KEYSER, W.Va. — A parent upset with the way the deaths of two people were announced over the loudspeaker at Keyser High School last week appealed to the Mineral County Board of Education Tuesday to come up with a better way of handling such a sensitive situation.

According to Brian Redman of Piedmont, the deaths of a Keyser High student and a former guidance counselor — both of whom succumbed to an illness which they each had been fighting for years — were included in the school’s announcements last week, upsetting a lot of the students and creating what his kids called “total chaos” at the school.

Noting that he spent all four years of his high school education at Keyser, Redman said “never once” during all the time he was there did he remember such an emotionally-charged announcement being made over the loud speaker.

In the case of the teen, Redman said the family “just had enough time to get the siblings out of the school before the announcement was made.”

Redman told the board members he questioned Principal Charles Wimer about the situation, and was told “the kids were already texting back and forth” with the news so he made the decision to announce it to the student body as a whole.

“I have since learned that there is nothing in place as to how we go about handling such a case as this,” Redman said.

“I was told they were trying to take care of a crisis before it got out of hand. But my kids told me it was total chaos in the hallways once the announcement was made.”

Board President Terry LaRue, who taught in Mineral County for 39 years, also said he had never heard of broadcasting such news during the morning or afternoon announcements.

“We don’t have a policy that I know of, but I think we need to make some clarifications on how to handle this,” he said.

LaRue also noted that the county has a policy against using cell phones during school hours, and “it’s obvious the policy is not being adhered to at that school.

“If the cell phones were not in use, probably 75 percent of the kids would have not known about (the deaths) until they went home,” he said.

Superintendent Skip Hackworth said after speaking with Redman he had begun working on “developing a more formalized protocol for crisis intervention.”

Noting that they “can’t go back and erase what happened,” he said a formalized protocol would give administrators guidelines to follow, recognizing that each situation will be different and would require prior analysis as to how to react, in addition to analysis after the fact to see if the situation could have been handled any better.

“I’ve never seen two incidents of this type happen the same,” he said.

“People handle situations a little bit differently,” board member Mary Aronhalt agreed, adding that the student’s death, in particular, was difficult for many of his fellow students to cope with because “a lot of them went through the illness with him.

“It was a tragedy,” she said.

As for the cell phone policy, Hackworth said he has the topic on the agenda for his next meeting with school administrators.

“If it’s a problem in one school, it may be a problem in more than one,” he said.

After much debate on the topic, the board approved a policy last October requiring that students keep their cell phones turned off and in their lockers during the school day.

Liz Beavers can be reached at Contact Liz Beavers at lbeavers@times-news.com.