On the Same Page

The University of Chicago Laboratory Schools

Communications from the Director

On the Same Page - Sustaining Diversity Belongs to All of Us

March 2007
David W. Magill, Director

On February 12, I released an Executive Summary of a Report on Diversity at the Laboratory Schools. The Summary includes the observations and recommendations of Mr. Prexy Nesbitt, who served as a consultant to our Schools during all of 2006. It also includes my administrative response and proposed actions to his observations.

Immediately following the release of the Summary, Mr. Nesbitt answered questions and helped clarify his observations at meetings of the Parents Association and the All-Schools Council. Questions were manifold and reactions were varied.

Several days after the report was released, one of our offices received a phone call from a prospective parent who had just seen a bulletin on our web site indicating that a “Report on Diversity Issues” was available at each of the Schools’ offices. The parent wanted to know if this meant that there were diversity problems at Lab and, if so, she would be withdrawing her child’s application. The next day we changed the wording on the web site to indicate that a Diversity Report was available!

While this reaction from someone who doesn’t really know us was both presumptuous and extreme, it underscores how words like “issues” can send up red flags. Regardless of how one interprets the consultant’s report or my Executive Summary, the observations, concerns, and recommendations should not be viewed as red flags.

Instead, they should be viewed in the context of a very strong and intact organization, proud of its past but bold enough to open its collective mind to ways in which it can continue to improve. These concerns should be viewed as beginning prompts in our Schools’ conversation that will continue well into the future.

In some ways, we have followed the lead of the University of Chicago, which visited this sensitive but important topic in depth several years ago and continues to address it today. A Diversity Statement prepared by the University in Fall 2004 is a work in progress, according to the Deputy Provost for Minority Affairs and Research. It states, ”We celebrate our proud tradition of inclusion even as we acknowledge the need for marked improvement.”

Interestingly, our consultant stresses the need to work on our own Diversity Statement and, from my perspective, it must start with the premise that most things are working quite well. Experience is a great teacher. Prior to coming to Lab, I was part of five school organizations that didn’t fully acknowledge their “issues” of diversity. Among the many reasons I am humbled to be a part of Lab is the opportunity to become even better.

I love being part of the University of Chicago, a model of a community of learners from age three to death. I have learned many lessons from this particular exercise of asking for help from someone outside of our organization but, importantly, I have also learned that improving the human condition is not the responsibility of one person. We all own a piece of it.