Crisis response teams helped students at New York and Central Junior High schools deal with the news Monday that two classmates were among five people killed in an East Lawrence house fire.

Near the end of school, emergency response workers announced that those who died in Sunday’s blaze included Nolan Vender, 13, a Central Junior High eighth-grader, and DaVonte Brockman, 11, a sixth-grader at New York.

Central Principal Frank Harwood said he told students of the fire at the beginning of the day and later that Vender was among those killed.

“A letter is going home to parents with kind of an explanation that we’ve been available to students, but a lot of times they don’t start grieving right away and that if there are problems to call us and we can help out,” Harwood said.

The letter asked parents to watch their children’s behavior.

“The thing about a death of someone so young is that even students who didn’t know him well can be affected by knowing someone that young has died,” Harwood said.

Letters also were being sent home to parents whose children attended New York.

Nancy DeGarmo, principal at New York, referred questions to the school district’s main office.

“We have a family of grieving adults and students here, who we’re trying to manage and hold together for a day,” DeGarmo said of the staff and students in her building.

Supt. Randy Weseman released a statement Monday afternoon: “On behalf of the Lawrence public schools, I want to extend my deepest sympathies to the Glover family. Our school communities are grieving this tragic loss and working together to support students, staff, and one another during this most difficult time.”

Four other elementary schools – Schwegler, Woodlawn, Pinckney and East Heights, which all had ties to the children through friends or family – were also provided information and counseling, said Donna Patton-Bryant, assistant director of special education and the person in charge of the district’s crisis response team.

“When something like this happens, everybody is kind of tongue-tied and doesn’t know how to respond,” Patton-Bryant said.

The response team includes mental health professionals from Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center, social workers and school psychologists, counselors, teachers, nurses and administrators, Patton-Bryant said.

The team, which began its work Sunday afternoon, provided principals and teachers at the schools some guidelines for giving out information and coached them on what to expect in terms of student responses, she said.

“Some act out, some are quiet, some write,” Patton-Bryant said of grieving schoolmates.

She said “safe rooms” were set up where students could go for quiet or to draw or make banners as outlets for their grief.

Deputy Supt. Bruce Passman said junior high students often had a wide range of reactions to a major tragedy and that the crisis team helped them handle it.

“In our culture, we’ve dealt with death in a very quiet way,” Passman said. “We expect people to deal with the issue of death and get on with their lives, and we don’t talk about it much as a culture.”

The crisis team was brought in nine times last year to be available to students and school staff, he said.