Artifact 1

Issue Analysis and Management Plan

Creating an Inclusive Environment at Notre Dame Precatory School and Marist Academy

Corey Porterfield

EA 7940

June 10, 2018

The Problem

Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy has grown tremendously and

become a stellar academic school in the past 24 years, but one issue they have struggled with is

the lack of diversity, which has lead to a few diversity issues over the past few years. Some of

these issues have caused families to feel uncomfortable within the school community and as a

result has led these families to leave the school and enroll in another independent school that has

a more diverse student population. Below, I have listed the all the major incidents over the last

two school years:

 Ongoing racially-insensitive remarks from a student (Upper Division, April/May 2017)

 Photo incident with track students (Upper Division, April 2017)
 Bus incident with track team (ongoing from photo incident) (Upper Division, April 2017)
 Racial slur with track students (Middle and Lower Division, April 2017)
 Online blackface incident (Middle Division, May 2017)
 Football locker room incident (Upper Division, August 2017)
 Student/Teacher email incident (Middle Division, October 2017)
 Student hallway racial slur (Middle Division, October 2017)

Notre Dame Preparatory and Marist Academy, NDPMA, is an independent Catholic, co-

educational day school, which includes three divisions: Lower (JK-5), Middle (6-8), and Upper

(9-12). The diversity of the school is broken down in the chart listed below.

During the last accreditation site visit from Independent Schools Association of the

Central States, ISACS, in 2012, one of the major recommendations was to demonstrate a
stronger commitment to an inclusive and equitable school community for all constituencies.

NDPMA leadership was to define “diversity” and implement a strategic initiative to attract,

recruit and retain a more racially, ethnically and socioeconomically diverse school population.

This is inclusive of the student body, faculty/staff, administration and Trustees. Since the

initiative, the diversity of the school has increased minimally, therefore it is still a major concern

for our school community.

Stakeholders

When developing a more inclusive environment for students, staff, and families, the

stakeholders need to include the entire school community such as the board of directors,

administration, teachers, staff members, students, and parents. To be fully committed to

improving diversity in the school community, it needs to happen at all levels within the school.

Analysis of the Situation

Once the analysis of our school was completed by ISACS, the Notre Dame’s Board of

directors worked for more than a year to develop the diversity statement for our school: “Notre

Dame believes that teaching students to advocate for justice is essential to their development as

Christian Persons, Upright Citizens, and Academic Scholars. We believe members of our

community should work to eliminate prejudice and be a voice for those pushed to the fringes of

society on the local, national, and global level. Therefore, Notre Dame challenges our

community members to battle discrimination against any person or group, including, but not

limited to discrimination on the basis of age, creed, gender, race, national or ethnic origin,

socioeconomic status, or religion.”

After the diversity statement was created and approved by the Board of Directors, the

administrative team, which included the Dean of Diversity and building administrators, arranged
diversity professional development for teachers and staff. This professional development was a

two-part series that dealt with becoming a culturally competent educator. After the completion of

this professional development, teachers felt that they needed more support in diversity within the

classroom and the development of the faculty diversity committee was born.

The Faculty Diversity Committee began to collect quantitative data about feelings

of diversity at our school, use data to develop and facilitate diversity discussions for staff (i.e.

lunch and learn style), and start to develop our overall school diversity plan. The Faculty

Diversity Committee is comprised of teachers, staff, and administrators from all three divisions

and meetings are held once a month. The committee was successful in gathering data from the

staff and the trends are listed below:

Survey Trends

Ourselves

Almost 90% of the faculty and staff responded that diversity is important to them, though

only about 51% felt that it had impacted their life in some way. Most of the faculty/staff felt

comfortable having conversations about diversity in general (about 75%), with family and

friends (about 75%), with students of different racial/ethnic backgrounds (about 75%), as well as

students of different religious backgrounds (about 80%). Almost 78% of the faculty/staff

believes that our community will get stronger by discussing issues of diversity, and that

embracing diversity lead to compassion and empathy (about 92%), but only about 30% felt

comfortable discussing politicized issues in diverse groups. How do we, as a community, learn to

push past the level of comfortability and into the uncomfortable spaces, where the growth and

understanding occurs?
Our School

As far as diversity being a priority within the community, almost 50% of the faculty/staff

believed that diversity is important to the administration, while 35% believed it is important to

the faculty and staff, and only about 16% believed it is important to students and families. Just

about half of the faculty/staff incorporates diversity into their lesson planning or job

responsibility(ies) regularly. If diversity is deemed important by almost 90% of our faculty and

about 75% feel the faculty/staff is welcoming and accepting to diversity (though only 55% of the

faculty/staff felt that the student body is welcoming and accepting to diversity), how do we

impact the culture of the school to be a more diverse and more inclusive community?

Our Students

More than 20% of faculty/staff believed that some faculty/staff members assume that

students of color are attending NDPMA on scholarship/financial aid, while about 35% of the

faculty/staff believed that some students assume that students of color are attending NDPMA on

scholarship/financial aid. About 20% of the faculty/staff felt that faculty/staff should know

which students are on scholarship/financial aid to better support them, although 8% of the

faculty/staff felt that some teachers have lower expectations for students they assume are on

scholarship/financial aid. How do we, as faculty/staff, encourage all within our community to

value and appreciate differences—to look beyond their own experiences and see the world

through the eyes of others—while not making assumptions about who they are, where they come

from, or what their experiences have been?

After the survey was completed, the Faculty Diversity Committee thought it was

necessary to create a monthly newsletter entitled the Diversity Chronicle. Each year there is a

different theme of the newsletter. The first year of the newsletter the committee focused on
themes derived from the survey trends above. For example, uncomfortable conversations (having

them, as well as facilitating them), creating a more inclusive community, and valuing differences

while not creating a single story.

Next, the school wanted to focus on a group of upper division students that experience

most of the diversity incidents. Notre Dame partnered with Jalen Rose Leadership Academy in

Detroit to form The Alliance Project (TAP). The mission of the program is to cultivate positive

relationships by establishing trust, deepen these relationships to create a sense of belonging by

expanding perspective and celebrating diversity, utilize this newfound knowledge to improve the

lives of each scholar and the collective group, and take this learning to lead others toward

appreciation, understanding, and respect.

Groups of 15 sophomore, junior, and senior students from each school met monthly over

5 months after school at alternating school locations to engage in dialogue around issues of

identity, diversity, and acceptance. The end goal for each student was to become more culturally

competent, feel more comfortable having difficult conversations, have the tools to intervene

when they see someone being mistreated, and to be prepared for the diversity that exists on

campus and in the workplace. The students felt that the experience was eye-opening, and they

got to see the world from a totally different experience than they did before. We are planning to

continue this partnership with Jalen Rose Academy for the next few years.

Lastly, to include the parent community in improving the diversity in our school

committee, the Head of School and Dean of Diversity launched the Parent Diversity

Collaborative, to begin a dialogue about diversity and social justice. The purpose will be to share

ideas and create an action plan with the goal of making our school a place of inclusivity and
belonging. This first year, we had four meetings throughout the school year that focused on the

following:

1. Why is diversity important to me as a family within the NDPMA community?

2. Our own personal identity and how personal identity affects our students' experiences in

NDPMA

3. Starting to Take Action as Families--What can we do as parents to make our community

more inclusive?

4. Starting to Take Action as Families-- Digging Deeper--putting "teeth" behind the ideas

from #3.