The Poughkeepsie City School District’s My Brother’s Keeper chapter is seeking community input on how achievement of young men of color can be elevated through a collective push to increase graduation rates.

That’s the focus of the Nov. 2 MBK Raising Achievement of Males of Color Convening, which will be held from 9:30-11 a.m. at the Columbus Administration Building, 18 S. Perry St. The organization is seeking individuals, community business organizations and other partner programs to attend and discuss strategies and solutions.

While the PCSD MBK has held similar convening in past years, Executive Director of School Engagement Da’Ron Wilson said the discussions spanned all six life milestones the MBK program discusses as key to future success: entering school ready to learn, reading at grade level by the third grade, graduating high school, completing post-secondary education or training, become employed and remaining safe from violent crime.

Wilson said the Nov. 2 meeting will be “laser focused” on improving graduation rates, which is also focus for the district as a whole. The graduation rates for female students at the high school have been more than 10 percentage points higher than that for the males nearly every year for the past decade.

“We’re making sure that we’re making a concentrated effort,” Wilson said. “That’s going to be the focus. How can you support that in various ways, either from community-based organizations, volunteers, stuff like that.”

President Barack Obama established the My Brother’s Keeper Task Force in 2014, creating an interagency mission focusing on the opportunity gap faced by boys and young men of color. New York in 2016 became the first state to enact the MBK initiative into law. MBK has several branches in the district; the main high school program has more than two dozen members with meetings every Thursday. The idea is to provide young men of color mentorship and tools to succeed, while also reaching out to engage other students.

The goal of the convening, according to a letter sent by Wilson and Superintendent of Schools Dr. Eric Jay Rosser, is to:

• Establish a collective vision for how we will support our community’s males of color.
• Identify strategies and programming that members of the community can participate in to support the academic, social, emotional and wellness of our community’s males of color.
• Identify key stakeholders and opportunities that will support the collective MBK vision.
• Demonstrate to the community through symbolic promulgation that a community of men exists who are focused on the positive outcomes for young men of color in Poughkeepsie.