The Connection

Following the unexpected death of Fairfax High School junior Cara Golias, school Principal David Goldfarb sent the following message to the Fairfax High community last Friday, Oct. 3:

“We continually seek to maintain a safe, positive and caring environment for all of our students. Our school staff was challenged this past week with the death of one of our students, Cara. We know our students cannot learn and achieve at high levels if they feel uncomfortable or unsafe. This is just one important reason why we believe forming strong and positive relationships is so important for our school to be a second family to our students.

Knowing that our students would react to a student’s death in many different ways, we took several actions to meet our students’ individual and collective needs. First, we called in a crisis team – which consists of school psychologists and social workers from other schools – to come to our school and help our student services team meet with students who wanted to talk about their loss.

Second, we delivered the news about the student’s death to students personally by a trusted adult, usually a teacher and sometimes a school counselor or administrator. We held a faculty meeting in the early morning before school to communicate the sad news to our staff and to discuss how staff should deliver the news to our students and how to support students depending on their response. Our staff shared this news early in the school day to allow our students a great deal of time and space to process the news surrounded by many adults ready to listen and support. School counselors followed Cara’s schedule over two days and spent extra time to be present with her classmates and address their feelings.

Students who wanted to talk with a counselor were invited to come to the Career Center at any time. [It] served as a staging area for our clinical and counseling team to identify needs and determine whether they should meet with students individually or in small groups. Students who chose not to express their feelings could also sit with a trusted adult. Groups of students talked together with a clinician or counselor, celebrating their memories with Cara. Our school counselors contacted the parents of each student who was seen by crisis and student services teams, and followed up with some students the following day to check in with them.

We managed our school’s response to also support students who were not impacted by the sad news. It was important to maintain a sense of normalcy and routine for those students. There were no directions given to students or any public announcements made to suggest that there was a right or wrong way for students to process and understand this event.

Our students were tremendous in how they supported one another this week. Students steadied one another with comforting words and hugs. They organized a moment of silence in our Commons (main hallway) Tuesday morning before first period. Students held onto one another and looked out for their welfare. Our students even referred friends to school counselors to make sure they would be looked after.

They have staged get-togethers to keep the positive memories alive and remind each other they do not ever have to be alone in their struggles. My belief in students has been enhanced by the resiliency they displayed this week. And that belief extends beyond our school, as students from Langley, Madison, South Lakes and Thomas Jefferson High Schools met with me this week and gave me cards of support.

We are proud of our work this week. Especially in this time of sadness, we did everything in our power to meet the individual needs of every student. Reflecting upon these past few days, I am truly amazed by the strength of our community and the collective compassion shown by our students and staff. Even at this sad time, having trusted adults deliver the sad news and support students in a small setting strengthened our family, and we hope it helped your family as well.

We invite parents who would like to know more about supporting their students at any time of loss to contact your student’s school counselor, or any member of our student services team. We would also like to make you aware of some resources on resiliency that can be found through the FCPS website at: http://www.fcps.edu/dss/ips/resiliency/resources/res-assets.shtml.”