Mayor Martin J. Walsh will announce today he is assembling a “diversity inclusion team” that will help him grow the ranks of minorities working for the city — especially Latinos.
Joseph Rull, Walsh’s chief of operations, said the diversity team will begin meeting on a regular basis around late January or early February, and will advise Walsh’s soon-to-hired chief diversity officer.
“It’s going to be a two-way conversation,” Rull said. “It’s going to be open and honest, and some of these discussions people don’t want to have, but you need to have them.”
On the campaign trail, Walsh pledged to bring on a diversity czar and focus on the racial makeup of the city’s workforce.
The move comes as the Greater Boston Latino Network releases “The Silent Crisis: Including Latinos and Why it Matters,” a report that found a “wide difference” between the number of Latinos in the city’s population (17.5 percent) and their representation in executive city positions.
The report determined Boston would have to double the participation of Latinos in executive positions and on boards and commissions for those ranks to be commensurate with the number of Latinos living in the city.
The report also found that in the Boston Public Schools — where Latinos make up 40 percent of enrollment, the largest of any group — only 10 percent of teachers, 13 percent of principals and 14 percent of central office employees are Latino.