Vision and Steps Toward Antiracism

Our Strategic Inclusion Plan, adopted in January 2022, signaled our commitment to create a more equitable and inclusive environment for all students, families, and employees at Catlin Gabel. More than merely aspirations, this plan includes concrete, actionable goals by which we can measure our progress and hold the school accountable.

The Catlin Gabel Strategic Inclusion Plan Report of Year 1: 2021-2022 provides accountability and transparency into our process and progress. This information is also available on our website.

I want to recognize the contributions of my colleagues on the Inclusion Leadership Team: Director of Equity and Inclusion Connie Kim-Gervey, Ph.D.; Assistant Head of School Kama Bruce; Director of Community Engagement Jasmine Love; and Assistant Head for Enrollment and External Relations Sara Nordhoff. Their hard work and sincere interest in the community is apparent on every page.

Please take time to read this report, as the work it describes is essential to creating the community our students need at Catlin Gabel. I also encourage you to share your thoughts in a community discussion for parents and guardians on Tuesday, December 13 from 12-1 p.m. over Zoom. We will share the zoom link in next week’s newsletter.

Sincerely,

Tim Bazemore
Head of School

Dear Catlin Gabel Community,

Two years ago we announced our vision to make Catlin Gabel a more equitable and inclusive school and to take decisive action to combat racism. The progress we’ve made since then is largely due to thoughtful input and productive dialogue with community members. I am grateful to all who have contributed their time and energy throughout this process.

This shared effort has culminated in the creation of a formal plan that details our priorities and intentions related to diversity, equity, and inclusion for the next three years. I encourage you to take time to read through the school’s Strategic Inclusion Plan.

As we move forward with the Plan, progress reports will be shared with the Catlin Gabel community. We also remain open to your ideas and perspectives that support the positive, forward-looking reach of this work.

Thank you,

Tim Bazemore
Head of School

Dear Catlin Gabel Community,

Once again, the scourge of antisemitism has led to a violent and tragic event in our nation. The armed gunman who held hostages at the Congregation Beth Israel Synagogue in Colleyville, Texas this weekend was defeated by the courage of Rabbi Cytron-Walker, but we cannot ignore the target of his evil act. Jews are under frequent attack, and as a school committed to equity and inclusion, we condemn all acts of antisemitism.

The murderous violence of the Tree of Life shooting in Pittsburgh and the bigotry and hatred of the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville continue to live in our nation. Jews in our school community, in our Portland region, and around our country and the world are anxious and fearful, as antisemitism increases, fueled by social media and by public figures on the left and the right. According to the Anti-Defamation League, Jews, who make up 2% of the U.S. population, suffered 60% of the reported religion-oriented hate crimes in 2020. This included over 2,000 antisemitic acts across our nation. In Jewish schools and synagogues, tight security, armed shooter drills, and terrorism training have become the norm.

What does this say about the society in which we live? Have we not learned the lessons that centuries of antisemitism around the globe so violently illustrate? For how long will stereotypes, tropes, and conspiracy theories about Jews and Judaism continue to be downplayed relative to other forms of bigotry and hatred? Antisemitism is not about politics or economics; it is simply hatred and bigotry against Jews because they are Jewish.

At Catlin Gabel, we embrace and support our Jewish students, families, and employees, and reject antisemitic prejudice in all its forms. Our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion is a promise to support positive identity in all of our students, and to teach them about the inherent worth and value in every person. As part of this commitment, in recent months, we have engaged with Jewish parents and students in an effort to ensure that our equity and inclusion plans include curricula, speakers, and opportunities to learn about antisemitism and its many impacts, and how all of us at Catlin Gabel can help to combat it.

We stand by our Jewish community, and ask you to join us in condemning all forms of antisemitism and identity-based bias and hatred.

Sincerely,
Tim Bazemore

June 2, 2021

Dear Catlin Gabel Community,

What does it mean to be an antiracist school? Beginning to answer this question and planning for changes to help us to realize that vision has been a primary focus of the 2020-21 school year. While work on diversity, equity, and inclusion over the years has been essential to our mission of inspiring courage to take responsible action, , events of last summer and the voices of alumni and community members made it clear that race-based injustice and bias are embedded in our systems, culture, and curriculum at the school, as well as in the society in which we raise our children. We thank those BIPOC and AAPI community members who spoke up about their experiences at Catlin Gabel and helped us to see the need and opportunity we must address.

The antiracist work we committed to this year, and reported on in July and October, ranges from policy and staffing to curriculum, and includes making immediate changes and building a foundation for lasting progress. The Board of Trustees, senior administrators, employees, and cross-constituent work groups have been listening and learning, identifying antiracism goals and action steps, as well as determining related budget and fundraising needs that will be integrated with existing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. This summer, school leadership will develop a strategic equity plan that includes goals, measurements, and accountability and will be shared in the fall. We recognize change needs to happen now; it also needs to be systemic and sustained to achieve our vision.

We invite you to learn more about this year’s work by accessing a detailed summary of 2020-21 Steps Toward Racial Justice at Catlin Gabel. The update includes information on vision and planning, how we are elevating voices, our curriculum work, employee training, and news on community engagement and The CENTER.

Part of our work to make sure the school is more equitable and inclusive is to provide transparency into changes we are making, and invite your feedback and involvement. In addition to updates in divisional newsletters and alumni communications, and at board meetings, student assemblies, PFA gatherings, and employee meetings, we will continue to share with all constituents an annual update each spring with measurable outcomes and progress-to-plan information. We invite you to participate in the many opportunities to share your experience, learn more about this work, and make suggestions.

It is essential that any questions you may have, about how this priority relates to existing school and academic priorities, school environment, and financial plans, be raised candidly and explored together. We seek to ensure that every student feels known and valued, that all students, regardless of race or ethnicity, benefit from the same privileges in our institution, and that we are confident in our educational rationale for change. Our plan and this work need to be shaped, understood, and embraced by all in the Catlin Gabel community. This is the only way that we can move forward, together, with integrity as a kind and inclusive community that puts students first.

Sincerely,
Tim Bazemore
Indira Nallakrishnan

Dear Catlin Gabel Community,

Yesterday we witnessed horrific violence committed against members of the Asian community in greater Atlanta. This is not the first incident of this kind; as you know, acts of hate and harassment against Asian and Asian American people have increased in recent months across the United States. This violence is yet another expression of race and ethnic identity-based hatred instigated by xenophobic politicians and organizations. It reflects an attempt to scapegoat members of our shared community based on COVID-19 fears as well as latent and historic biases against Asians.

At Catlin Gabel we denounce and condemn such hatred and violence. We affirm our commitment to equity and inclusion, and our deep appreciation for our Asian and Asian American community members. This unwarranted and inexcusable mistreatment of fellow citizens violates our school’s values of kindness, inclusion, and integrity, and everything we teach our students about the intrinsic worth and value of every person.

We addressed these concerns at a recent Middle School Assembly, and our Diversity Summit on May 5 will include opportunities for students to learn more. We need to ensure, immediately, however, that all students understand the import of these recent events, the school’s clear and determined position on equity and justice for all, how we can support the Asian and Asian American community, and the importance of raising our voices in opposition to such violence and hatred.

To that end, we will make time before and after spring vacation to engage students in age-appropriate ways in all divisions. In the Upper School, we will host a virtual assembly tomorrow and support post-vacation conversations. Middle School students will continue to follow up on their assembly with C&C discussions. In the Beginning and Lower School, we will equip teachers to acknowledge recent events, hold space for this topic during morning meetings this Friday, and send information to parents to aid in conversations at home. To help guide us in this work, we are reaching out to the Asian American Parent and Student Affinity Groups at Catlin Gabel.

If we can help you or your family in any way at this time, please let your child’s division head, Barbara, or me know as soon as possible. In the meantime, I am asking everyone at Catlin Gabel School to recognize the seriousness of this situation, and to do what you can to combat race and identity-based violence, actively and personally.

Best, Tim

Resources for all of us:

• ABC News: Professor of Psychology at Santa Clara University, Dr. Sherry Wang, discusses layers of racial trauma experienced by Asian Americans and Pacific Islander community
• Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council: Data on discriminatory acts among AAPI communities
• Time magazine article: I Will Not Stand Silent: 10 Asian Americans reflect on racism during the pandemic and equality
• HuffPost article: This Is What No One Tells You About Being Asian In America in 2021
• LA Times: Anti-Asian hate crimes and harassment rise to historic levels during Covid-19 pandemic
• PBS Newshour: How to address the surge of anti-Asian hate crimes
• The Atlantic: What It’s like when Racism Comes for You

October 29, 2020

Dear Catlin Gabel Community,

In recent months we have shared with you steps we are taking to ensure that every student feels heard, known, and valued at Catlin Gabel School. We know that we will not achieve our school’s mission until we have equitable systems and practices in place to support our increasingly diverse community. As we wrote in our July 25 message, “We acknowledge as an institution the lived experiences of inequity expressed by Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) in our school community, and we commit ourselves to doing the work to make meaningful change.”

To guide the steps we will take, our antiracism work group crafted an overarching vision statement, which was reviewed by students, employees, parents, and the administration and was also endorsed by our Board of Trustees. We are sharing that statement with you.

Working Vision for Catlin Gabel School as an Antiracist Institution
(Approved October 1, 2020)

Consistent with our mission and values, Catlin Gabel School is committed to becoming an antiracist institution. We expect all members of the Catlin Gabel community to realize this vision by committing to individual and collective action through policies, practices, and behaviors.

At Catlin Gabel we seek to be an antiracist institution by:

• Acting to identify and eradicate curriculum, pedagogy, policies, and culture that sustain white supremacy;
• Listening to and elevating the voices of Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, and other people of color;
• Holding everyone accountable for racist behaviors, comments, and harassment;
• Educating students and all community members about how local, national, and global history inform racial dynamics;
• Educating students about systems that affect our current experience of privilege, power, and oppression;
• Recognizing the positive influence and impact of people of color in our school and beyond; and
• Expecting white community members to understand and acknowledge their privilege and support this vision through self-education.

Diversity Action Council and Board Inclusivity and Diversity Committee

The school’s Diversity Action Council is coordinated by Director of Inclusion and Outreach Jasmine Love, and the Board’s Inclusivity and Diversity Committee is coordinated by PFA President Mimi Sei. To achieve a more equitable school, we have charged this council and this committee to pursue work in the following areas:

Responsibilities of the Diversity Action Council
(teachers, staff, students, alumni, parents)

• Antiracist Curriculum: Collaborate to research, curate, and develop standards for antiracist curriculum and instructional practices across grade levels.
• Antiracism Training for Teachers and Staff: Examine teachers’ needs as they create antiracist classrooms and provide resources to meet those needs.
• Community Partnerships: Better understand how we connect CGS to the larger community through curriculum, equity-based partnerships, and the businesses CGS supports.
• Beyond Eurocentric Culture to Equitable Practices: Define and understand Eurocentric culture at CGS, examine school practices, and make recommendations to dismantle inequitable practices and traditions.
• Truth and Reconciliation: Learn and acknowledge the history and experience of marginalized and underrepresented students and provide opportunities for support and reconciliation.
• Admissions and Hiring: Use an equity and antiracism lens to look at admissions and hiring practices at CGS to support the enrollment, hiring, and retention of BIPOC students and employees.

Responsibilities of the Board’s Inclusivity and Diversity Committee
(trustees, administrators, students, alumni, parents)

• Provide resources and support for the institution and the Board as we enact an antiracist vision at Catlin Gabel.
• Develop a culturally responsive board with equitable recruitment practices, ongoing education, and criteria for equitable strategic decision-making.
• Create a viable structure for the amplification of voices of color and policies that support admitting, hiring, supporting, and retaining students and employees of color.
• Invest in research and assessment of the best uses for resources already allocated to support antiracist initiatives. Identify new resources.
• Ensure that all in our community feel safe, valued, and welcomed.

Antiracism Collective

In addition to these two committees, Upper School students have formed the Antiracism Collective whose mission is to invite the community to “analyze their privilege, focus on antiracism, and understand the experiences of BIPOC on campus.” The Collective is organized into three committees: education, facilitation, and outreach. Members already have led a workshop for the Board and will seek to learn how systems work at our school, and organize various community opportunities, including assemblies and student surveys.

Financial Resources to Support Change

As students, educators, and trustees move our antiracism efforts forward, we recognize that it will be essential to secure and allocate financial resources to support change.

Funds for Today: We are deeply grateful to David Recordon ’04, who last summer made a generous donation and challenged our community to match his gift in support of this work. David’s gift combined with gifts from parents, alumni, employees, and friends generated $86,000 to be used this year. This allowed us to expand Erica Babino’s part-time role to a full-time position as Assistant Director of Inclusion and Outreach, with diversity recruiting and retention as part of her responsibilities. These funds also are supporting English teacher Krystal Wu in leading our PS-12 antiracist curriculum efforts and will support antiracism employee training and community speakers and events.

Funds for Tomorrow: As we begin to embark on the school’s next capital campaign, we are setting a goal of raising $10 million to endow a Responsible Action Fund. This endowment will enhance our ability to recruit and retain diverse, talented teachers and permanently fund positions in the Inclusion and Outreach Office. It also will provide grants for innovation in teaching and support talented students by providing increased access to financial assistance.

Additional Actions

In addition to these efforts, other actions include:

• Creating a new oppressive language policy;
• Improving racial incident reporting mechanisms;
• Auditing our current commitment and opportunities to invest in local BIPOC businesses; and
• Involving alumni in identifying opportunities for mentoring, working with affinity groups, and more.

We are grateful to all constituents for sharing with us their experiences and ideas, and for recognizing the essential need for change. Our vision for becoming an antiracist institution requires leadership by the Board and administration, active engagement by all community members, and a sustained school-wide effort.

We can and must summon the will and courage to ensure that our mission and values hold true for all community members. This is necessary for each student’s happiness and success and to ensure that Catlin Gabel School adds value to the world.

We continue to invite your feedback by emailing us at hos@catlin.edu. There is much that we can learn from one another, and we won’t always get this important work right, but that will not deter us from moving forward. We plan to share updates with you on a bi-annual basis. Thank you for your support and your belief that positive change is essential and possible.

Tim Bazemore
Head of School

Indira Nallakrishnan
Chair of the Board of Trustees

Dear Catlin Gabel Community,

Since our communication on June 9, when we shared our commitment to creating a truly inclusive and welcoming culture for our Black students, employees, and parents as well as other communities of color, we’ve started to make structural changes that address systemic racism at our school. As we expressed in that communication, “we know it’s time to reflect, act, and make changes that are overdue and that our students deserve.”

We are grateful to Catlin Gabel’s Black Parents Affinity Group and TRIBE (Black student affinity group), and the many students, alumni, and colleagues who stepped forward to share with us (via email, in person, and on social media) their stories, experiences, and requests. We acknowledge as an institution the lived experiences of inequity expressed by Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) in our school community, and we commit ourselves to doing the work to make meaningful change.

The Board, administration, faculty, staff, Parent Faculty Association, and Student Association join together in a pledge to do all we can to become an antiracist institution and provide equity of opportunity and experience, as well as safety and a sense of belonging for all. To that end, we are sharing this update on steps we have taken so far and further changes we will pursue in the months ahead.

Action steps to date:

• Formed an antiracism work group composed of our Inclusion and Outreach office team, teachers, staff, and the Head and Assistant Head to work this summer to develop antiracism initiatives that we will pursue in the 2020-21 school year.
• Revised employee and family handbook policies regarding race-related non-negotiable language and behaviors, including consequences and accountability.
• Expanded reporting language in school handbook to include racism and other forms of discrimination.
• Funded antiracism curriculum design classes and workshops for teachers.
• Appointed Erica Babino as Assistant Director of Inclusion and Outreach. One of her primary responsibilities will be recruiting outreach and retention strategies for BIPOC teachers.
• Charged the Board of Trustees Inclusion and Diversity Committee (trustees, administrators, parents, and students) and the Diversity Action Council (employees, parents, and students) with leading our school’s antiracism work in 2020-21.

Action steps underway this summer/fall:

• Drafting a Vision for Catlin Gabel as an antiracist institution, and asking students, families, and employees to commit to realizing this vision.
• Providing teachers with guidance for academic curriculum and classroom discourse regarding race-related historically oppressive words.
• Identifying and addressing the impediments to increasing the enrollment of Black and other underrepresented students.
• Creating antiracist curriculum guidelines and expectations across grades and departments.
• Funding and developing ongoing cultural responsivity, antiracism, and white privilege teacher training programs.
• Auditing our vendor list and creating a new policy to increase investment in BIPOC-owned businesses.

Additional steps:

• Develop an Annual Report to the Community on progress toward becoming an antiracist institution.
• Develop new systems to collect and track student data related to social identity to identify potential and hidden systemic inequities.
• Conduct a school culture analysis—traditions, symbols, language, etc.
• Audit school curriculum for inclusion of BIPOC histories and implicit biases in curriculum selection.

As we define our vision for what a more equitable and inclusive community, curriculum, and culture looks like at Catlin Gabel School and put into action tangible changes to support this vision, we continue to invite your feedback by emailing us at hos@catlin.edu regarding our plans and intentions. This work is not the responsibility of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color in our community; it must be work that each of us embraces and pursues, and it must be sustained. This is the only way we can ensure that the mission and values to which we aspire hold true for everyone who is a part of this educational community.

We will share more updates on our efforts in September. Until then, we welcome your input, appreciate your support, and encourage you to join us in this important antiracist work.

In partnership,

Indira Nallakrishnan
Chair, Board of Trustees

Tim Bazemore
Head of School

Dear Catlin Gabel Community,

In recent days we have seen widespread protests in Portland, the United States, and around the world as many march to call attention to social injustice and systemic racism, especially related to the Black community. Here at Catlin Gabel, statements of support that we made have led community members to share painful personal stories and ask hard questions about what we are doing to address issues of inequity and privilege in our own school community.

In this moment of collective reckoning, we need to examine our institution and how racism exists here, historically and currently. We won’t look away. We won’t be in denial. We will not let our privilege allow us to be silent. It is time to reflect, act, and make changes that are overdue and that our students deserve. It is time to live up to our responsibilities as school leaders to do this work.

Experiences shared by Black students, families, and employees make it clear that Catlin Gabel must do better in fostering a truly inclusive and welcoming culture of belonging. As a school, we believe that the student voice is of utmost importance, and we need to listen more closely to grievances of our Black, Indigenous, and People of Color communities (BIPOC). When we hear the pain of fellow community members, we know it is necessary to take action to continue to dismantle racism in our institution and in society.

Racism and its effects exist at Catlin Gabel, rooted in the fact that most independent schools were founded by white educators to serve only white students. We must understand how this history still informs the school today. We must create an environment where all students and families feel welcome and valued. Every student has their own unique experience in school, but we need to ensure that all students have in common a school experience that respects, recognizes, and supports their identity in all regards. That is our obligation to every family and employee. Steps we have taken to date to be more diverse, equitable, and inclusive are not enough, and we must do more.

Thank you to community members who are sharing their perspectives and input with us. Please keep doing so. This will help inform further actions that we will take.

The following steps are a starting point:

• Ensuring accountability for hurtful and derogatory race-related language and behavior
• Prohibiting the use of the n-word from classroom instruction by non-Black teachers, regardless of educational context, and prohibiting the utterance or use of the n-word in any other context by non-Black students or employees
• Providing access to safe and accountable reporting mechanisms for all
• Training for teachers, staff, administrators on white privilege, biases, and systemic inequities
• Developing anti-racist curriculum across the divisions
• Hiring and retention of BIPOC teachers
• Supporting BIPOC-owned businesses and vendors
• Communicating outcomes and data annually regarding these steps

We are listening, and we will share more detailed plans for structural change in the weeks to come. We have work to do to create the inclusive, nurturing, and supportive learning environment that every student deserves. It is time for all of us to step up and do that work. This is a human issue, and we all play a part in effecting positive change.

In partnership,

Indira Nallakrishnan
Chair, Board of Trustees

Tim Bazemore
Head of School