In September two tragedies struck the community of Rose Hill. There were remains found at a house in town of a little girl and a few days later there was a car accident involving the death of a fifth grade student.
Unfortunately these casualties happened only a couple days from each other but the people of Rose Hill came together and navigated it as a town.
“Last week was quite a week, kind of one that just didn’t want to end,” said Superintendent Chuck Lambert on a September episode of the “At the Hill” podcast. “But what I like here is that people stick together really well and handle it through.”
Lambert has been in education for 34 years, with those years comes many victories but also many struggles. No one wants to get good at handling the hard times because that means you’ve experienced the bad way too often.
“I do know that over the years, now I think it’s been 34 years, and in those 34 years I’ve lost eight students,” said Lambert. “And it never gets easier. You see it’s hard on the family and everybody, but our hearts sure go out for what went on and if anybody needs any help we will sure help out where we can.”
When there is a tragedy that happens with a school district there are many ways to handle it. But as a role model and a protector for these kids, administrators and teachers always want to put the kids and their feelings first.
“One of the things that we have to do is we meet as a team when we find out something like that happens and we try to get facts,” Lambert explained. “We basically have a crisis response team, so in this case we got together on Saturday morning right away and then we started talking about what we were aware of and what was going to be the best approach for helping students, staff, and family through that, and also being sensitive to what was going on. That’s usually the steps you go through.”
It can be hard as a leader to know just the right things to say and act exactly like how the kids need you, too. But thankfully Lambert dealt with that week like a true leader.
