Oxford Community Schools

Dear Oxford High School students and families,

We truly miss you and can’t wait to see you soon. It has been extremely difficult working through this tragedy, and seeing many of you at our various community events has helped in the healing process.It’s been healing and helpful to share stories, cry together, give hugs and just be together. We plan to create many opportunities to keep connected as we work through this traumatic event. Emotions will continue to shift and change as we begin to process all we have been through. This experience is more than anyone can be expected to handle on their own. Our crisis response team includes professionally trained counselors and therapists, and we encourage you to talk with them. Counselors and therapists are available to our students and all community members during the sessions below. Here is the counseling schedule for this week:

• Tuesday, December 7: 9 a.m. – 11 a.m. at Oxford Middle School in the commons area
• Wednesday, December 8: 9 a.m. – 11 a.m. at Oxford Middle School in the commons area
• Thursday, December 9: 9 a.m. – 11 a.m. at the Oxford Virtual Academy Elementary lab

If you need immediate help, please call the Crisis Hotline at 800.231.1127.

We are working to schedule additional counseling sessions and we’re also working on additional opportunities for high school students and their families to come together and gather. We will continue to share those opportunities with you, so please continue to check your student email daily. We understand the importance of keeping an ongoing connection with one another, as we do not expect any formal classes to resume until at least after the Holiday break. We are also in the process of reaching out to each individual student. We want to make sure that we have heard from each student at OHS.

We’ve had a team of staff present at OHS through the weekend working on organizing and sorting student items and backpacks. We are beginning to remove items from lockers and will be communicating the days/times of student item pick up. Please stay tuned for this information. If you have an urgent item you are in need of, such as an inhaler or any medical device--please email Gary Van Staveren at [email protected] and he will assist. If you are in need of medication you have checked in the front office, please email Mrs. Shefcyk at [email protected].

Lastly, our Nutrition Services Department will be distributing nutritious meals for students and families on Monday, December 6 at the Oxford Middle School gym entrance of the building from 3:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m. There will be five days’ worth of meals included in each bag.

We miss you, love you and we can’t wait to see you again,

Mr. Wolf and the Oxford High School staff