November 14, 2024
Dear LREI Community,
Greetings and I hope you are weathering the change in weather to the more appropriate chilly temp as we head towards Thanksgiving. Balancing that is the hard to imagine spate of brush fires dotting our urban landscape. So hard to imagine Inwood Hill Park, home to among the last old-growth forest in Manhattan, on fire only a week after a similar conflagration in Prospect Park. Just never imagined it would or could happen.
A short note from me today, mostly to share the 2024-2025 Equity and Community Report with you. Each year, we share our plans for the coming 12 months regarding the equity and community efforts we have planned for our work with children, with the professional community, with the LREI family community, and with the school’s leadership. We at LREI and WE as a larger, broader community, have had a year that challenged our sense of community and continues to do so. Within the confines of LREI’s communities – the schoolhouse, the City, Country, and outside of our borders we see discord, violence, and seemingly intractable conflict. Within our borders, the recent election displays divides and dislocation. As a school, we have a responsibility to support your children in understanding the landscape and their place and role in it.
Thank you to Director of Equity and Community Kalil Oldham for writing this report, to his team of divisional facilitators – Tori Murphy, Momii Roberts, and Charlene Cruz Cerdas, and to the LREI’s Board of Trustees’ Committee on Diversity and Community for support in these efforts.
Please do not hesitate to be in touch with questions or for conversation.
