Dear Penn Charter Community,
One month ago, I committed to you our unwavering attention to issues at Penn Charter that have been brought into sharp and painful focus by the Black Lives Matter and Me Too movements. I promised that we would listen to the voices of people of color, girls and women, and LGBTQIA+ people, many of whom have suffered or felt marginalized by racism, sexism and homophobia that exist in our community. I committed to seek truth, make amends, and make change.
Along with planning for a return to learning this September, anti-bias and consent education work has been a priority, and we have made progress in setting up a process and structure that will lead us forward. Our work began with a period of intense community engagement, which will be followed by fully developed plans for systemic change.
We are close to completing an initial stage of the engagement work, which was to solicit input and listen:
We created three channels to gather personal accounts so we could understand the scope of the issues as well as any specific harms. So far, several individuals have stepped forward to engage in our online survey, and several others have had confidential conversations with third parties (external professionals with expertise in diversity and human sexuality) or with PC administrators or counselors. That engagement has ebbed, and we anticipate that we will soon collate and analyze the data from that engagement as well as the social media posts from students and OPCs.
We have established two task forces to energize, organize and monitor the effort through implementation. These task forces will act based on that data and what we already know about race and gender issues at PC.
The Task Force on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion will be co-clerked by PC Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Antonio Williams and board member Benjamin Robinson OPC '82. The Task Force on Gender Equity, Sexuality and Consent will be co-clerked by PC Director of Public Purpose Alyson Goodner OPC '96, Associate Director of Admissions Naté Hall and board member Mark Hecker OPC '99. Each task force will have a "steering committee" as well as a subcommittee structure that we develop based on our data collection and any other identified issues. The full committee membership will be announced soon and it will include students and recent OPCs, parents, faculty and staff, and board members.
The task forces will benefit from collaboration with external experts. Sherry Coleman, the DEI practitioner we asked to counsel and interview individuals seeking a conversation with someone outside of PC, will collaborate with the DEI task force. Dr. Coleman works as a coach, advisor and organizational specialist; she has worked nationally on equity and inclusion initiatives through training, and structural and group dynamics. We are working to engage an expert in human sexuality and consent for a similar role with the task force on gender equity.
In addition to the task forces, multiple groups of faculty and staff, students and OPCs, and board members have been working independently to identify where Penn Charter must improve and how we can make change.
The result of our collective work, I anticipate, will include changes to:
- Curriculum. Particular attention will be paid to our health, human sexuality and consent curriculum, and to ways humanities and other disciplines can expand students' worldviews about race and racialized and sexualized experiences.
- Training. Teachers and students must be better trained to understand and address racism, sexism and homophobia in the classroom, the hallways, the playing fields and in the experiences of many of our PC community members.
- Bias Response. Our new Bias Response Protocol, which provides a mechanism to report and address offensive language and behavior, will be completed by the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion before the beginning of the school year.
- Accountability. Students and adults must be held accountable for violating community norms.
- Hiring and Enrollment. We want to hire adults who will lead by example and champion this work, and we want to admit families that embrace our commitment to equity and justice.
- Sexuality Educator. Critical to the work of the steering committee will be a goal to hire a full-time sexuality educator to support our curriculum development and work to improve PC climate and culture. The steering committee and outside consultant will help us develop this new position in a way that best supports the Penn Charter community.
Please know that faculty and staff continue to work on these issues this summer with professional development designed to help all of us strengthen our diversity and gender understanding and practice. We have curated print and video resources and distributed them to faculty, staff, board members and coaches for summer professional development work; here are the race and anti-racism materials and the gender equity and consent materials. I recommend them to all, and particularly to parents. We are partners in the education of your children, and on issues of race and gender, even more than practicing multiplication tables or a presentation for English class, we need to work in tandem. Parents who understand the challenges and the growth that must happen are critical to how quickly and how far we progress in this essential work. Please, enter into this work with us.
Sincerely,
Darryl J. Ford
Head of School
Previous communications on these issues:
June 24
June 26