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A Proud Tradition of Diversity
David Royal, Director of Finance & Operations
I remember, when I first arrived here at Brandeis in 2018, being struck by the authentic diversity of our parking lot. Now, a parking lot may seem like an odd place to look for diversity, but I was coming from many years working in independent schools in Los Angeles, and while there I learned that you can tell a lot about a community by the cars the parents drive. I have done crosswalk duty in parking lots where there were more car makes and models I have never seen before than there were ones I had. Those communities valued a kind of performance of newness, of the bright and shiny. In my first crosswalk duties here at Brandeis, I saw minivans, sedans, and SUVs; Teslas, Volvos, Priuses, and Subarus; and yes, some makes and models I had never seen before, too.
I remember, when I first arrived here at Brandeis in 2018, being struck by the authentic diversity of our parking lot. Now, a parking lot may seem like an odd place to look for diversity, but I was coming from many years working in independent schools in Los Angeles, and while there I learned that you can tell a lot about a community by the cars the parents drive. I have done crosswalk duty in parking lots where there were more car makes and models I have never seen before than there were ones I had. Those communities valued a kind of performance of newness, of the bright and shiny. In my first crosswalk duties here at Brandeis, I saw minivans, sedans, and SUVs; Teslas, Volvos, Priuses, and Subarus; and yes, some makes and models I had never seen before, too.
What our parking lot said to me then and says to me now is that this a community that values many different things: comfort, safety, limiting your carbon footprint, being in the great outdoors. And, it also tells me that we see the value of that diversity itself: that we mean it when we say on our website that socioeconomic diversity is “central to the mission of The Brandeis School of San Francisco,” and that we are “proud of this tradition” of remaining accessible to families from a wide range of economic backgrounds (and vehicle preferences).
Last week, we shared this graph during our annual Town Hall Meeting:
It’s a graph that shows our commitment to this proud tradition of socioeconomic diversity in dollars and cents. With this slide up, Dr. Glass reminded our community of our strategic plan’s “ongoing commitment to maintaining our socioeconomic diversity through our tuition assistance program.”
This week, I am in the midst of working through all the tuition assistance applications that we receive here at Brandeis. Each one represents its own story, its own family working to make ends meet and prioritize the wonderful education their children are lucky to get in our classrooms each day. It’s important work, and work that I am proud to do, as we continue to drive toward our vision of being an inclusive, future-focused Jewish day school.
