Equity & Community

- Elisabeth Irwin, founder of LREI

Greetings to all LREI Families,

We hope you and your children find yourselves relaxed, safe, and ready for the school year. Below are a few things to note about the work of diversity, equity, and activism that will take place this year at LREI.

As we reflect on the work we do with students, parents, educators, administrators, and the Board, we realize that the conversations and work have come to focus more and more on equity. With equity as a core value within our LREI community, we hope to focus on building strategically and sustaining our diversity efforts, contributing to our current programs and curriculum with a multicultural and activist lens, and assuring that every member of the community feels a true sense of belonging.

LREI is a school that not only encourages relationship-making, we actively create spaces for children and adults to sustain and rely on friendships and work partnerships between people who hold diverse perspectives and different cultural ways of operating. Actively building a diverse school is but one step in the process. In fact, taking advantage of the benefits of a diverse school community takes work on the part of adults at home and at school. LREI, like many schools and communities, is a place where social identities are explored and formed. Allowing students opportunities to engage in this journey contributes to their ability to interrupt prejudice, build social and cultural competencies, and develop values around activism and democracy. 

Alongside, and through, our dynamic progressive curriculum, children explore issues of bias and anti-bias, inequities and fairness, and discuss ways to become active citizens of society. LREI is also a place where parents discuss strategies for raising social justice citizens. We encourage you and the adults in your household to join any of the affinity forums of which you are a member and to attend any of the all-parent discussions around race and equity.