Dear Parents, Staff and Community:
It is a difficult time for everyone, particularly students and their parents, when our world is rocked by news and images from yet another school shooting. Along with the unspeakable sadness that accompanies the death and injury of innocent students, comes a heightened fear and tension for our own kids’ safety. To put it bluntly, many of us are on edge as we process what happened to our neighbors just a few hours from here.
At a time like this, it is important to know that we continue to take all the steps necessary to assure the safety and security of our Grand Valley students and our school personnel, but, we need your help. Conduct and expression outside of our buildings on social media that unnecessarily brings threatening speech and images to our students and the school community, can only serve to seriously disrupt our educational environment. Please know that we will respond swiftly, if and when, that happens.
As always, we will continue to take great care in evaluating and balancing the need to provide a safe school environment with the First Amendment rights to free expression. In doing so, we persevere not to overreact in favor of either. Nevertheless, off-campus student speech that contains a threat to kill or harm students or staff, and is connected to our educational environment and communicated to our schools, are not protected speech and will be subject to school discipline. When lines are crossed through social media and disruption results, we will take steps to address it.
We are asking that our students always think carefully about what they choose to post on social media, especially during this time of heightened fear and frayed nerves. Talk openly with your friends about making good decisions. We ask parents and families to reflect upon, and have dialogue around, these serious concerns to help us avoid unnecessary discipline issues and escalation of fear that can spread rapidly when we are careless with our speech and expression.
The Grand Valley school community is united by our common desire to provide a welcoming, safe and secure environment for learning for our children. We need your help to continue to make that happen every day.
Thank you for allowing us to reach out on this important topic.
Dr. William R. Nye Jr.
Superintendent, Grand Valley Local Schools
(440) 805-4545 Ext. 4, then Option 1
Chad L. Fernandez
Chief of Police, Orwell Police Department
(440) 437-1234