The Great Reset Comes For The Dalton School

Steve Sailer

12/20/2020

The Dalton School (tuition $54,000) on the Upper East Side is one of the half dozen most famous private schools in New York City, with a heavy enrollment of children and grandchildren of people you’ve heard of.

Dalton’s demographics are interesting because they reflect what Celebrity/Master of the Universe Tier Americans want for their children’s classmates these days:

In other words, elite whites want their kids to go to school with other whites (67.7%), plus a sizable sprinkling of blacks (11.0%) and Two or More Ethnicities (10.4%), but not so many Asians (8.2%). As for Hispanics (2.7%) …

If you ever wonder why less than one percent of students at Manhattan’s Stuyvesant public STEM exam school are black, well, one reason is because Dalton is on the lookout for smart blacks and will often subsidize them with scholarships. Why go to Stuyvesant when you can go to Dalton?

Not surprisingly, Dalton is Woke (here’s the high school’s list of classes), but not Woke enough for 100 of its staffers, who have submitted an 8 page list of 24 recommendations for getting even more anti-racistier than Dalton already is. Obviously, Dalton is a boutique school for the rich; but this list is likely a good leading indicator of what your suburban school district will think mandatory in the future.

1. Collect and publish data regarding race, grades, retention, and graduation rates.
2. Collect and publish data regarding race and discipline (including suspensions).
3. Commit to racial equity in leveled courses by 2023; at that time, if membership and performance of Black students are not at parity with non-Black students, leveled courses should be abolished.
4. Publish data regarding faculty, staff, and administration salaries, including mean and median salaries of employees by race and gender.
5. Develop a systematic and robust approach to assessing the experience of Black students and their families, and Black faculty, staff, and administration. Publish an annual report detailing institutional progress towards equity and inclusion.
6. Convene a committee of students, alumni, parents, and faculty to audit progress and develop new suggestions to supplement these measures by 2023. At least half of the committee participants should be Black.
7. Adopt a two-pronged approach to course-related content changes: 1) Institute a divisional requirement for courses that explicitly center Black liberation and challenges to white supremacy. The requirement should be equivalent to or greater than the smallest requirement for any other department. 2) All other existing course content and departmental work via Dalton by Design should undergo an audit to ensure that content is guided by Dalton’s commitment to anti-racist education and diversity, equity, and inclusion.
8. Allow faculty members to earn a course release if they partner with a Black-led community organization to teach a class or volunteer in other meaningful ways.
9. All faculty, staff, administration, Parent Association volunteers, and trustees should undergo yearly anti-racist training.
10. Administrators, faculty, and staff should produce individual public anti-racism statements. Faculty should also include anti-racist resources for each class they teach. Each department/grade level should publish its DEI-related efforts in an annual report.
11. Expand the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion to include at least 12 full-time positions: one Director, one Office Assistant, three full-time staff members per division, and one full-time staff member for PE/Athletics.

Dalton only has 1274 students.

12. Hire a staff member outside of the DEI office whose entire role is to support Black students and students of color who come forward with complaints and/or face disciplinary action.

13. Hire a psychologist in every division with a specialization on psychological issues affecting “ethnic minority populations,” as defined by the Council of National Psychological Associations for the Advancement of Ethnic Minority Interests. Expand services to support students coping with race-based traumatic stress.

14. Implement name-, school-, and salary history-blind recruitment and hiring practices for faculty, staff, and administrative roles; require diversity statements as part of every application; publish expected salary range in every job posting; and publish data regarding the racial makeup of every stage of every hire.

15. Review and audit all vendor and third-party contracts to ensure that Dalton is partnering with Black-owned businesses wherever possible. Publish yearly reports detailing Dalton’s vendors and third-party contracts.

16. Retain all security/maintenance/dining/other contracted staff without reduction in salary or benefits, regardless of whether Dalton is able to physically re-open facilities.

17. Offer a special orientation session for incoming students and families of underrepresented racial and ethnic backgrounds. Provide anti-racist orientations for all families on a yearly basis.

18. Provide child and elder care support for faculty and staff, and any families who qualify for financial aid, especially if Dalton remains primarily online due to COVID-19. Dalton should also restructure its parental leave policies for employees; rather than 6 weeks of paid leave and 6 weeks of unpaid leave, Dalton should follow the lead of companies like Netflix and offer a full year of paid leave for new parents.

19. Commit to paying all Dalton employees — especially staff and independent contractors — at minimum a living wage for New York, as calculated by MIT’s Living Wage Calculator. Ensure racial equity in the proportion of full- and part-time workers; independent contractors; faculty, staff, administration, and associate teachers; and publish information regarding the racial makeup of each of these categories every year.

20. Double individual faculty and staff professional development (PD) allotment if it is used to service student debt.

One of the most meaningful changes Dalton could make for the long-term financial safety of its Black faculty and staff would be to commit to paying any outstanding student debt upon employment; failing that, Dalton should double the PD allotment for employees who use the money to service student debt.

21. In alignment with the Movement for Black Lives, Dalton should immediately divest from the “criminalizing, caging, and harming of Black people.”

22. If Dalton is unable to diversify per Proposal 5, the school should make a financial commitment to institutions that serve a student body more closely representative of New York City, and contribute 50¢ [%?] of every dollar raised via any form of fundraising to the NYC Fund for Public Schools.

23. Going forward, any Black student or student of color who appears in Dalton’s promotional materials should receive reduced tuition, or be retroactively compensated the equivalent amount if they graduate before their likeness is used.

24. Similarly, any Black student or student of color who does work or provides consultation with the school regarding anti-racist and/or DEI initiatives should receive reduced tuition.

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