SANFORD, Fla. – Extra mental health counselors were brought in to Seminole High School on Thursday as a result of Wednesday’s shooting where a student was injured.
Extra resource officers were also seen on campus Thursday.
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“With all the police officers there, it’s pretty secured,” Mike White said.
White, whose son is a freshman at Seminole High School, said he felt comfortable dropping off his son following the shooting.
“Back in the day we had fist fights, a lot of times, and we handled it, and now it’s so easy to just go out and get a weapon and just bring it. It’s not even funny,” White said.
According to the spokesperson for Seminole County Public Schools, the district brought in 10 extra mental health counselors to work with students and staff. That’s an addition to the counselors already assigned to the main campus and to the 9th grade center.
“It’s kind of tough. I’ve never seen anything like this before,” 12th grader Mahamudul Chowdhury said.
Deborah Beidel, UCF professor of psychology, said students may have anxiety going back to class and pointed out the importance of talking to them about the situation.
“I think it’s really important parents take that step, that parents just say ‘Something happened at your school today that could have been quite upsetting or that was upsetting, you were hiding in a closet for a couple of hours, do you want to talk about it?’ And then respect what it is that the child says,” Beidel said.
Seminole County Public Schools released the following statement to News 6 on Thursday:
“Families should be assured that we have a large additional law enforcement presence on campus today and that will remain in place the rest of the week,” the statement read.