Reply to GDS Student Newspaper posts about the horrible incident

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[quote=Anonymous]And this seems fair game since reported on by student paper and quoted

Dear GDS Families,

Earlier today, many members of our community received a concerning communication from a former GDS family. In it, the family shared serious claims that their child was harmed while at GDS, and additionally raised questions about our core values. We write today to share an accurate representation of the facts.

At GDS, we have no greater charge than protecting the safety of our students. In that spirit, we take extremely seriously any allegation that students may have been harmed. We want to assure you that immediately upon receiving the troubling allegation last winter that a former middle school student was physically harmed at school months earlier by another child, we conducted an internal investigation and a third-party, independent (by Julie Freudenheim of T&M, USA) investigation, and also reported to the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) and Child Protective Services as a mandatory reporter. Contrary to the information shared with you earlier, we can report that neither T&M (the independent investigator) nor the MPD found evidence during their investigations to substantiate the allegations.

We understand that receiving an email such as the one you may have received earlier today is disconcerting. GDS has robust, documented, well-tested, and best-practices-informed protocols designed to ensure the safety of every student, and we are consistently evaluating how to improve them to support the needs of our community.
 
GDS refrained from a broad communication to our community to avoid interference into the investigation and to maintain confidentiality. We worked with our faculty, counselors, and GDS leadership to ensure open lines of communication from students to teachers and teachers to school leadership. GDS also worked to provide care and support to the family and student who alleged harm. Even as we provided a general overview of the details above, our community should know that, because of concerns about child privacy and safety, GDS does not share confidential information with our greater community or details of the alleged incidents in situations such as this. Our goal is to ensure the safety of our school community, follow requests from investigators, and preserve individual’s privacy.

Our actions were and continue to be aligned with GDS’s core values and followed our policies. To be clear, according to the MPD, the case was thoroughly investigated and there is no evidence to substantiate the allegations put forth by the former family.

We will meet in the coming days with our students to reiterate our practices in these situations in developmentally appropriate ways, including reminding them of our commitment to safety and the ways in which they can report concerns to trusted adults. We will also assure them that they will be treated with compassion, respect, and discretion. Please also talk with your children to encourage them to not engage with any harmful rumors or unverified information that they may hear.

Protecting the safety of our students is at the center of everything we do. When anyone in our community feels harm or hurt, it affects us all, and we remain committed to doing everything we can to provide support and care. 
 
Thank you, as always, for your understanding and support for one another. 
 [/quote]

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