Over the past several weeks,  numerous “Grant High School” Instagram accounts have been anonymously created that are in no way school sponsored or affiliated, including those that use the Grant logo in the profile picture. Regardless of their intent, many of the pages themselves and the posts within them are problematic in nature and have caused harm to the students and staff at Grant.

While we fully respect the privacy of our students and acknowledge their right to use social media, we also have an obligation to uphold a safe and respectful learning environment, which we know is easily compromised by harmful social media posts. As an administrative team, we have worked incredibly hard to intervene whenever possible. While we have found some success in identifying the students behind these harmful posts, our influence is severely limited because a) the pages are not attached to names and b) these posts are being made on third party social media sites that are not controlled by our school or district. 

We will continue to monitor these pages and will do whatever we can to mitigate their impacts, but would love your partnership and support in the following ways:

     1.  Report any harmful accounts/posts that you come across directly to Instagram. We have successfully gotten Instagram to take down a few posts, but only after repeated reporting on our end. The more reports Instagram receives, the higher the chances are that a post/page gets removed. Here are some directions on how to do this.

     2.  Encourage your children, if they are comfortable, to report harmful content to any GHS administrator.

     3.  Have conversations with your children on how to use social media responsibly. Support them in finding healthy ways to engage in these platforms to reap its benefits. Check out these resources on social media and internet safety provided by the district.  

The Culture and Climate team met with a group of students last week to discuss ways to promote responsible and productive social media use, with hopes of launching a schoolwide positive social media campaign. More information to come in the coming weeks.

Thank you for your continued support.                                                                                                                                                                                                                

James McGee, Principal