List of 6 items.

• Curriculum Changes

  “Black History, Critical Race Theory, and Ethnic Studies must be central to the school’s core curriculum. Black history on American chattel slavery and Jim Crow, as well as the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans, must be further infused into the sophomore U.S. History curriculum and the Freshman Perspectives in World History class…
  
  …These histories must be integrated into all core English courses and relevant electives by including more perspectives and works written by Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC)…
  
  …Add a contemporary racial education course to the formal curriculum and offer it as an elective available to juniors and seniors by 2021-22 school year…”
  
  SCHOOL RESPONSE AND ACTION STEPS:
  We welcome the call to develop new curricular approaches to addressing with our students issues of race and societal inequities. This is work we have been engaging in over the past couple of years, largely through the classes we’ve created in our English, history, and IDS elective program. The history and English curricula are constantly being re-evaluated through DEI lenses, and we vow to intensify our efforts to provide broader cultural representation in the curriculum and to implement anti-racist pedagogies.
  
  Recent changes made to the US History curriculum to include a greater emphasis on the history and experiences of African-Americans and other marginalized groups will continue to be refined and bolstered in preparation for the 2020-21 school year, and augmented for the fall of 2021. We expect to have the sophomore US History curriculum partially redesigned for the 2020-21 school year, with the full curriculum changes implemented in the fall of 2021.
  
  Other examples of curricular work that has already begun include:

  ● The development of a course for all sophomores through the Center for Community and Civic Engagement (CCCE) on self and society that will explore social and racial identity, systems of power, and skill development for engagement and civic action. That course will be refined during this school year and implemented in the fall of 2021.

  ● The development of a contemporary racial education offering through an elective for juniors and seniors will be developed by the 2021-22 school year. Details and focus for that course will be determined by course designers through the fall of 2020 for presentation to the Curriculum Committee in January 2021.

• Freshman Year Seminar (FYS) Shifts

  “Restructure a portion of the Freshman Year Seminar (FYS) to center and expand on pertinent equity issues…”
  
  SCHOOL RESPONSE AND ACTION STEPS:
  The freshman seminar course currently carries elements of identity exploration and will be enhanced to do more of that work. We feel that the larger part of that work, however, belongs in a 10th grade program (see above), where it can be met in a more comprehensive and developmentally appropriate way. Enhancements to the existing 9th grade program will be implemented during the 2020-21 school year.

• Trainings and Professional Development

  “Starting in the fall of 2020, all student leaders participate in mandatory training programs.”
  
  SCHOOL RESPONSE AND ACTION STEPS:
  We are in the process now of developing programming for student leaders across all facets of student life, from athletic team captains to club leaders. Training will include (but not be limited to) allyship training, anti-bias training, and the development of skills to help our students manage “uncomfortable conversations about power, privilege, and oppression.” We’ll begin building that training curriculum this summer and begin implementation in the fall of 2020, with the goal of having it completely worked out for the fall of 2021.
  
  Staff training, which has been ongoing in these areas for many years at Rivers, will continue and be matched with the work we’re doing with our students.
  
  Parent education programming, which we began in earnest in the 2019-20 school year, will accelerate in the 2020-21 year and be matched with the training mentioned above for students and faculty. (Note: Because of the current health crisis, it’s unclear right now how we’re going to be operating come the fall, so these types of training have not yet been determined or scheduled at the time of this writing. We can update on that work as we get the year settled and the training piece figured out.)

• Summer Reading

  “Starting in the summer of 2021, each incoming junior class is assigned a culturally relevant book chosen collaboratively by the English department and BRIDGE.”
  
  SCHOOL RESPONSE AND ACTION STEPS:
  We appreciate this suggestion and plan to continue using our US summer reading program and our English department summer reading selections to provide opportunities for students to acquaint themselves with different cultures and explore issues of racial and social injustice. We like the idea of working with BRIDGE to identify appropriate texts for juniors and can commit to making that happen for the summer of 2021. Currently, all juniors read Imbolo Mbue's “Behold the Dreamers” as a summer reading text for English 11 and AP English 11. Freshmen read Angie Thomas's “The Hate U Give” (and watch the film adaptation) for English 9, and all sophomores read Khaled Hosseini's “The Kite Runner” for English 10 and Honors English 10. The summer read for middle school students this year is “New Kid.”

• Scholarship

  “Create a generous four-year scholarship grant awarded to a new, incoming freshman, who demonstrates leadership and activism in the fight for racial justice.”
  
  SCHOOL RESPONSE AND ACTION STEPS:
  
  While we think this is a powerful idea—one that places a public value on the work of civic engagement—we have to acknowledge that there are some structural impediments to deploying a “scholarship” in this way that we will have to problem-solve. We are restricted in the way in which we are allowed to deploy financial aid by the cooperative arrangement of the league of schools in which we operate, a way that does not allow for “scholarships,” per se. However, we think we can find a way to take this concept and make it work for our current students who qualify for significant aid and who demonstrate effective leadership and engagement in the diversity, equity, and inclusion work in their time at Rivers. We are engaged in crafting what this could look like and hope to have it rolled out—as we seek the requisite funding required—for the 2021-22 school year and beyond.

• Student, Staff, and Administrative Accountability

  “Increase student, staff, and administrative accountability when addressing disciplinary matters pertaining to discrimination.”
  
  SCHOOL RESPONSE AND ACTION STEPS:
  We have added a new section to the student handbook entitled community citizenship.  This section explicitly lays out what we at Rivers mean by citizenship and identifies vulnerable populations in our community who will be uniquely and deeply impacted by offenses, whether those be micro-aggressions or sustained aggressions.  The Dean of Students was very clear with our student body about these new sections in the handbook and about the fact that slights and slurs, whether they are song lyrics or quotes from a text have no place in our community.   This was a message all students received in addition to some ground rules set up during orientation to empower students to be up-standers in ally-ship with those who are being negatively impacted.  
  
  Along with this addition to the handbook we have created a bias reporting system aligned with our community standards that allows for any student to find a trusted adult and report incidents that arise. Alone or with that trusted adult, that student can bring any issue of concern forward to the DOS.  There is also opportunity to report anonymously.  Then a committee comprised of the dean of students, the DEI Director and the division head will meet together to discuss a path forward. There are number of ways in which any incident might be handled ranging from mediation and education all the way to expulsion depending on the severity of the incident and the discipline history of said student or students.  The other thing this reporting system allows us to do is shape our all school programming in a way that is specifically informed by the incidents that occur in our community.