Anti-Racism Statement and Actions

The Administration was aware of a number of the incidents as reported on Black@HRS before they were publicly posted, and in some cases had already undertaken an investigation, restorative justice and/or disciplinary action. Due to our confidentiality policy and legal privacy rights of employees and students, the School is not able to discuss specific names but the board is briefed regularly on significant issues, including incidents of racism.

We have an office of DEI, as well as an Administrative and Board DEI committees. Johára Tucker is our Director of Equity & Inclusion and we also have three Deans of Equity & Inclusion, one in each division. We also bring in outside experts for one-time and ongoing work with our professional community, including the National Equity Project who is entering their third year of facilitating monthly affinity groups and professional development workshops for our professional community, including our opening full Professional Community Cultural Competency training.

We have recorded all the incidents and personal stories mentioned on the BlackatHRS instagram account and incidents shared directly with the school are being treated seriously. In summer 2020, we developed an Incident Reporting Protocol for students and employees to safely and confidentially report incidents and complaints of bias/racism. The new protocol will be rolled out to faculty, staff and students at the start of school.

We are working with the Office of E&I, the Board DEI Committee and Admin team to establish our metrics for progress, and we will work to share them on our website. Aligned with our Diversity Action Plan, these metrics will include but are not limited to incident reporting, hiring, faculty/staff evaluation metrics, professional development and progress with curricular change.

The work of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is complex and multi-faceted. We see our role as educators to create an environment for all of our students to learn, grow and thrive. Making mistakes has always been an important part of learning and we are committed to building trust and relationships, engaging in restorative practices, and incorporating other tools that will assist us in this important and nuanced work as part of our community programming. One example is encouraging/practicing/modeling courageous conversations, starting with specific scenarios so students and adults can work together to understand and navigate complex situations.