At UHS, we believe that the deepest learning requires collaboration among people who embody a diversity of backgrounds, beliefs, experiences, and perspectives. Building and sustaining a community composed of a wide range of social and cultural identities requires that all members have the resources they need to thrive. To this end, we must further our self- knowledge, our ability to communicate effectively across individual differences, and our capacity to cultivate an anti-racist[1], anti-oppressive[2] school culture mindful of systemic barriers to equity[3]. We do this work on a personal, professional, and an institutional level, recognizing that our community is part of a larger and more complex world. 

The purpose of this document is to articulate our aspirations in our ongoing work towards building systems that yield equitable outcomes. We make the following commitments in the context of the increasing cost of living in the Bay Area, our desire to better serve youth who are expansive in their understanding and expression of gender and sexuality, and our conviction that this revised Statement on Equity and Community must inspire deliberate actions. 

Equity in Access and Support 
● Continue to recruit, nurture, and support a student body, faculty, staff, and board of trustees whose composition is responsive to the shifting diversity of the Bay Area, with particular attention to race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, gender, religion, and 2SLGBTQIA+ identities. 
● Devote resources to measure and promote equity and belonging in order to ensure that our students, faculty, staff, and trustees have support and opportunities to thrive in our programs and community. 
● Sustain and promote financial support systems to provide our students with equitable
access to all aspects of the UHS experience, and respond proactively to changing family circumstances. 
● Provide equitable pathways for the professional growth and leadership development of our faculty and staff. 

Care and Interconnection 
● Regularly revisit and revise our UHS Community Agreements to maintain a model for honoring differing perspectives, and for building and sustaining relationships in and outside of the classroom. 
● In moments of difficulty and disconnection, respond with openness, empathy, and restorative action. We are a stronger community when we repair harm by talking to each other, not about each other. 
● Develop and sustain partnerships with people, institutions, and organizations beyond UHS in order to learn and grow as part of a larger community ecosystem. 

Diversity Responsive Teaching and Learning 
● Act with an awareness of our personal cultural lenses and the normative culture that we, consciously or unconsciously, create together. 
● Regularly engage faculty, staff, and administration in equity training to ensure that all UHS programming and practices are designed to understand, respond to, and elevate the perspectives, experiences, and needs of our increasingly diverse student body.
● Consistently invite student reflection and incorporate student feedback in order to create learning experiences that are meaningful to the dynamic needs of diverse students—that help them feel seen and heard in ways that resonate with them. 

Institutional Self-Assessment and Reflection 
● As we design new programs, policies, and practices (and changes to existing ones), be deliberate about considering the impact of this work on advancing equity, anti-racism, and anti-oppression. 
● Create dashboards that communicate our progress in increasing student, faculty, staff, and board diversity in order to monitor our accountability to our goals. 
● Regularly measure the growth, success, and well-being of our community members, and utilize student input whenever appropriate as we design responses to any patterns of inequity that we identify. 
● Continue to uphold our core value of Inquiry, challenge our thinking, and foster our growth as an institution by looking beyond our walls for models, best practices, and opportunities to learn from (and share with) our peers. 

Endorsed by the UHS board of trustees January 2023 
Adopted by UHS faculty and staff February 2023

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[1] An anti-racist school is one that does not tolerate racial discrimination on an individual or a systemic level. Anti-racist actions may take the form of: 
● Confronting racism, disenfranchisement, and discrimination 
● Acknowledging the inequitable effects of power and privilege structures based on race ● Interrupting and challenging oppression 
● Building community that values all members 
● Building systems of equitable access, experiences, and outcomes 
● Conscious, structured, and deliberate actions 
— from the Due East Educational Equity Collaborative 

[2] An anti-oppressive school seeks to dismantle systems of power and privilege that mistreat historically marginalized groups. 

[3] Equity requires providing members of a community what they need in order to thrive, with particular attention to systemic barriers they may face due to group membership(s). “Equity is not equality; it is the expression of justice, ethics, multi-partiality, and the absence of discrimination” (NAIS.org).