written by David Núñez, Head of School

Dear GRS Families,

Happy Spring! I hope you all had a lovely and restful Spring Break!

This month I thought I would start by updating you all on policy and protocol work we are doing this year at Great River. The policy committee has been active and is reviewing both the Violence and Harassment Policy and also the Bullying Policy. The Violence and Harassment Policy work in particular came about because a student group, Students Against Misogyny, has been working on the policy and will be partnering with me and the Policy Committee in re-drafting it.

Also, our Equity Action Planning Team met consistently for several months and have created a draft of an Equity Action Plan for Great River. This month it will be reviewed by parents, students and staff and will be the cornerstone of Great River’s new 5-year Strategic Plan.

Finally, the school is also working on drafting a new protocol around the use of hate speech. This protocol is designed to both support staff through responding to any incident of hate speech in our community, but also holds staff accountable to the community. Writing down a protocol like this means that we can share it with the community and increase both transparency and accountability.

Beyond all that tremendous work, we are also busy getting ready for Spring Key Experiences! Planning for the bike trip, the new 3rd Grade Key Experience, and Spring Intensives is well under way. As a parent of a 7th and an 8th grade student I am particularly excited for this year’s bike trip!

The Blue Heron Bash was a wonderful success this year. Personally, I enjoyed going and especially seeing the presentations by the students from the robotics team and the school musical. Also, our musical guests were delightful, the food was wonderful, and the gym looked magical. Thank you to everyone who made this night such a great success!

I also wanted to take just a moment and thank all the parents who were involved and who donated to feeding the staff during conferences. The food was tremendous and while I know this is a school tradition, I also heard from a number of staff about how much they appreciate all the work that went into feeding 130 people. And the food was marvelous! I can’t tell you all enough how much this means to the staff.

I hope your Spring is delightful and rejuvenating after a long, cold MN winter.

Peace,

David