I wish to commend Dawn Williams for her advocacy for Marysville students in her May 17 letter to the editor. I attended Marysville schools from fifth grade until graduation in 2011. Superintendent Becky Berg’s response in the June 11 Herald is very reminiscent for me about something I experienced attending the last day of summer school in 2008, the day we were told a fellow student, Myka Campbell, had died in a motorcycle accident.
I arrived in a classroom to take a language arts final. The silence was broken when Myka’s friend walked through the door crying hysterically and said, “Myka can’t come. She died last night.” The teacher asked what happened and shed a few tears herself. Ms. A excused the student from class and allowed her to pass the class without taking the final. Students were allowed a moment to sit silent and stunned before our teacher passed out the final.
Just minutes after we were told that someone had died. Someone whose life mattered, someone who sat beside us the day before. I will never forget those two weeks I shared a summer school classroom with Myka, or how it felt taking a major test under that kind of emotional duress, because we had to if we wanted our diplomas.
Thank you, Becky Berg, for sharing with the public some steps that Marysville School District has taken to help the student population heal and prevent such a preventable tragedy from ever happening again. Props to you for coming out publicly against state standardized testing as a graduation requirement in the first place!
Devani Nessinger
Marysville
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