Office of the Superintendent

February 14, 2023

To our Grosse Pointe Public School System family,

As a proud Spartan parent (my daughter graduated from MSU last winter) my heart broke last
night when I learned of the shooting at MSU. Unfortunately, I am writing to you today to share
that this tragedy is impacting GPPSS even more closely. Earlier this morning I learned that both
Grosse Pointe North and South each have a recent graduate that died from their injuries last
night at MSU. I can’t even process what I just wrote. How can we have our community impacted
in this personal way?

Our hearts go out to MSU and to our GPPSS community. At this time names have not been
released by law enforcement officers. Once we have more detailed names, we will share that
information with the community.

Today at both North and South we are supporting our young people with our exceptional mental
health team. We are not sharing details of this event in our elementary and middle schools. Our
high school students have been told, and we are prepared to support them with our mental
health teams.

As additional information is shared through the media, your child may be exposed to the reality
of what has sadly taken place in East Lansing. And many of us personally know the families
grieving here in our community. The first thing that our children and young adults will wish to
obtain from you is an assurance that you are providing the support they need to be safe. They
may ask questions and it would be important to answer their questions based on their level of
understanding. I’ve attached resources to this email that you can use to talk to your children
about tragedy in general.

It is with a great deal of sadness that I bring this news to you and my thoughts go out to the
many families that are suffering from another senseless act of violence.

Thank you for wrapping love and support around our students, staff and families.

Jon Dean