August 17, 2020

Dear Packer Community,

In the weeks since the 2019-20 school year closed, we have been grappling with what school would look like for our students, faculty, and staff in the fall. At the same time, we have been taking the promised steps toward a reimagined approach to building a truly anti-racist culture at Packer. In our June 30 email to the Packer Community, the Board of Trustees and I shared with you our plan to achieve our anti-racism goals, including specific action steps we would take in the subsequent three months and in the coming year.

Our Anti-Racism Action Plan builds on the foundation of the diversity and equity work that has been in place at Packer. However, as powerful testimonies on the Black at PCI Instagram page and candid feedback from alumni, current students, and families have illustrated, our previous work has not been enough. In addition to concerns that Packer Professionals of Color have also shared with me this year, our whole professional community — in particular white administrators, faculty, and staff — now better understands just how extensively equity work still needs to be prioritized within our school.

The ongoing national reckoning about race, racial violence, and systemic inequity makes it impossible to ignore the experiences of those within our own community. So now we are approaching this work differently — and we need your support and engagement to ensure success.

To make certain that we have the resources necessary to achieve our goals, the Board and I have more than doubled the budget for our diversity, inclusion, and anti-racism work. We are implementing various measures of accountability and expect that you will hold us accountable as well.

I am extremely appreciative of those who have participated in our initial anti-racism work this summer. Administrators, faculty, and staff have come together as an Equity Working Group to assess Packer’s current policies, procedures, and professional development needs, and to offer recommendations to support our new Packer Anti-Racism Council (PARC). In addition, the newly created student-led Change Committee partnered with members of various departments and offices to review the scope and sequence of our curriculum and to determine ways to ensure it reflects an anti-racist perspective. At a time when we could all benefit from a much-needed break, I am especially grateful to the students who sacrificed time off to help us move forward in this work.

We are at the halfway point to the three-month deadline to implement the immediate steps in our Anti-Racism Action Plan. Below I have provided some highlights of what we have accomplished so far. Full details about our progress are also available on the new Anti-Racism Action Plan page of the Packer website: www.packer.edu/anti-racism.

Faculty and Student Investigations
Through Black at PCI and other channels, students and alumni — particularly those of Black heritage — have shared their concerns about the microaggressions and racist behavior of past and current members of our community. In consultation with legal counsel, we are developing a process to fairly and consistently address these complaints and have been counseling current faculty and staff who have been named as having caused harm. Early this fall we will strengthen the formal process we have in place for reporting racist acts or harassment. We will also conduct orientations for students, faculty, and staff, as well as back-to-school programming for families, that will detail our anti-racist and anti-harassment policies and how they will be enforced.

Training for the Packer Community
The effectiveness of our anti-racism efforts is dependent on our community sharing a common understanding of the issues we face.

This fall, our Board of Trustees, Alumni Board, Parent Association Board, and faculty and staff will participate in mandatory anti-racism training.
Consultants will provide ongoing coaching to our senior leadership, assistance with the aggregation of data, and help with identifying further action steps that will lead to a long-term anti-racism strategy for our school.  
We have started to develop anti-racist training program for families, designed by our outside consultants, the Diversity and Equity Team, and PARC. This year, it will take the form of various optional meetings and workshops in partnership with the Parent Association, the Office of Diversity and Equity, and our divisional offices, in which families will be encouraged to participate.  
Nicole Lavonne Smith will guide us in building restorative justice practices to support the redesign of the Student-Faculty Judiciary Committee (SFJC) in the Upper School and disciplinary structures in the other divisions.
Adeyemi Mchunguzi ’09 of ASMT Solutions will coach divisional leaders, department heads, and others responsible for hiring searches in establishing culturally responsive hiring practices so we can build a more diverse and equitable workforce.
Dr. Jackson Collins will lead a workshop for our academic leaders titled “Understanding the Experiences of Academically Talented Students of Color in Independent Schools,” which will help us better understand the racial stress, climate, and encounters that impact the experience of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) at a predominantly white institution like Packer. Participants will include all divisional leadership teams and deans, department heads, grade-level coordinators, college counselors, diversity and equity coordinators, and community engagement coordinators.

These are just a few examples of the training that will take place over the course of the next year. I am personally looking forward to the insights that I will garner from these growth opportunities. After a year as head of school, I have realized we need to develop a deeper understanding of how students of color experience Packer. These training sessions will allow our community to gain a common understanding and work together to make change.

Packer Anti-Racism Council
In the June 30 message, we stated that we would create an anti-racism advisory group. The Packer Anti-Racism Council (PARC), co-chaired by Trustees Jamillah Hoy-Rosas ’94, P’22, P’27 and Eric Ryan P’28, P’30, has been established to hold Packer and its community accountable for the implementation, monitoring, and sustainability of our Anti-Racism Action Plan. The group will represent all of Packer’s constituents — trustees, students, parents, alumni, administration, staff and faculty — and will work in partnership with the full Board and school administration to advance our anti-racism commitments. Packer students, parents, alumni, and school professionals are all invited to get involved in the Council’s work by participating in focus groups throughout the year and/or being considered for a position on the Council itself.

Ongoing Community Outreach
Following our conversations with Packer students, families, and alumni in June, we have continued to engage with members of our community. Members of the administrative team and I met with Packer Dads of Color, a group of fathers in the community who shared their expectations about our hiring and retention, curriculum, and admissions outreach. Our Communications Office has had two meetings with students to address the disproportionate representation of BIPOC students on the Packer website and in print publications. Semeka Smith-Williams, our Director of Diversity and Equity, along with members of our Development and Alumni Office, have had conversations with alumni and families about the new commitments and ways of partnering with the school to reach our goals. These examples are part of an ongoing dialogue across the school community that is critical to the long-term success of our efforts.

Ongoing and Public Accountability
What I have shared in this message represents just some of the work we have accomplished at Packer this summer. Updates on our progress will be provided in fall 2020 and in spring 2021 via email and on the Anti-Racism Action Plan page of the Packer website (www.packer.edu/anti-racism).

Our Anti-Racism Action Plan provides a clearly defined roadmap for the next 10 months, one which will surely expand and evolve beyond that timeframe. We recognize that it will take much longer to reshape a culture that has formed over the past 175 years. This work must be holistic — addressing anti-racism at both institutional and interpersonal levels — and ongoing. I am grateful for the contributions of our students, faculty, staff, alumni, families, and Board thus far and look forward to a continued partnership as we work to create a more equitable Packer — one that truly welcomes and appreciates every member of our unique community.

Best,