Focusing our efforts on creating a diverse school community, for our students and our employees, provides for a richer educational and work experience for all. This pillar will focus on growing our employees’ and students’ cultural competency through intentional professional development and curricula. In the following videos, learn more about our goals and how in our first year work is already underway.
Adopted by the Board of Trustees in October 2020, The Overlake School’s Diversity Strategic Plan pillar continues the work from the previous two plans to build a community based on the school’s values of Inclusion and Equity, where students gain cultural competency and anti-racism skills that will carry with them as graduates who create communities of Inclusion and Equity beyond Overlake.
Goal 1 - Leading for Change
The leadership of The Overlake School will engage in ongoing training and professional growth on social justice, anti-racism, and cultural competency and design policies and practices for equity and inclusion.
Goals
The Overlake School leadership – specifically including, but not limited to, trustees, administrators, directors, department chairs, and Parent Faculty School Association (PFSA) leadership – will deepen:
- their shared ownership of TOS’ commitment to DEI
- and their leadership of TOS’ standing and strategic DEI commitments
by intentionally designing for cultural competency integration, professional growth, and impact in their internal and external processes and practices.
Goal 2 - Equitable & Inclusive Hiring
The Overlake School will design and implement an equitable and inclusive hiring process to recruit, hire, and retain culturally competent educators with a specific focus on increasing diversity from underrepresented Black, Latino, Native American, and Asian communities.
Goals
The Overlake School will effectively hire and retain culturally competent educators and the TOS employee (faculty, staff, and administration) community will also grow in diversity, specifically in, but not limited to:
- ethnoracial diversity - particularly groups that are significantly underrepresented, including African-American/black, indigenous/Native American, Latino/a/x, and APISA (Asian, including Pacific Islander and South Asian)
by intentionally designing equitable and inclusive processes and practices for employee recruitment, hiring, and retention, including cultural competency professional growth for hiring supervisors and teams.
Goal 3 - Equitable & Inclusive Community
The Overlake School will design and implement equitable and inclusive admission processes to recruit, admit, and retain a diverse student community with a specific focus on historically underrepresented Black, Latino, and Native American communities and socio-economic diversity.
Goals
The Overlake School student community will grow in diversity, specifically in, but not limited to:
- ethnoracial diversity – particularly groups that are significantly underrepresented, including African-American/black, indigenous/Native American, and Latino/a/x students; and
- socio-economic diversity of students’ families; and
TOS will effectively increase it efficacy to support an ethnoracially and socio-economically diverse student body and family community by intentionally designing equitable and inclusive processes and practices for student recruitment, admission, and retention including cultural competency professional growth for admission teams (staff, faculty volunteers, and parent/guardian volunteers).
Goal 4 - Culturally Competent Curriculum
The Overlake School will review, evaluate, and design curriculum and instruction with an intentional focus on equity, inclusion, and cultural competency. Cultural competency skill development will be a core academic expectation.
Goals
Equity and inclusion will be at the heart of excellent teaching and learning at The Overlake School, across the campus, in both classroom and co-curricular programming; and all students will grow in their cultural competency as a core academic expectation through intentional design for equity, inclusion, and cultural competency in curricula and pedagogy.
Goal 5 - Assessment & Accountability
The Overlake School will design assessment tools to formally collect data and report on DEI goals. The Overlake School will utilize DEI data to inform policies, strategic planning, and programming.
Goals
The Overlake School will integrate formative assessment of DEI into institutional processes and tools, in order to steward progress toward DEI goals; and TOS will use longitudinal data about DEI to inform its policies, strategic planning, and programming.