The South East Cornerstone Public School Division moved quickly to put its tragic response protocol into place last week after the death of a student at the Estevan Comprehensive School (ECS).
Aaron Lavoie, a 16-year-old student who was in Grade 11 at ECS, died on Feb. 24. Lynn Little, the director of education for the school division, said when the division receives notification of a tragic event, they will identify the nature of the tragedy, and the people who will be affected directly.
“And then we begin to reach out to our various teams to put supports in place,” said Little.
One of the first calls made will be to the school’s administration, so that the school can begin to prepare their staff members. The staff members will be aware of the situation and can support the students once they arrive at school.
Providing support for staff is also a task that must be taken care of, she said.
Arrangements were made through Aaron Hiske and his team at student services for the support of student services counsellors, who are trained specifically to support students in these challenging times.
“We have a number of counsellors assigned to specific buildings, and then in the event where we have a tragic event occur like this, we pull them from different areas for a little bit of time to offer additional support for students in need or for staff in need at a specific site,” said Hiske.
The additional counselling services were provided from Feb. 25-28. The counsellors were very busy, and Little believes that reflects the positive relationships between counsellors and students. They’re good at what they do, and students are willing to talk to them.
If counsellors are deployed to other schools, then the school will do what is necessary to compensate for the lost staff members.
“We’ll leave those resources in that school or in that setting until there’s a sense that there’s stability, and everybody who is typically a part of that school is then able to manage and move forward,” said Little.
The size of the school and the impact of the incident will determine how many counsellors they bring in. And it is a fluid situation, so they might have to bring in extra counsellors as the week progresses in case they are busier than expected, or they might send counsellors back to their school if it is quieter than expected.
There are two full-time counsellors in student services at ECS, and three other counsellors were brought in from other schools to see students. The division has 16 1/2 counsellors available.
In recent years, those counsellors have also responded to such tragic situations as the Humboldt Broncos bus tragedy last year, and the school shooting in La Loche in 2016.
Hiske said he was pleased with how the school responded to the tragedy.
Little said these situations are more common than people might think. Counsellors are sent in to a school three or four times per month, whether it be for situation involving a student, teacher, staff member or another member of the school community.
“Our counsellors primarily support the students. They do also help with staff, of course, but primarily for students,” said Little.
Teachers also have supports through the Saskatchewan Teachers Federation through an employee family assistance program to deal with tragic occurrences.
