To whom it may concern; 

The recent firing of Jodie Dean has cause a lot of distress to her current and past students. She was fired for reasons that seem unfair to anyone who could see how Copper Hills was and is ran. We are told that if we need someone to talk to, we can talk to any of the staff there. The word “any” is not appropriate for that school. Jodie was the one person at the school I personally could talk to. I graduated in 2015, the year Dylan Bingham had lost his life. After his death there were many students who were unstable after the loss of him. Anyone who has read about suicide knows that there is a spiraling afterwards. There were grief counselors at the school, but no one was there for us students like Jodie. She made sure that we felt safe and had someone that would listen. 

Through out all of high school I struggled with my situation of being in foster care and had a problem with authority. Jodie was the one who helped me realize that just because I’m angry with my parents does not mean I get to misbehave in school. She helped me straighten out my act and graduate. There are some individuals who work at CH who may think she is doing her job wrong but she is doing everything right. As a high school student who had gone through some of her hardest times during those short years, I can while heartedly say if there is anyone at CH that I trusted enough to tell me how it is it was Jodie. She may not do things the way that other hall monitors do but you need a good cop bad cop in order to have a functioning school. 

The point of this letter is to tell you that even though the choice to let Jodie go may have seemed like the best solution, it was the worst one. Students rely on Jodie to be the listening ear and friend at school. She is the one person kids can trust and go to if they are having issues at home or struggling with their grades. She speaks to students as a friend not a superior and helps them realize the need to do well in school. Reminds us that high school is just a small part of our lives and we need to make sure that we graduate in order to get big things done. She gets excited for us when we pass our classes, get our grades up, and get to class so we don’t get attendance school. 

This is a list of students who, protest the decision made by the district to let her go.