In an email entitled “Next steps for our community” sent to the Upper School on April 19, Head of the Upper School Justin Brandon announced his plans to create a “discipline policy review committee,” tasked with “reviewing and revising our current discipline policy that is in our handbook,” inviting all members of the community to participate.

The committee was born out of meetings Brandon attended with students, faculty and staff members alike. “After living through different events of the year, it became clear that there needed to be larger conversation and more people involved with understanding and informing policies and practices,” Brandon said.

Upper School Counselor Binita Donohue did not entirely agree with the basis and timing of Brandon’s council. “I firmly believe that student input is important,” Donohue said, “however, I do not believe that this is a student responsibility. This is an adult responsibility. To create policy is not something that you throw out in email to anyone who wants to come onboard.”

“What I observed, from a counseling point of view, is that you had kids who were hurting,” Donohue said. “I think we needed to hit the pause button. The steps for healthy resolution when there’s been an eruption like this is first to debrief and get a sense of where we’re at. After that, we need to start thinking about how are we coping, and what are the things we need to continue as we think about the next while. What do we need? And I think, first and foremost, we need to heal.”

Although the committee only met twice in the 2018-19 school year, its end goal is to create a legitimate, tangible discipline policy using student input. “This year, its purpose was to have discussions about our current practices and policies,” Brandon said, “and also to brainstorm and think about what our policies can be. Long-term, it is to meet the needs of the students of this school, and to live up to our mission, recognizing that our policies may need to be updated, and more transparent.”

Brandon is looking specifically to reform the sections on behavioral probation and major offenses––those accompanied by suspension or days of reflection––although he will be reviewing the entire handbook.

Brandon views the council as an opportunity for him to hear and process the views of students, faculty, and staff, in order to develop mindful practices.The plan to include student input relies heavily on conversation within the committee. “I’ll take the notes, and take what the themes were, and look at how they can be honored and included in the decisions made about specific policies,” Brandon said.

Freshman committee member Alex Carlin is not confident in the administration’s ability to implement the changes she wants to see. “The administration has proven time and time again that they’re unable to write and follow policy,” Carlin said. “The discipline committee was the first time I was given a sense of hope. I was excited to influence the handbook and make it so future students don’t have to go through what has happened this year.”

In order to create a space in which community members can share personal experience as part of their input, Brandon chose to experiment with smaller groups within the 30-person council. “In our last meeting, we had small group sessions with more of a design-thinking approach to our policies,” Brandon said. “We were looking at where students thought our policy needed the most work.”

“Personally, I did not feel the space was conducive to sharing personal experience,” Carlin said. “Even when I did share, I did not feel like I what I said was heard or received in the way that it should have been.”

The two meetings that have taken place this year have been informative for Brandon in terms of policymaking. “I learned that there is some confusion when it comes to what exactly our policies are,” he said, “and I think people want to know how and when they’re administered, which is another question I am talking to division heads about, in terms of balancing transparency and confidentiality.”

Donohue agrees that confusion is likely, given the emotional nature of some of these topics. “For some people, having this place to impact and create actual, tangible change is incredibly important,” she said. “The idea of ‘something happened to me, and I don’t want it to happen to anyone else,’ is meaningful. But if that’s coming out of a place of hurt, then that’s not how policy should be formed.”

“Policy should be made on values,” Donohue continued. “No policy can cover every situation. It sort of directs and guides behavior, and so all policy should be based on that. It’s hard to make policy based on emotion. It’s not an emotional thing. It needs to have a level-headed approach.”

Donohue is also concerned about the dynamics of the committee at this point in the healing process. “If I’m in a place where my emotions are still boiling, and I’m sitting next to someone who does not have the same emotion, that creates animosity,” Donohue said. “That was my concern. You have thirty people in a room, some of whom have experienced harassment, and the process of this discipline committee becomes the proving ground for that.”

Brandon is working with the administration and the school’s legal team to come up with a level of transparency in the discipline policy that is satisfactory for both the student body and the administration. “That’s what we are trying to figure out. We have to understand how much we can say, while also keeping confidentiality.”

Students agree that the administration needs to find a balance that has not yet been discovered. “I understand that confidentiality is important, especially at school,” Carlin said, “but I think the school has gone too far and as a result has hidden under the guise of confidentiality and worked to sweep a lot of things under the rug. Right now it is very clear they’ve lost the trust of much of the student body, and they need to do something quickly to earn it back.”

“There needs to be trust,” Brandon said, “that I will be able to write something that will, at least for the next year, maintain part of the student voice. A lot of this has to be trust. I did not create this committee for fun, just to take some time out of my schedule. This committee was intentional in order for us to have a conversation, in order to learn and grow as a school. This wasn’t lip service.”

Division heads from across the country will be informing Brandon’s work as he reviews and edits the handbook this summer. “It is interesting to note there are a lot of schools that will be re-writing their handbooks this summer,” Brandon said. “We are not alone in that sense.” Brandon has collected handbooks from a number of private and progressive schools to inform his work.

Brandon sees these revisions as a two-year process. “Over the summer, we’ll be looking to refine some of the practices and provide more clarity with some of our policies,” Brandon said. “Next year, we will spend the time to have more thoughtful conversations where we can look at the policies and brainstorm even deeper how they can be changed.”

Brandon is hopeful this year has inspired real change that will benefit Parker students for years to come. “The policies that will come out of what has happened this year, that’s progress,” Brandon said. “I am not ignoring what has happened or ignoring the issues that have been presented. I see what’s going on with our students and I want to improve the student experience, which is why Student Government was asked to look at the Code of Conduct months ago.”

“Again, there needs to be a sense of trust,” he added. “Everyone has experienced tough aspects of this year, and that’s why we’re doing this work.”

In terms of the 2018-2019 school year, Brandon believes his work is done. “I have been working with the counseling department in order to be informed as to how to best support our students through the end of this year, but as to any further steps outside of the discipline committee, I don’t have an answer for that.”