Town Hall Meetings

To all parents, alumni, staff, and students in grades 6-12:

In the midst of all of the end-of-year activity at Harker, we sent a note to our community on Sun., May 31, in which we indicated our plans to host a vigil and town hall meetings for students in response to two events: the discovery of an Instagram account with racist imagery and verbiage, and our own and the national dismay and outrage at the killing of George Floyd.

The Harker Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee worked in short order to host a Solidarity and Fellowship Vigil last Thursday for students and staff. This coming week we would like to invite all of our community members to Harker Town Halls:

Town Hall: All Staff and Grade 6-12 Students: Tues., June 16, 6-7:30 p.m.

Town Hall: Parents and Alumni: Wed., June 17, 6-7:30 p.m.

The primary goal of these town halls will be to provide community members an opportunity to share thoughts, sentiments and questions, and to provide input that will help the school enhance and focus our efforts and impact in the coming years. The event will include discussions of essential questions, as well as open mic time for additional comments.

In order to help us frame the questions for discussion, and to get a sense of the size of the participant group, please fill out the following RSVP form.

RSVP

The last phrase of our mission statement reads that we prepare our students “to take their place as global citizens.” Harker is a uniquely global community, and as such, not only do our students represent the future of this globe, they have the opportunity to define it.

Our efforts to embrace diversity, another component of our mission statement, are by no means perfect or without challenge. In fact, we can only advance our collective capabilities by facing and addressing the challenges in front of us, which can be hard. Yet, we need to do so with a spirit of compassion, understanding, and hope. The recent killing of George Floyd at the hands of an arresting officer has sparked outrage throughout our communities. The insidious nature of implicit racism continues to plague our progress, and overt racism continues to exist in our country.

We hope that you can join next week’s town hall to help us meet our mission, to help us be the best community we can be, to help us become an example for the rest of society, and to help us have the hard conversations that we need to have.

Thank you,

Brian Yager, Head of School, and the
Harker Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee