Minutes - February 26, 2008

Minutes From SENA Meeting On Tuesday February 26, 2008 (Howe Library, 6pm)

Minutes from January 22, 2008 read. Vice President, Mark Beaudoin, noted that several things had changed since they were announced at the January meeting: 1) The closing of the Howe Library would now be in mid-April instead of on March 15. 2) The Trinity Institution would be on Thursday April 24 instead of on March 27. 3) Because of the later closing of Howe, the March 25 SENA meeting could be held at Howe Library.

The question of where the SENA meeting for April could meet came up. Most likely the meeting could be held in Rev. Covington's church (Union Missionary Baptist, next to the Courthouse on Morton) at the Crenshaw Memorial Center. Rev.Covington had offered to make his church available for meetings at an earlier SENA meeting.

Regarding SENA's upcoming Job Fair, the idea was put forward to possibly partner with the Giffen Elementary PTA. (Kenneth Braswell - when he published his "South End Scene" newspaper - had held a Job Fair at Giffen).

President JoAnn Morton praised Yoko Chaumont's work as SENA's webmaster (southendna.blogspot.com). Emails to SENA can be addressed to: southendna@gmail.com

Lt. Matt Montesano gave a brief Public Safety update: Jorge Ventura, an individual out on parole, residing on Elizabeth St, was arrested in connection with several robberies in the area: the Holiday Inn Express, Mr.Subb (next to Delaware Library), the Stewart's on Morton Ave, and the McDonald's on S.Pearl St.
Central Square larcenies were linked to a Leonard Farmer of Lark St. A number of North Albany area burglaries have occurred but remain unsolved at this point.
To discourage trespassing on residents' property in the South End, a property owner can participate (for a small fee) in something called the "Trespass Affidavit Program". The Program would allow the arrest by police of unauthorized persons on one's property. To participate, one should contact Jessica Blaine Lewis at the DA's office.
The Citizen's Police Academy will have a 13-week program (3 - 4 hours one day each week, usually Tue.) educating about activities of the Albany Police. Information will be available on the Albany Police Dept. website.

Melissa Bucher, whose newsletter has a 2000 copies monthly circulation in the area, offered to print in the newsletter announcements for upcoming SENA meetings and programs such as the Job Fair.

On Saturday March 8, an Empowerment Fair was scheduled at Giffen Elementary. Carolyn McLaughlin would be the featured presenter. It was suggested SENA might wish a presence at the Fair.

Bill Rahm (of the Fire Dept.) introduced himself as the replacement for Bill Jones (who had reported on Fire Dept. matters monthly at previous SENA meetings). Bill Jones has retired.

Carolyn McLaughlin, the Albany Common Council Majority Leader, was the evening's featured speaker. She commended SENA's work over the past year (it developed out of a Quality of Life Committee), and encouraged everyone to continue their efforts.
She spoke of demolitions which have taken place in Ward 2, the displaced Lawson family (now living at 15 Elizabeth) whose Alexander St property had been destroyed by surrounding collapsing buildings, the fact that Habitat for Humanity was finishing up a third house on Odell St and may have a long range plan of building up to 30 homes in the South End.
The Capital South Plan appears to be sitting on the table for now. Monique Wahba, who was coordinator of the project for Albany's Dept of Planning and Development, is now at home taking care of her children. Someone needs to take her place to move it forward. Council woman McLaughlin also spoke about a Morton Ave project, the Jared Holt project (24 units on Broad St, which needs more funding) and the demolition of 4 buildings on South Pearl St including the Knitting Factory, which had been 35 years vacant. The New York City owners had allowed the buildings to deteriorate so much that they had become a public safety issue. A decision was made and they had been quickly demolished.

Guest speaker Aaron Mair (of the NYS Dept. of Health) reported that zip code 12202 (which covers most of the South End) has the most cases of respiratory illness in the area. Aerial photos reveal at times an orange haze of particulates in the air of the South End. Pollution from the Port of Albany, highway 787, the freight trains, tug boats, etc contribute to a high rate of environmentally caused asthma.

For upcoming meetings, it was suggested SENA invite the South End Legislators whose districts include the South End to come to hear residents' concerns. Also Lucille McKnight should be invited again to come to a SENA meeting.

Resident Emily Collins spoke of a Public Art Exhibition presented by Grand Street Community Arts. Artists can submit work proposals beginning March 1st to be displayed on the exterior of GSCA's Church on the corner of Grand St. and Madison Ave. See www.grandarts.org or call 396-5401 for more information. Deadline is March 28th.

Next meeting to be scheduled on March 25th, 2008 at the Howe Library, starting at 6pm.

Parent and Community Empowerment Conference - Notes

These are notes taken from the conference at Giffen on Saturday March 8th, 2008:

Parent and Community Empowerment Conference
At Giffen Elementary School


Welcome Address, Beverly L. Ivey, Principal
- Why are we here? We, the South End, aren't succeeding as highly as we should.
- The parents, teachers, and community have to work to ensure the children have a bright future.
- The parents' responsibility is to be in the PTA, check child's homework and schoolwork, talk with their teachers, have library cards, take trips to the museum and other educational places, don't let kids be on the computer or TV too much, have a reading time every day, and make sure they're eating nutritious meals and get enough sleep.
- The teachers need to make the material being taught fun and challenging. Make the kids excited and really want to come to school each day.
- The community can support the children and schools by volunteering, reading to kids, mentoring, helping them out, and by voting for people that support schools so they have enough of a budget to get what they need to improve them.

1st Keynote Speaker, Hon. Carolyn McLaughlin

- We have to re-energize ourselves. We can't do anything unless we all come together, the South End community needs to work together to grow.
- We're like a table. A table has a top and four legs. The South End as a whole is like the top of the table. Without its four legs, the top won't stand. It'll just roll or fall over. So it needs its legs. The students represent one leg. Parents represent another leg. The school district and teachers represents the third leg, and the community leaders and residents represent the last leg. Every part is vital for the table to function properly. Everyone needs to fulfill their responsibility.
- Many times you don't know the child can't read or needs glasses. They were never asked to read out loud or to answer problems on the board. We need to read to our children and communicate with them. Reading is very important and helps them many things. If you want to travel but can't, you can read a book. A book can take you anywhere.

1st Seminar - Building a Loving and Strong Home, Ms. Jacquelina Johnson, 2nd grade teacher
- She started teaching because she didn't want to work a 9-5 job. She wanted to get back earlier to spend more time with her family and children. She started out as a tutor and substitute before becoming a teacher.
- She was a single mother, but had strong family ties, so she didn't do it by herself. Her family helped her out a lot.
- Teach a child in the way he/she should go and they won't go astray.
- You need to be a role model for your children.
- Need to have consistency.
- Meet your child's physical and emotional needs.
- If you don't discipline them, they're disciplined through the course.
- The children should know discipline so when they walk into the classroom, the teacher shouldn't have to deal with that. They should just be free to teach.
- The goal is to have a loving and strong home. In order to have a loving and strong home, we need to have: patience, trust, understanding, give the child choices, a sense of humor, endurance, a challenge, be flexible, be realistic, have some R&R time, consistency (routines, good habits), honesty, constant learning, respect, quality time, discipline, communication, sacrifice, responsibility, be nurturing, be open to change, and lots of LOVE! Factors that affect these things are your job, extracurricular activities, support you get, your conscience, teachers, role models, feelings, parental demands, time, favoritism, being able to change and not do bad things your parents did to you, balance, firmness, spirituality and faith, and books you read. It's a lot, but the rewards are great, such as seeing your child graduate. Especially from college.
- You can get books at the library for free or go to flea markets and garage sales to get them cheaply. Read a lot!

2nd Seminar - Preserving and Protecting Emotionally Healthy Families, Noelene Smith, Social Worker
- This is about trauma, the causes, how to identify it, and what we can do about it.
- The definition of trauma: a tragic experience that causes shock, disrupts psychological health, can occur once or be continuous, and often having long-lasting effects.
-Causes of trauma include: physical or sexual abuse, divorce, mental illness, sudden homelessness, poverty, displacement (child taken away), death of a loved one, injury (to themselves or others), violence, environmental issues (fire, earthquake), and war.
- The anger because of the traumas are many times the cause of bad behaviors.
- If no discipline is working and the children are still misbehaving, we need to look deeper and many times it's because of traumatic experiences.
- A child misbehaving is like a cry for help.
- Symptoms and behaviors of trauma victims include: anger, isolation, rebellion, numbness, change in social and emotional behavior, withdrawal and shutting down, sexual promiscuity, alcoholism and drug problems, bed wetting, depression, loss of concentration, looking for love in the wrong places, hyperactivity, emotional detachment, despair (don't care), helplessness, and low self esteem.
- When they go through a trauma or are abused, women tend to think it's their fault and hurt themselves and men tend to hurt others.
- Albany County got a $6.9 million grant for young people. But they're mostly only treating white kids. There's a lot of discrimination still, and many inner city black kids aren't treated and aren't getting what they need.
- Many children are misdiagnosed with adult problems because we're tired and give up. We need to work harder to look deeper because many times the treatment is wrong or it's not necessary.
- Many children don't want to work with social workers or people trying to help them because they assume there's a problem when they come and are upset. They think they're going to take them away from their parents or they're the reasons their parents can't get jobs or other things.
- What we can do to treat them: little medications, only when necessary. Medications are only temporary things, but a behavior modification lasts. There's often no coordination with social workers and psychologists helping the children. Someone needs to be in charge of coordinating things. They need to be able to provide them with treatment, the staff should be trained to recognize trauma, parents and teachers need to communicate, have a personalized education plan (PEP), call a social worker for treatment for a child instead of calling the police when there's a problem. They need to get better instead of be punished.

2nd Keynote Speaker, Rev. Dr. Damone Paul Johnson
- Strong families = strong communities = strong nation and world.
- Harvard did a study to predict how many juvenile delinquents there would be in the future. The similarities between juvenile delinquents include: no parental involvement or awareness, no discipline, and the parents don't know who the child's friends are. Those kinds of kids are more likely to be juvenile delinquents.
- One way they judge how many prisons they should build is by looking at the 3rd grade reading levels.
- If we can predict who will be juvenile delinquents, shouldn't we do something to prevent it?
- 60% of babies are born to single mothers.
- 69% of African Americans are from single mothers.
- Fathers spend an average of 7 minutes a day with their children.
- A six month old baby had a fever that wouldn't break, so they took him to the hospital. They found out he had six broken bones caused by the father on three different occasions. Nowadays manhood is judged by their "hotness" and anger. The hotness and anger is from being so broken inside.
- You have to change roles when someone in the family goes down. If the father leaves, you have to step up and replace it. Be flexible and ready to change roles when needed.
- Ask not why the father left, but why the mother stayed. Why they care for their children and work so hard to keep a roof over their heads.
- In Mexico City, Mexico, there was a very bad accident where there was a bus full of people that went off the road and fell 100 feet down a cliff. Only 2 people survived -- a 9 year old and a 15 year old. The 9 year old had a broken leg and hit her head. When asked how she survived with a broken leg and head injury when the bus was spinning round and round, she said she felt like her grandmother was embracing her. She kept her safe. So even when your life is going round and round, they're broken on the inside, and their head is messed up, you can still embrace your children. That's how you'll survive.

Minutes - January 22, 2008

SENA Minutes For Tuesday January 22nd, 2008

Those in attendance: JoAnn Morton, Matt Montesano, Pete Piazza, William Pendleton, Tanya Owens, Nellie Morton, Kazuko Walton, Robert Chaumont, Noriko Chaumont, Yoko Chaumont, Mark Beaudoin, Marie-Elise Beaudoin, Melissa Bucher.

JoAnn Morton (President) led the meeting.

Minutes for December 17, 2007 read and approved.

Scott Jarzonbek: The Howe Library will be closing in April. There will be a party and Silent Auction on the last day. The library will reopen in the Housing Authority Building on South Pearl Street. How much time between closing and reopening is not clear, yet. There is no written agreement. There is some possibility there may be story hours in the Schuyler Mansion. Two branches (Howe and Pine Hills) will be closing at the same time. Some 5,000 books from Howe will be going into storage. There was some discussion of the Howe library windows (whether they should be restored or simply replaced). For Scott, the #1 issue was being sure the windows kept out outside noise.
After the Howe Library closes, where should SENA meet? Would it be possible to have the April 22, etc meetings at Rev.Covington's church of which Nellie Morton is a member?

The major part of the meeting was devoted to planning for an upcoming Job Fair. Tanya Owens (of the Trinity Institution) explained about their upcoming job fair (to be held Thursday April 24th, 10am - 4pm). They are estimating attendance of about 20 vendors. Prior to the Fair, they have a "Job Club" giving training in job application skills: filling out application forms, the job search process, practice being interviewed, how to dress, etc. There should be interviews on site. Trinity is open to partnering with SENA, should SENA wish to participate.
Bill Pendleton and Pete Piazza discussed aspects to consider when planning a job fair, setting a date, etc. February (black history month) is probably not a good time. April might be best. Times Union is holding a big Job Fair on April 2nd. Organizations seeking to fulfill their diversity requirements may be attracted to come to a SENA job fair. In mid-March, NY State will be having a Career Fair at the Convention Center. The Urban League has a mentoring program (helping individuals prepare to get work).
Should the SENA job fair be held at Giffen Elementary? Mark Beaudoin and Tanya Owens would connect to exchange information, ideas, etc regarding job fair partnering.

Matt Montesano discussed car larcenies and prevention, and the usefulness of having a "neighborhood watch". He suggested inviting representatives from the DA's office and Dept. of General Services to our meeting.

Should we have a SENA outreach activity at the Library Closing Party?

An officer's meeting was proposed before the next general SENA meeting on Feb. 26th.

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