• Anytime there is a death of a student or staff, we activate our Crisis Support Team. This team is composed of grief counselors (BISD counselors from across the district, counselors from the Olympic Educational Service District, and/or counselors from Bainbridge Youth Services). The counselors meet with those who need help processing the death and the Crisis Support Team remains active until their triage services are no longer required.
• A quiet room is set up at the school and is a place for students and staff to express emotions and find solace. Staffed with grief counselors, the quiet room offers healthy snacks and drinks and provides outlets for processing emotions such as coloring pages and fidget objects. If students are identified as needing increased levels of support, they are brought to the school counselors’ offices for additional assistance.

• Suicide prevention and substance abuse prevention are community-wide issues that require community-wide support. As such, the district and our community partners (Bainbridge Youth Services, Raising Resilience, and the Healthy Youth Alliance) partner in this work.
• BISD is fortunate to have Bainbridge Youth Services housed on its Bainbridge High School campus. This collaborative relationship allows middle- and high-school students to receive free, confidential, on-site counseling.
• The Signs of Suicide program is implemented at the secondary grade level in some grades. One of the program’s main goals is to decrease suicide and suicide attempts by increasing students’ awareness and attitudes about depression.
• BISD school counselors, school psychologists, and school nurses are trained in suicide prevention and must be retrained every five years in order to keep their certificates current. They are the front-line for suicide prevention.

• When a student, or the student’s peers/parents/teachers, report a suicide concern, counselors and principals meet with the student to investigate and informally assess the risk following district procedures. The parents/guardians are also alerted.
• Depending on the situation, the next steps may involve creating a Student Safety Plan and providing the family with suicide resources such as a psychological evaluation resource list.

Each case is individualized and requires a specific plan for the student to meet their needs.