In today’s world, the increasing attention given to the need for schools to be prepared to respond to a wide variety of crisis situations has experts in school crisis prevention and intervention emphasizing the importance of having a comprehensive out-of-district School Crisis Team. This expert assistance helps address the safety and mental health needs of students, staff, and families through response and recovery. Crisis events are sudden, uncontrollable, and extremely negative events, such as when RTR had two student deaths in 2019 that had the potential to impact an entire school community. We received an organized and carefully coordinated response from the SWWC School Crisis Response Team to help meet the needs of our district-wide affected individuals.

 

Although it is important to have an in-house building-level crisis team and ensure that local school resources are the primary providers of crisis team assistance, these regional crisis response teams are extremely important because they have members with more advanced knowledge, expertise, and access to additional resources. Also, as in our situation, our local caregiver(s) knew these two students and were affected greatly by the situation which complicated our ability to respond adequately to the crisis. The RTR School District was greatly blessed to have such a team of experts to help our community move forward through that terrible tragedy.

David A. Marlette, Superintendent, RTR ISD #2902

---