DEJIB Statement

The Kew-Forest School, located in a borough of immigrants, is one of the most culturally diverse of any independent school in the country. We celebrate and affirm the various identities of our community, including but not limited to race, ethnicity, culture, nationality, language, religion, gender, socio-economic status, ability, family structure, sexual orientation, size, and age.

Given the diverse environment at Kew-Forest, our educators believe that they have a heightened responsibility to continuously work towards equity and justice. Equity encompasses the responsibility of the institution to ensure that every student has the resources they need to participate, achieve, and succeed. Justice requires us to go further and challenge the structures that give rise to inequity. We aim to realize equity and enact justice in our community through intentional efforts including but not limited to hiring practices, development of representative curriculum, programmatic offerings, and professional development requirements for our faculty and staff. We are committed to learning and growing, holding ourselves personally and collectively responsible to our principles, and engaging in continuous self-reflection and conversation.

The structures of equity and justice at Kew-Forest aim to create an affirming and inclusive environment, and promote a sense of belonging that is foundational to student success. All students deserve to be their whole, unique, authentic selves—courageously and unapologetically. Our students have the agency to build their own spaces of belonging, by curating their academic and extracurricular experiences. Students learn to see faculty and staff as allies and advocates.They learn to reject any form of bias, intolerance, and discrimination and seek ways to address biases within themselves and the community. With the affirmation that comes from the authorship of their own Kew-Forest experience, students know they belong here and develop the confidence necessary to thrive and contribute outside of K-F’s doors.