Kassidie's Classmates, Teachers Grapple with Loss

At San Jose Elementary School on Monday, the first day back to school after hearing of the passing of one of its own, there were no smiling faces to be found, only ones filled with tears and sorrow.

Kassidie Rae McMillin, a fourth-grade student at the west Dunedin school, was over the weekend May 12 from her mother Tina Marie Foster, who then turned the gun on herself.

A moment of silence was observed in Kassidie’s memory during the morning announcements, and grief counselors from the Pinellas County Schools’ Emergency Response and Crisis Management team were on hand to help students and teachers grapple with the tragedy.

“We had a staff meeting this morning with the district’s grief crisis team to help our students, well, really to help our teachers, so that they could have the right thing to say to students,” San Jose principal Monika Wolcott said.

While counselors recommend being truthful with children who are old enough to understand what happened to Kassidie, Wolcott also was instructed to “gauge the children” as to how much to reveal regarding the circumstances of the tragedy.

“It’s difficult because the little Pre-K’ers and kindergarteners probably are not going to know (what happened)…so it’s such a balance to make sure we’re not saying too much, but still being compassionate and ‘there’ emotionally for the children that do know what’s going on.”

Dawn Stacey, whose son was in the same fourth-grade class as Kassidie, expressed the thoughts and concerns many San Jose parents are having during this time in a correspondence with Patch on Monday afternoon.

“My heart is in pieces because it is so 'close to home.' You hear of these stories unfortunately every day, but when it hits home like this, well, words cannot describe how I am feeling.”

Stacey, a 14-year resident of the community, chose to keep her son home from school on Monday so he wouldn’t have to “deal with so much sadness at school from staff or students.”

As the community begins the painful process of healing, Wolcott encouraged people to remember Kassidie for who she was.

“Kassidie was very smart, very kind-hearted, had a lot of friends … a little shy in the beginning, but once you got to know her, she was a very good friend.”