By Dominic Abassi

UPDATE: SD68 makes Decision to Bring Students Home from Nice

Jul 15, 2016 | 6:21 PM

It wasn’t the summer trip to France a group of Nanaimo students was planning on — and now it’s coming to an abrupt end.

Dale Burgos, communication’s director with Nanaimo-Ladysmith Public Schools, says they have made the difficult decision to bring home their 85 students and chaperones from Nice, France.

Burgos said earlier this week some members of the group were just 100 feet away from the truck that plowed through a crowd taking in Bastille Day celebrations, killing at least 84 people.

“It was a difficult decision, we’ve already heard from a lot of parents, we called them directly before we shared this with the community. It may not be a popular decision, but in the end, the district had to make a decision based on the safety of their students and that’s what it did,” said Burgos.

The decision was the district’s to make.

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“This is after many, many calls in consultation with people who are at the forefront of threat assessment and trauma response. It wasn’t something that I would say would be solely on the district, however in the end, we had to make the call.”

Burgos says they were told by experts that the next destination on the students’ trip, Spain, is also on a high alert right now.

Burgos says overall the group is doing okay, according to the chaperones.

“There are some that are visibly upset and shaken, there are some that are fine. However, hearing from professionals, these first few days are the most crucial and what may come as maybe calmness in one individual, maybe hasn’t settled in yet.”

A Canadian school psychologist is joining the group shortly, and on-going support is being planned for when the students get home.

Burgos says the group is still in Nice, and travel plans are still being arranged.

“We are working with a number of different organizations, with the Ministry, to look at how we can get them back safely and quickly. We don’t have any details on that yet.”

Based on advice from experts, besides being at home, Nice is probably the safest place for the students right now, according to Burgos. That, he says, is because of the heightened level of security there and the increased presence of authorities.

The decision to end the trip over a week early, was made after consultations with the Ministry of Education, The Canadian Centre for Threat Assessment and Trauma Response and Safer Schools Together.