Diversity, Equity, Inclusivity

The challenge and goal of Carolina Friends School is to help each student participate fully in a dynamic community of learners, in essence bringing their whole selves to school. We are committed to creating and maintaining a community of various races, ethnicities, religions, socioeconomic classes, sexual orientation, gender expression, and learning styles. 

The story of our School is rooted in the long history of Quakers who worked to eliminate slavery, segregation, and other injustices. From this tradition, Carolina Friends School was founded in the early 1960s as one of the first schools in the South deliberately to pursue a policy of racial integration.

While we continue to be driven by our founders’ dreams for a diverse learning community, we also have continued to examine how best to realize that vision. We acknowledge that we as a community must identify our personal biases and reckon with the ways in which our radical founding and values do not exclude us from systemic inequity.

Work in this area was formalized in 2006 with the formation of the Diversity and Inclusivity Staff Committee, building toward the establishment of the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in 2018. In alignment with our strategic vision goals to become “A Beacon of Equity and Inclusivity,” in fall of 2020, the Board of Trustees established a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusivity subcommittee. 

We believe that successfully preparing students for lives of purpose means starting with our own self-knowledge as educators to model awareness and a search for truth. We aim to provide an educational community centered in identity affirmation, learning, growth, and understanding, through our interactions, through restorative justice practices, and through a culturally responsive curriculum.

Statement of Community:

Our belief in the innate worth of each person and in the uniquely valuable heritage of every cultural group guides our practice as a multicultural community and our commitment to authentic personal relationships and peaceful resolution of conflict at Carolina Friends School and in our lives outside of School. Our learning community is built on our Quaker values: simplicity, peace, integrity, community, equality, and stewardship (SPICES). In order to meet these goals, we believe in holding all of ourselves accountable to respecting the identities and experiences of all community members and maintaining a safe and welcoming community. We actively oppose and will address any actions and/or speech which demeans or discriminates based on race, ethnicity, religion, socioeconomic class, sexual orientation, gender, gender expression, or any other attributes of identity.