We as a Board continue to prioritize one of the central goals of our Strategic Plan: to support a culture of inclusivity, equity, and social justice. As the Board uses the lens of diversity, equity, and inclusivity in our work together, we will continue to ask "What assumptions are we making? Who is not at the table? Who is empowered, and who may not be?"

 

As a school, we believe that diversity, in its many dimensions, is a prerequisite for excellence. We define diversity to include a number of socially significant differences, including but not limited to race and ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic class, sexual orientation, and religious belief.

 

But creating a diverse community is not enough; we must also create an inclusive environment that sustains that diversity and ensures that each member of the community feels that they belong. The Board understands that we share responsibility for creating and nurturing this kind of inclusive community. To that end, we wish to share a few examples of how the Board incorporates this thinking into our work each day:

• The Board's Diversity, Equity, and Inclusivity subcommittee (part of the larger Governance committee) oversees board professional development focused on diversity, equity, and social justice and sets goals using an equity lens as we work on strategic and long-term planning. This subcommittee includes trustees as well as members of the school's faculty and administration: Fernanda Pernambuco, the Director of Cross-Cultural Partnerships and Community Engagement; Lisa Becker, first grade teacher, and Joe Harvey, Head of
  
  
• The Board, like the Mark Day School faculty and staff, has worked with the VISIONS, Inc. multicultural consulting group to develop a common language and set of tools for us to use in our work together. Every new trustee goes through an orientation that includes a 3-hour block on VISIONS tools for multiculturalism and Gender Spectrum training to help inform their leadership and decision-making processes.
  
  
• Board meetings frequently feature short "cultural introductions" that allow individual board members to reflect on the factors that shape their identity, and on the way that their identity shapes their lives.
  
  
• Each year the Board and the administration together focus time on specific topics to be better informed and deepen the discussions happening among independent schools. In the past few years, the Board has explored topics including LatinX enrollment at Mark Day, affinity groups, and diversity in hiring at Mark Day. This year, the trustees participated in a 5th grade multi-disciplinary lesson understanding the history of discriminatory policies including redlining by the Federal Housing Authority and then analyzing opportunity maps from the Othering and Belonging Institute to see how that history plays out in our communities today.
  
  
• Over the past few years, Mark Day School and the Board have undertaken major strategic initiatives in which we have continually strived to apply a lens of diversity, equity, and inclusion, including the roll-out of Indexed Tuition to better support socio-economic diversity and inclusion, a new Learning Commons that appeals to different kinds of learners, and in continually selecting future trustees in order to make the Board representative of the diversity that exists in our community.

The Board welcomes any questions or feedback you have pertaining to diversity, equity, and inclusion, as this is an ongoing process which we continually strive to improve. 

 

All the best,

Mark Day School Board of Trustees