Dear SSFS Families,
I am writing to invite you to attend the Tues, Oct. 22 Parent Forum with the Head of School in Yarnall Library, where our focus this year will be the School's recently-published Diversity Audit Report. As in previous years, the Head of School forum will take place at 7:15 pm following the Parent Association meeting, scheduled for 6:00 pm the same evening, also in Yarnall Library. All SSFS parents and guardians are welcome and encouraged to attend both events. For those who are unable to make it in person, this forum will also be streamed live from our YouTube channel here.
Many of you may remember that during the 2018-2019 school year, SSFS initiated a School-wide Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Audit conducted by the Glasgow Group (see email sent in January 2019 with more information about the audit). The audit included online surveys and focus groups with various constituencies.
The resulting Diversity Audit Report can be found online here. The members of the 2018-2019 Audit Steering Committee* hope you will set aside time to read through this report in detail, especially the sections that highlight findings, recommendations, and the draft action steps. This report is a prime example of our learning process: Question, Reflection, Action – the audit has taken us from Question into Reflection, and now it's time to move through Reflection into Action.
We will spend some time during the Oct. 22 forum to share thoughts with each other on the report, and especially the action steps, as we turn to the important work of putting what we've learned into action to make our school a fully inclusive and equitable community.
Additionally, I want to thank the parents and guardians who provided us with valuable feedback via the Parent Satisfaction Survey, which has been distributed at the end of each academic school year for the past nine years. Assistant Head of School David Hickson has prepared a summary report of the 2018-19 survey data, which you may view by clicking here.
I hope to see you at the forum on October 22.
Tom Gibian
Head of School
Sandy Spring Friends School
"Let Your Life Speak"
*Many thanks to the 2018-2019 Audit Steering Committee members for their work over the past 14+ months: David Blake, Chanelle Broughton, Brian Brubaker, Adrienne Chisolm, Brenda Crawley, Aimee Farley, Tom Gibian, David Hickson, Pamela Kogan, Liza Long, Julie Mendez, Jonathan Oglesbee, and Fernanda Velazquez '20.