Schools Across Oklahoma Offer Support After Beggs Tragedy

Dozens of school districts from across the state are reaching out to the Beggs community, offering whatever resources they can to help students get through the tragedy.

Jenks and Broken Arrow are just two of those school districts who reached out to help. While they haven’t been through this same situation, they have been through the death of a student and say they wanted to share their resources and experience with Beggs. 

There are aspects of tragedies that districts can prepare for and there are aspects that they can't.

“In their young lives, many of them have never dealt with something like this before ... so for the first time the person that has been sitting next to them in class, or getting dressed with them in the football locker room the day before is suddenly just gone," said Rob Loeber with Jenks Public Schools. 

Districts say the main priority is to make sure their kids have everything they need to work through their grief.  Jenks and Broken Arrow Schools said they wanted to offer Beggs the same resources that helped their kids cope with their own tragedy.

"In the past year we have lost a few members of our family and it hurts and it still hurts but we came together as a family to work through that, we got a lot of help from outside people when we went through our tragedies and we owe it to carry that forward," said Charlie Hannema with Broken Arrow Public Schools.

“It doesn't matter whether you ware maroon and white or black and gold or any other color, we understand what these families and these educators are going through because we have gone through it ourselves and if there is anything at all that we can do to help them move forward and take the next step then we want to be able to do that," said Loeber.

It's an act of solidarity among countless schools across the state, support that the Beggs districts said is making all the difference.

“Schools all over the state calling, superintendents calling, principals calling. It's Oklahoma, it's what we do. We reach out to help when someone is hurting," said Beggs Superintendent Brian Terry.