Emporia High School freshman asks USD 253 to standardize crisis plan for student deaths

At the May 10, USD 253 school board meeting, Emporia High School freshman Marina stood before the crowd and recited a speech, written in honor of her sister, asking the district to standardize its response to student deaths.

Marina said the discrepancies in the response from school administration following her sister’s passing didn’t hit her until another death at Emporia High School elicited a different chain of events.

“It seemed like they didn’t care,” Marina told The Gazette this week. “It made me feel like Emily wasn’t significant to them. A lot of the students didn’t know who she was as a student there. I just feel like it shouldn’t be like that. All students should be remembered equally and be equally important to the school.”

Currently, USD 253 has no policy regarding student deaths, USD 253 community relations director Lyndel Landgren confirmed, as every situation is unique.

“We do however have steps to follow in our crisis plan which is what our administrators have followed for any student death occurrence,” he added.

Memorials, funerals and memorial services in district facilities and naming facilities after individuals who have passed are considered and decided upon on a case-by-case basis, he added. No further policies are outlined.

However, while the death of Emily elicited no public communications or action from the district, the district sent out an email to parents and media, canceled games and provided mental health resources in the death of another student. A request for clarification on what determines the actions taken following a student’s death was not returned by press time.

That lack of policy is uncommon and can unfairly leave some families alone in their time of grief, Marina said.

“I have done a lot of research about policies relating to student deaths and our school is one of few that doesn’t have one,” Marina said. “Most schools do, they have something.”

Marina said the response from the Neosho Rapids and Hartford school district, where Emily had attended elementary and middle school, was more than that of EHS. Even at the Hartford graduation, Marina said a seat was set aside in her sister’s memory.

“Hartford did so much after the loss of her,” Marina said. “They had a moment of silence after their football game, all the cheerleaders, they wore ribbons for her. The volleyball players … the girls wore ribbons and the boys painted E’s on their jerseys and the cheerleaders painted E’s on their faces and they had posters.”

Richard Goza, Emily and Marina’s grandfather, said he believed the three students who passed away in the EHS graduating class — Diego Benitez, Chase Luby and Emily Goza — would not have been mentioned at graduation if it wasn’t for his granddaughter speaking to the school board.

“I felt that it was significant that they were acknowledged,” Marina said. “They were important, they were significant to their class and people should know who they are.”

While Marina feels there is little the district could do that would change her opinion of them, she wants to ensure a policy is in place “so that no other students get ignored or no families get left feeling like my family does now.”

“I have talked to the superintendent since and she basically told me that the reason they don’t have a policy is because they have their crisis protocol that they follow … but I feel like it’s different,” Marina said. “There should be a specific policy in the case of a student loss.”

To Marina, the simple option for families to make a statement following a student’s death should be offered.

“The school should just make an effort to ask instead of just staying silent,” she said.

Emily was set to be the first in her family to graduate high school and would have completed her education at Emporia High School last December.

“She really wanted to graduate,” Marina said. “That was what was most important to her. I remember this one time, it was during COVID, so grades didn’t really matter, but she had taken a test and she had gotten a B on it. I went upstairs and she was bawling her eyes out … she took her grades very, very seriously. She really cared about her education.”

In a family of many siblings, nieces and nephews, Marina said Emily was a support system and an inspiration to all.

“Emily, she was just an awesome person all around. She was really kind, caring, she loved kids. She said multiple times that there was nothing she wanted more than to be a mom, and she got to experience that. We have a lot of nieces and nephews … so she got to experience that a little bit, but she really wanted to have her own kids,” Marina said. “She wanted to be successful. There’s a lot of tension when it comes to success in my family. There are a lot of people who aren’t and she just wanted to be different. She didn’t want to be counted as nothing. She wanted to make sure she was important.”

The USD 253 school district provided Emily’s family with an honorary graduation certificate in her memory. For Richard Goza, she will always be a role model for his other grandchildren.

“Because of Emily’s drive, Marina and [her brother] Kevin are driven now too, because she encouraged them and encouraged them,” he said.