Stevenson is committed to protecting our students’ health, safety, and well-being.

Our health and wellness staff make every effort possible to ensure that students and teachers benefit from healthy relationships with one another to provide a healthy and safe environment for students to learn.Students receive regular age-appropriate training and we require all employees to read and review our Code of Ethical Conduct annually. We are also steadfast in our resolve to investigate historical employee sexual misconduct thoroughly, report findings transparently, and acknowledge and support survivors with consideration and care.

Student Handbooks

Our Student Handbooks document our community guidelines which frame our rules and expectations for student conduct in the classroom and the outside world. We review the key elements of these handbooks with students for the year and provide students and their families with related internal and external support resources.

How We Protect Our Students

Throughout the year, we continually engage our PK-12 students in developmentally appropriate discussions about their physical, social, and sexual development; personal safety and self-care; healthy decision-making, boundaries, and relationships; how to recognize and report adult misconduct; and how to seek adult support for oneself or a peer.

Employees: All employees are trained annually on their duties as mandated reporters as defined by the Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting Act (CANRA), and also engage in annual scenario-based training—designed in consultation with nationally recognized experts—regarding proper boundaries and conduct regarding their interactions with students.

Students: Throughout the year, we continually engage our PK-12 students in developmentally appropriate discussions about their physical, social, and sexual development; personal safety and self-care; healthy decision-making, boundaries, and relationships; how to recognize and report adult misconduct; and how to seek adult support for oneself or a peer.

The School’s expectations for employees regarding their interactions with students are set forth in the Code of Ethical Conduct for Employees in Relation to Students (CEC), which all employees review and sign annually as a condition of employment.

The CEC provides a values-driven framework for conduct and decision-making, rather than a recitation of discrete rules, and is organized by what David Wolowitz, a nationally recognized expert, describes as the “four guideposts of roles, boundaries, accountability, and power.” He defines these terms as follows:

  • Roles: Teachers should be role models and stay in their professional roles with students, such as classroom instructor, coach, or advisor, and avoid personal roles, such as friend or alternative parent.
  • Boundaries: Teachers should establish clear and appropriate limits at the beginning of relationships with students and maintain them consistently.
  • Power: should be alert to the inherent power imbalance between teachers and students and use their influence to promote students’ healthy childhood and adolescent development and age-appropriate personal autonomy.
  • Accountability: Teachers should be alert to appearances and to the impact of their actions, and to the appearances and actions of their colleagues. All interactions with students, whether in person, virtually, or electronically, should be transparent as if they are subject to review.

We welcome your help in three ways.

  • First, if you directly experienced employee sexual or other behavioral misconduct, and either did not report it at the time that it occurred or believe that the School’s contemporary response was deficient, please consider sharing your allegation with one of the School’s outside investigators at Van Dermyden Makus—Liz Paris, Lindsay Ingham, or Tessa Nevarez—by calling (800) 280-2656, a hotline number reserved for this purpose.
  • Second, if a person claiming to be an outside investigator contacts you to provide witness testimony in response to someone else’s allegation, please confirm the identity of the outside investigator by calling the number listed above before sharing information. [Consistent with the standard of care, outside investigators only initiate contact with people named by others as potential witnesses; they do not initiate contact with people named by others as possible survivors.]
  • Third, please refrain from speculating with Stevenson acquaintances and others as to the possible identity of unnamed survivors and witnesses, as doing so may unintentionally contribute to an environment in which people are less likely to feel safe coming forward with the new or additional information upon which effective investigations depend.