Superintendent David Fleishman sent this email out to the school families this morning….
February 6, 2014
Dear Newton Community,
It is with great sadness that I am writing to inform you that a Newton South junior, Roee Grutman died unexpectedly this morning. Authorities have stated that the death is not suspicious and there is no foul play.
Our thoughts are with Roee’s family during this very difficult time. They also have children at Memorial-Spaulding and Oak Hill and it is hard to imagine what they are going through right now.
The death of any young person is a terrible tragedy. The shock of this loss is magnified by the deaths of two Newton students last fall. Please know that we will have counselors available at our secondary schools, as we know that many of our students will have heard about this news through friends and social media. If you have any concerns about your child/children, please make contact with their guidance counselor, social worker or school psychologist and they will be sure to follow up. Processing three student deaths within a school year is very difficult to comprehend so we have provided some information below that you may find useful.
Next Tuesday, February 11th, we have scheduled a community forum in the Newton South Auditorium at
7:00 p.m. to help process the tragedies we have faced this school year. We will have a range of experts who will join us to share important information about how to talk with your child/children about a sudden death and how to support your child/children and yourself following tragic events. The Mayor and other city and school leaders will join me at this forum.
I fully recognize that this is a very trying time for the City of Newton. I am hopeful that together, we will provide the support, care and kindness necessary to move forward. Please let any Newton Public Schools’ staff member know if we can be of help to you and your family.
Sincerely,
David Fleishman
Superintendent of Schools
http://www.nasponline.org/resources/crisis_safety/terror_general.aspx
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration also provides guidance on how adults can help children after a traumatic event at this website: http://store.samhsa.gov/shin/content//SMA12-4732/SMA12-4732.pdf
Dr. Robert Evans, Psychologist and School Consultant, offers five guidelines that can make a positive difference for children after tragic events. Visit this link for more information: http://www3.newton.k12.ma.us/sites/default/files/users/176/helpingchildrencopewithtragicloss.pdf
Riverside Mobile Crisis Intervention (781-769-8674) can also be called if you have concerns about the safety of your child.
This is beyond sad.
Third(?) student to pass between the two high schools this year. As parent of a North student, it’s hard to comprehend.
There are no words.
We have GOT to step up affirmative suicide prevention in the high schools. I realize much of it is unpreventable but we have got to do something.
@Lauren: What exactly does that involve?
There’s nothing in the letter about cause of death. Conjecture or not there’s a surviving family that should be the only source of this type of detail
@Hoss, It’s true. We have it first hand. (offline, obviously). @Gail, I’m no expert, but I know there are participatory, ongoing programs that do more than just discuss the issues for one night. I think this needs to be geared at the students, not the parents. The meeting is for the parents.
I have no idea what was going on in this young man’s life that might have caused him to take his own life. Nor do I want to jump to the conclusion that’s what happened. I suppose we’ll find out more details over time. But as a more general commentary on the student suicides we know about, I think a point I’ve made on numerous past occasions warrants repeating. We as a community, as parents, and as a school system, put far too much stress on these kids. Stress has become the norm. We are oblivious to it. Most of these kids just take it in stride and bend with the stress. But too often one of them breaks. We need to address the underlying causes of stress in our children’s lives. One thing I am 100% certain about, is that the school system is not doing enough to address this.
Roee was a great kid. He was bright, kind, caring, the embodiment of promise. I don’t know why this happened, but I do know that there are many — not to mention his family — who are are all hurting badly right now. I would ask that instead of turning this into some policy debate, for now at least, let us as a community remember a wonderful kid whose life ended far too soon.
Well said, Bill.
This article, from a responsible source, has some thoughts. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/media-spotlight/201208/when-suicides-come-in-clusters
From the Society for Prevention of Teen Suicides http://www.sptsusa.org/suicide-prevention/teen-suicide-prevention/memorials-suicide/
The Society for Prevention of Teen Suicides has a free online course for educators that shares best practices for teen suicide prevention. I think it would be great if our high school teachers at a minimum were encouraged to complete this course. What are we waiting for?
http://spts.pldm.com
As the mother of a Newton South graduate, whom we lost in a tragic stupid accident in May of 2012, I have to speak up here. I beg all of you to not publicly speculate or disseminate news or rumors or even facts you ‘know’ about a CHILD whom a family has lost. Someone’s little boy, a piece of someone’s heart, a chunk of a family’s future is gone. Surely this is not the forum nor the time for action points and agendas and policy debates. Look into your hearts and find the part of you that melted when you first met your children. that melts still….and imagine it frozen. Forever. Now go write something. With love and light. A memory about Roee his family can hold onto as the years without him pass. Words of support or empathy. What would you like to read if this was your loss?
(Thank you @Bill Brandel)
May God comfort and eventually bring some peace to the loved ones left behind.
Amen.
Thank you, Gisela, Bill and Paul H.
We have no idea how this young man died, so the speculation on teen suicide is premature and, for now, not appropriate (in my opinion).
However, it is a worthy topic, but at least for now a separate one.
Gisela, I’m sorry for your loss- as I mentioned above I am a parent of an NNHS teen and can only imagine what that is like.
A good friend lost her 17 year old son last summer, and I do not wish the grief and sadness (and all the other emotions bundled into it) on anyone.
My houghts are with the family, and Roee’s friends as well. A tough, tough year for the HS community here.
(ETA: wrote before seeing all of Lauren’s comments above; my bad)
A teenager I know well said Roee was a really great, friendly kid. He knew and remembered everyone’s name, even if you were only in one class with him once, years ago. And he would say hello to everyone, by name, when you passed him in the halls (which is not typical in a place where there are many cliques).
From the NSHS Principal, in an email widely shared with the community
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Dear Newton South Community,
It is so difficult to write to you to share our experience over the last two days. I want you to know that our students and staff are taking care of each other, and that through our sadness there are lots of hugs and stories. Thank you once again to our community for embracing our school, from food to tissues to well wishes.
Roee was personable, engaging, bright, articulate, and compassionate. He was an excellent student, served as a class officer for the class of 2015, participated in athletics, and was a peer advisor for a freshman homeroom. He was very connected to many adults in the building, and was not shy about engaging in long conversations. Roee’s family has shared with us that his death was by suicide. There were no indications to any of us – or to his family – that Roee was even contemplating suicide. There are no easy answers. It is simply beyond comprehension.
Roee’s death is also so deeply troubling as this is the third student suicide in Newton since the beginning of the school year. We are all extremely concerned about this, and are working with experts in the field to know how to proceed. This issue will be discussed further at the upcoming Tuesday, February 11th community meeting at 7:00 in the NSHS Auditorium.
I share this to encourage you to have a meaningful conversation with your children, and to remind them that no matter what they are going through, we (the adults in their life) can help them through it. That things will get better. That we love them, and will move heaven and earth to provide the support that they need.
We will send information about services for Roee when we have those details.
We will observe a moment of silence during homeroom on Monday.
While many of our students are still working through sadness and other emotions, we are continually struck by the resilience of our young people. It has been a difficult two days, to be sure, and it is also wonderful to witness teachers, staff and students supporting each other throughout the school.
This weekend, it would be helpful if there are opportunities for students to connect with other students in healthy ways, with adults near-by. We want to ask you to think about opening your home this weekend to students in order to create a safe place for kids to gather.
Also, we wanted to be sure that you had information about what to do if someone you know needs additional support. The following community resources are available over the weekend:
Riverside Emergency Services: (800) 529-5077
Bridge Over Troubled Waters: (617) 423-9575
“Samariteens” – Suicide Prevention Hotline: (800) 252-8336
“Samariteens” – online chat: http://www.samaitanshope.org/im-here
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: (800) 273-TALK (8255)
Newton Police Department: (617) 796-2101 or 911
Again, thank you for your partnership.
Best regards,
Joel Stembridge
Principal, Newton South High School
The same teenager I was referring to above was angry that no one was using the work “suicide.” “How can you deal with a problem if you can’t even talk about it?”
Stembridge’s email removes that barrier.
The link for the Samariteens online chat doesn’t work. To link directly to their teen page, go to http://samaritanshope.org/index.php/teen-helpline.html.
as a parent of nnhs students i tell them daily…no problem is to big to handle…call me , text me, i will always be there for you or your friends..or friends of friends. please kids, learn that this is forever, there is no coming back.
This op-ed was written by Helen Holmes, a 2012 South graduate. It was written after the suicides of Karen Douglas and Katie Stack, but is relevant today as well:
I’ve been thinking a lot about my hometown lately. I’m from Newton, Massachusetts, a thoroughly liberal lake-speckled suburb about 20 minutes removed from the shimmering hustle of downtown Boston. When the seasons change it’s like an orchestra revving up its string section, and when you’re hungry you’re perpetually within a few miles of a freshly baked bagel. Last year, CNN even said that Newton was the 4th best city in the country to live in, a ranking that to me is inadequate in expressing the warmth and generosity of the community that bundled me up in a smart little package of privilege and opportunity and bore me happily off to NYU last year. Recently though, without much of the fanfare or harrowing details that so fascinate the pulsating mainstream media, two young girls from Newton, Karen Douglas and Katie Stack, committed suicide within two weeks of one another. Worse, the administration of Newton South, my alma mater, seems to want to shunt this fact aside.
To be clear: Newton South High School, which is currently helmed by principal Joel Stembridge, cannot be accused of denying students sufficient access to listening ears. Counselors were made abundantly available the day after Stack, a Newton South sophomore whose cheeks were creased by dimples when she smiled, was discovered dead. In fact, counselors are available to talk year-round at Newton South, which is also lucky to employ (for the most part) thoughtful, insightful, and forthright teachers as eager to discuss current events and your personal consternations as they are to discuss classwork. Temple Beth Avodah, a local synagogue, kept their doors open late Thursday night to welcome anyone in need. Open letters released by both Stembridge and David Fleishman, the Superintendent of Newton Public Schools, provided links to crisis hotlines and guidelines for dealing with grief from a local psychologist. What both of these letters failed to do was to use the word “suicide.”
“The letter was extremely impersonal,” said Tom Howe, a senior at Newton South. “It didn’t acknowledge who she was or what she did at all, not just her suicide but what she meant to the community. [Stembridge] just talked about office hours and staying focused on school” (Stembridge and Fleishman both only said that Stack “died unexpectedly” and that her “death [was] not suspicious.”) Of course, school authorities have a delicate line to walk when notifying the student body about the passing of one of its own.
To publically glorify or lionize the awfulness that is the death of a high school student is just as much of a mistake as masking its circumstances. However, this fact often seems to be lost on those left to process teenage death, resulting in a newfound virtual explosion of grand declarations of grief (as well as cruel, meaningless swill) on social media. It seems that every time I log onto Facebook or Twitter another former classmate is weighing in on this deep maw of tragedy, lamenting the loss of a friend or simply regretting, as many often do, that we did not get to know them better. Meanwhile, Sonya Maria Douglas took to Reddit when Karen Douglas went missing, asking readers for help in locating her sister, while a memorial fund in Stack’s name set up via gofundme.com has already raised north of $7,000 dollars. Compared with the fresh phenomenon of ask-me-anything sites such as ask.fm and spring.me, which have in many cases provided dangerous, anonymous platforms for online bullying, technology has become an intrinsic factor in both the problem of and the solution to adolescent depression.
As a culture, we must stop perpetuating the cycle of denial and grief and denial that comes with the incredibly difficult task of grappling with teenage depression and suicide. Difficult, but not impossible: some schools have already responded to the overwhelming statistics and all too stark evidence of high school-aged kids at risk. While I cannot and will not ever comprehend the direct motivations for what drove Karen and Katie and many others to places they felt were too deep and dark to ever fight their way out of, to simply omit the fact that their deaths were suicides is an insult to the people who love them most and a step backward in society’s attempt to better understand and treat people in crisis.
Read more: We Need To Use The Word Suicide · NYU Local http://nyulocal.com/national/2013/10/18/we-need-to-use-the-word-suicide/#ixzz2iDEOldb5
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution
Very sad indeed. My thoughts and prayers to the family.
As much as teenaged students and their families may want the issue of suicide out in the open so we can all talk about it, we must also respect the privacy and feelings of the families of these young people. Suicide, like alcohol and substance abuse, and mental illness, all carry with them a stigma that make it harder still for family members and friends at a time when they are already coping with a devastating loss.
Roee Grutman’s family has displayed great courage and grace while dealing with their private grief by their willingness to share the circumstances of their personal loss with the community. My thoughts and prayers are with them. I hope that, as a community, we can all unite in giving the Grutman family, and the families of Karen Douglas and Katie Stack, the support they will need in the days, weeks, months and years ahead in dealing with their tragic losses.
And I also pray that we can all support one another in dealing with the incomprehensible loss of these young people and have a respectful and constructive dialogue about suicide, alcohol and substance abuse and mental illness, and other contributing factors.
@Ted: Your points are well taken but also seem to suggest that the discussion here has not been respectful. I’m not seeing that.
thank you all for understanding and for your support. We need to do something right away so there will not be a 4th case. We are in an emergency situation now and need to respond and act fast. You are right – Roee was an exceptional young man and although we may never know what happened, we need to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.
B.J Novak’s hit the nail on the head during his recent visit back home to Newton . He said, “The episode, “Diversity Day,” really I wrote about Newton Schools.” It’s just people trying so hard to prove how open minded they are that they end up putting their foot in their mouth.”
Perhaps it’s Newton schools’ culture of political correctness that is preventing us from dealing honestly and openly with issues before us. I heard lots of platitudes at the community forum, but very little by way of introspection. There is a culture at NPS that needs to be looked at openly and honestly.