St. Philip’s School and Community Center’s origins come through the active interest of the Episcopal Diocese and local African American Episcopalians to start a black Episcopal church in South Dallas in the late 1940s. In striving to fulfill the needs of the local community, the burgeoning church began offering programs specifically targeted to meet the needs of area youth.

In 1959 church members, neighbors, and the Episcopal Diocese of Dallas continued to invest in the community through the construction of a new gymnasium to accommodate community center programming. In 1967, the educational thrust began in earnest with the establishment of a daycare center. Over the years as the original church began to wane, the daycare and community center and school blossomed.

The school and community center’s focus on excellence in education and service reached its current high standards under the leadership of Dr. Terry Flowers, who joined St. Philip’s as school principal in 1983 and now serves as Headmaster and Executive Director. Under Dr. Flower’s leadership, St. Philip’s School and Community Center has grown from an Episcopal PreK3 – 1st grade school serving under 90 children, to a highly competitive, independent PreK2 – 8th grade institution with a rich reputation for educating children to be confident, morally strong, intelligent, and caring leaders.

In 2019 St. Philip’s created an Office of Experience to ensure that all faculty and staff as well as volunteers and constituents of our community are supported in a fair inclusive  and equitable fashion. Along with our human relations department this office serves as a sounding board for strategy to enhance everyone's journey within our programs operations and services.

SPEEK (St. Philip’s Employee Engagement Committee) Is an initiative that helps to promote belonging and inclusivity opportunities. This initiative spans across every department of our ministry and intentionally promotes equity with a open channel for opportunities of improvement.

St Philip’s conducts an annual survey for faculty and staff. In part this tool is used to identify whether there are any diversity equity and inclusion challenges within our community that require additional focus.  

The leadership team analyzes the results of the survey to determine if there is a need to strategize beyond our standard practices to support all faculty and staff in the embracing of their human rights and dignity to solve. The identified challenges are ideated to create solutions and those steps are accompanied by a list of to dos with assigned persons of accountability for implementation.   All issues are reported on and archived for future references. For transparency all of the objectives and goals that are identified through the assessments of the leadership team are presented to the full faculty and staff on a quarterly basis to afford inclusion on goals and objectives targeting our growth and equitable strategy.

Unifying themes are introduced each year that help promote and thrust the DEI vision and mission into all of our quarterly meetings.

Our human resources department is intentional about making sure that each employee is educated and extended opportunities to drive in our community in an equitable and inclusive fashion.  This includes the introduction of ERG’s (Employee Resource Groups) that may include common interests or common affiliations for employees to become involved in. 

In addition, from this department, analysis of salaries benefits and overall compensation are viewed from a lens of fairness across all departments. Areas of discrepancy or inequity are presented to the headmaster and where confidentially appropriate to the leadership team for collective solutions gathering.