A Message from the Head of School
Dear Archer Community,
 
Thank you to those who have expressed your condolences on the loss of my son, Grayson. I am grateful for the time I had with my family and all those on the Cape who loved and cared for him. Grief is not time-bound, but the time I have had this week has given me needed space to say goodbye.
 
While I’ve been away, I’ve been made aware of parents and students who feel strongly that we have fallen short by issuing a statement of unity and support - as opposed to an explicit condemnation of Hamas for the horrific terror attacks of Saturday, October 7. Our decision to focus on the support and education of our students was intentional. Since the murder of George Floyd, a watershed moment in our nation, we have expressed to our community a desire as a school with a diverse population to refrain from making socio-political statements and instead to do the work of educating our students around the hard issues that continually arise in our nation and beyond. We now understand that this restraint has felt to some like an absence of support for our Jewish students and families. We heard parents and students refer to our statement as “silence.” This could not have been further from our intention; yet we recognize the very real impact. 
 
We understand that some feel we have not done enough to support Jewish causes or to address antisemitism. It pains us to hear this, and we want to share the programming and support we have provided recently. We do so with humility. In addition, we want to address recent assertions of a hostile classroom environment related to the Israel-Hamas war. Those assertions were patently false. We of course urge anyone in the community who believes they have been the target of or witness to prejudice at our school to please contact us immediately so that we may promptly investigate.
 
Archer’s core values are empathy, integrity, and responsibility. With empathy, we continue to express our most sincere grief and support for the traumatized and bereaved and, above all, for our students who are also deeply hurt and frightened. With integrity, we continue to listen to our students’ grief, helplessness, and criticisms, providing ongoing emotional and educational aid and allyship. With responsibility, we endeavor to educate and prepare our faculty to facilitate difficult conversations and issue a call for compassion and unity among our diverse community. 
 
We recognize that some in our community will not feel safe or supported until they hear The Archer School for Girls directly condemn terrorism, antisemitism, and hatred of all types, which, of course, we do - unequivocally. This includes our condemnation of the brutal October 7 massacre by Hamas and continued acts of war. Further, we universally condemn the killing of all innocent civilians in this conflict, which includes Palestinian civilians in Gaza who at present have no means of escaping the devastating violence and resulting humanitarian crisis.
 
My personal hope for Archer, and free academic institutions everywhere, is that we serve a higher purpose for our communities, ready to condemn inhumanity and hatred on principle yet inoculated from the pressures of competing advocacy and influence. Ultimately, it is our job to teach students how to think, not what to think, preparing them to reason critically, argue, and seek justice for all.
 
Sincerely,
Elizabeth English
Head of School