overlap with well-known local organizations. "We will do our best to focus on the things we're already doing, or know have worked," she said.

In Minneapolis, recommendations that come out of the My Brother's Keeper planning process will be incorporated in other ongoing efforts at the city, including those of the mayor's "Cradle to K" cabinet. That group of experts, convened by the mayor this spring, is studying how the city can do more to ensure young children have access to the services they need before they reach school age.

Though Hodges was the only mayor involved in Tuesday's discussion, she and the other officials said mayors of other cities could tell similar stories about their ongoing efforts — and the challenges they face.

"What we want is for no local leader to feel like they're doing this work in a vacuum," said Castro. "There really are communities across the country that are wrestling with these exact same issues for our young people."