Over 500 people filled the Race Street Meetinghouse on April 17 for the only Philadelphia-area stop of the White Fragility in America Tour. Those who were unable to see the event live were able to watch a live stream in the Blauvelt Theatre at Friends Select School. Toni Graves Williamson, Friends Select’s director of equity and inclusion, arranged the event and introduced the evening’s speakers: Robin DiAngelo, the author of White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism, and Jack Hill, a diversity consultant, educator, and author.

Friends Select’s SummerSessions program has flourished in the last 12 years to offer a wide range of courses that utilize the school’s location in Center City to offer in-depth, exploratory learning. Desiree Harmon, Friends Select’s middle school dean and director of SummerSessions, recently discussed how the program continues to evolve, and what parents and students can expect this year. SummerSessions classes run from June 10 through August 9, and registration is now available.

It has become a recent tradition at Friends Select for me to share with the community the state of the school. I am thrilled to share that the state of our school is strong.

In the spring of 2018, Herb Siegel ’46 honored his friend and classmate Andy Lucine ’46 with a generous challenge to the Friends Select School community: Herb would match, dollar-for-dollar, $500,000 in donations to support need-based scholarships for Friends Select students. By the end of the calendar year, the community delivered: a total of $508,305 in gifts was raised by alumni/ae, parents, former faculty, and trustees to establish The Andy Lucine ’46 Scholarship Fund, a $1 million endowed fund to support students.

Advance Friends Select is the culmination of many years of an exciting, thoughtful, collaborative process undertaken by our community to reimagine an unparalleled Quaker education in the heart of Philadelphia.

On the Friday before Martin Luther King Day, J. Jondhi Harrell, Executive Director of The Center for Returning Citizens, spoke with middle and upper school students in the Race Street Meetinghouse. Harrell delivered the keynote address for Friends Select’s first-ever Martin Luther King Teach-in, which upper school students arranged to honor King’s legacy of activism and leadership in the civil rights movement.