Sedalia School District prepares for peaceful, parent-led protest

The Sedalia School District #200 is making preparations ahead of a planned, parent-led protest scheduled for Thursday afternoon.

The gathering comes less than a week after 16-year-old Riley Garrigus took her own life. According to district officials, Riley is at least the third student in the last 15 months to commit suicide in the district.

“So after the second, I would say we really, for about the last year, have really dug into mental health issues, to suicide, to bullying and those issues that surround that type of activity,” Assistant Superintendent Steve Triplett said.

Triplett said the district was made aware of the planned gathering, scheduled for 1 p.m. Thursday at Smith-Cotton High School, earlier this week.

“I think they’re just wanting to send a message that another life lost would be one too many,” Triplett said. “And they just want to send that message to the young people at our schools to choose life.”

A group of district officials held an informal meeting Wednesday to talk about the logistics of the gathering.

“Parking; trying to estimate the size of the crowd we know nothing about — we’re planning for a small crowd to a large crowd,” Triplett said. “We’ve designated an area of the campus for those folks to gather for their peaceful rally in support of Riley. We want to make sure we can conduct school, because it will be during school hours. We want to make sure that we protect the education that’s going on inside the building and the safety of everyone.”

Triplett also spoke about two programs the district is planning on implementing, the first starting this fall.

“It’s called the ‘Link’ program,” Triplett said. “That’s introducing freshmen and pairing them with an upperclassman, kind of a peer mentor program.”

The second will involve training faculty and staff.

“We also have chosen the SOS program, which is Signs of Suicide,” Triplett said. “We’re sending staff members now to get trained for that to come back to work with our students. We’ll hopefully implement that as soon as possible.”

As far as punishment for bullies, Triplett said there’s a range of consequences.

“Consequences vary from a conference with that kid to out-of-school suspension and contacting law enforcement,” Triplett said. “Bullying can be labeled a crime. The definition of bullying is the repeated offense. Our administrators are trained and our counselors are trained to look for those signs, to investigate and follow through with those consequences that are appropriate at that time.”

When asked if the Sedalia School District had a bullying problem, Triplett said he didn’t think their community was any different than anywhere else.

“Unfortunately, people aren’t always nice to each other,” Triplett said. “We are working hard to dig into that and address that. We have a lot of quality, good, caring teachers in our district that I support 100 percent and appreciate everything they do for us. They love and care for all of our kids. They come to work to give 100 percent and we may not always get it right but we are trying to do the right thing day in and day out.”