MARYSVILLE, Wash. -- For the last five days, the staff, the teachers and parents at Marysville-Pilchuck High have been bracing for the inevitability that students return to school on Monday.
Cheri Lovre knows the questions running through their minds.
"What's the toughest thing you're going to face? What is the question you dread from the kids? What is your greatest concern for Monday?" she said.
Lovre is a crisis management expert who help schools in Springfield, Ore., and Littleton, Colo. She is advising staff at MPHS on how to help kids get through the tough emotional moments of next week.
"There are going to be some classrooms with empty desks," she said. "Often times, we put a plant on that desk and we do cards and letters to that family, and those cards and letters are collected at the end of the class periods and they go to that family."
Her big piece of advice to parents: keeping students out of school can do more harm than good.
"School will be organized so that right away kids do processing that helps them move through the really tough parts," she said. "And as I call it, reweave the tapestry of who we are. And for kids who stay home, they miss that process and they feel like people have moved on without them."
Meanwhile, some Marysville parents are moving forward with ideas to make schools safer.
Brandon Helsop, father of four, co-authored a Change.org petition asking the state's Office of Public Instruction to make metal detectors and security cameras mandatory in all public schools.
"I think walking through a metal detector would make them feel like, as they're going through, they don't have a weapon and make someone who was bringing it in that would be found before some damage was done," he said.
He said they started the petition Monday and by Wednesday afternoon, it had more than 150 signatures.
Helsop says he's been pushing for security cameras and metal detectors in schools well before this shooting, and what happened here seems to be convincing parents to join the effort.
The district says they're also preparing for a big event this Friday night, a football double header. Marysville Getchell plays at 5 p.m. Marysville-Pilchuck plays at 8 p.m. The district is hoping the city can come together and cheer on both home teams.
