Principal’s Vantage Point — September 2020

Returning to School Now
Welcome back to this most unusual school year! It has been reassuring to see students and colleagues come to school (and parents at drop-off and pick-up), even in the attenuated way that must exist now. This week, all grade levels of students have started school, some on campus earlier in the week, some a bit later, while others have begun school remotely at home. Our approach is gradual, methodical, and all with the safety of our students, employees and parents in mind. Although we have never started a school year like this before, Parker’s care for its community members remains steadfast, resourceful and hopeful.

 

The year begins with our community experiencing multiple emotions, and many of them simultaneously. I feel this, too. Students and adults alike have feelings of appreciation, apprehension and disappointment; hopeful anticipation and lingering fears; excitement to reengage with one another and real concerns about how teaching and learning in the midst of this pandemic will play out throughout the year. 

 

This is common across all schools now. As a community, we need to draw on our empathy toward one another, to appreciate the collective need for flexibility, and to act in accord with our social contract—demonstrating our mutual care and concern for one another’s health and well-being. I am grateful to all in our community for leading with grace and understanding in all school interactions, and I am especially grateful to my faculty, staff and administrative colleagues for their dedication and professionalism under truly trying circumstances. 

 

However, the pandemic is not Parker’s only focus now. While we are highly focused on a successful start to the school year, we are also paying close attention to vital matters facing the school and our city and nation that we will be addressing this year and beyond. 

 

Parker’s Mission in Action
At Parker, we ground our actions in our core values, purpose and mission. Parker exists to educate students to develop a sense of self with the disposition and skills to be actively attuned and responsive to the needs of our complex, diverse democracy. We are a school that focuses both on the present experience and on shaping a future that provides opportunities for transformative growth and achievement for ourselves and others.

 

Parker is dedicated to progress and improvement. We continuously improve supports for individual students as well as examine and change structures and systems—academic, social and financial—that have held the school back from living up to its highest ideals.

 

Priorities for the Year
This year, while we educate as well and as safely as possible during the COVID-19 pandemic, Parker will also direct its institutional energies to address essential issues related to systemic racism and other forms of discrimination that exist in our own school community. Parker will pay heightened attention to improving our educational program and school culture as an anti-racist and anti-discrimination institution.

 

Parker has a firm commitment to strengthening the values of diversity, equity and inclusion through practical actions, including building on systems, structures, and programs that we have already established. We outlined these earlier this summer in a community-wide letter and they can be reviewed on Parker’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion webpage.

 

This year, Parker will address three main areas of school life that have been identified both by our diversity, equity and inclusion strategic planning, and by the demands outlined by strong student and alumni voices this summer in Instagram communications. These three areas of focus are: changes needed in our educational program; changes needed in the culture of behavioral accountability in the school; and changes needed in Parker’s fundraising and allocation of financial resources. 

 

The administration and Board of Trustees agree that our work in these three areas is a top priority. This year, specific actions in these areas will include but are not limited to: 

1.) Educational Program

Parker’s Progressive Vision for the Future:
I am excited to report that Parker’s mission-based vision for being a diverse 21st century urban progressive school will be greatly supported by the recent acquisition of a new transformative resource. Last week, Parker finalized the purchase of 317–325 West Belden Avenue in an amicable sale endorsed by 100% of its owners. This is an historic step for our school and one that augments Parker’s ability to serve as a vital anchor civic institution in our neighborhood and our city. 

 

We are in the process of developing plans for how we will use this property to create a larger integrated school facility, still all under one roof. We appreciate the look and feel of our neighborhood, so, when we do convert the property for school use, we will retain the facade, and our plans will be in keeping with our previous public commitments, all in the interest of maintaining the Belden streetscape. Parker will finalize decisions about the specific interior design and use of the building after we have worked through our own inclusive internal school community process, and neighborhood community input processes.

 

With great care, responsibility and optimism, we will navigate our way into the start of this school year and steward Parker’s future in a manner that supports our core values and current and anticipated needs. 

 

With gratitude, respect and best wishes to all in our community for the start of this coming school year,

 

Dan

 

Daniel B. Frank, Ph.D.
Principal