As our students prepare to head back to the classroom next Thursday, Jefferson High School leaders have attempted to develop a plan to help students and faculty return to the school following tremendous emotional upheaval during the summer months.

With the suicide of a beloved teacher within the very walls where he taught so many and the arrest of another teacher for conduct that should never be found between a teacher and student, there are many emotional holes that need to be filled.

Beginning this Sunday evening, the school is opening its doors for a community prayer service to help restore some semblance of peace and healing.

We say kudos to Principal Sherry McCall Ross and the rest of her staff, along with the Board of Education, for allowing this prayer service to move forward. These students need to have the emotional and spiritual guidance to head back into another year and the clergy from around the county who plan to participate will give them that guidance, and hopefully, closure.

It is never easy to lose a loved one to death, especially in a manner that the students lost Steve Glendenning. It is all the more difficult to go back into the theater area of the school and carry on without focusing on the death happening there.

The prayer service, along with the options of counseling for students as the year begins, will go a long way in helping these impressionable young people to accept the tragedy even if they will never understand it.

Coming to grips with the loss is the best that these young people can hope for as they look ahead to another year at Jefferson High.

Kudos once again to the staff for working to help these students make some sense of a devastating chain of events.

Let’s hope that each student and faculty member finds the peace and understanding they need to carry on and learn from the clergy and counselors how to cope with emotioanl distress and the pain of loss that is sure to hit full force as the doors open on Thursday for the first day of school.

Let us all join in praying for our high school and all those affected by the events of the summer.

May they all feel the love and peace from God surround them as they contunie down the road to recovery and seek to be free from the pain, sorrow and even anger they may feel as a result of events beyond their control.