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After the shooting at Apalachee on September 4, 2024, a group of teachers and staff from Oxford High School in Oxford, Michigan reached out to some of the AHS staff members to offer support. Oxford High School experienced a school shooting in 2021 that took the lives of four students, Justin Shilling, Tate Myre, Madisyn Baldwin, and Hana St. Juliana. To honor their lives, a group of students created the Ox Legacy Fund to raise money to support other schools who were victims of gun violence.
From those funds, Oxford High School offered Apalachee a service dog named Beau. Mr. Dean, the Graduation Specialist for Apalachee, travelled to Oxford over Thanksgiving Break to pick up Beau and bring her to Georgia. While there, Mr. Dean met with students and staff at Oxford to discuss their experience and their healing journey after the shooting at their school.
Since Beau started at Apalachee, she has made a huge impact at the school. Beau greets students every morning in the atrium, and they have fallen in love with her. She also spends second period with Cassi Ryan’s math class who were directly impacted by the shooting at Apalachee. Beau is doing amazing work with those students and has become part of the class in the short two weeks she has been here.
Beau is also present with Mr. Dean when he meets with students to discuss their progress towards graduation. Sometimes those are difficult conversations due to students not meeting their goal of graduation, but Beau has helped to ease the stress of those meetings, and the students appreciate that she is there.
Apalachee is grateful to Oxford High School for the gift of Beau. She has helped make the air a little bit lighter and the smiles a little brighter after the tragic semester they have had. Apalachee looks forward to having her as part of the Chee Family as they continue their path to healing.