To the Editor:

One of the more puzzling aspects of the controversy over the decision to replace the principal of PHS has been the blasé response to the fact that a student opened a side door to admit a former student who, however briefly, roamed the halls of the school until identified, located, and escorted out. 

Despite the current spate of school shootings in a country awash with guns, the odds of such an event at any given school are very low, so low that chances are we could do away with safety drills altogether without negative consequences. Not ordering a lockdown as soon as the intrusion happened was the easy decision, the one that played the odds. The hard decision, the one that would have required real leadership, would be to order the lockdown knowing that almost certainly there would be no shots fired, and that the decision would surely be second-guessed.

The things said about the former student who entered the school fit with the things said about actual school shooters. By and large they too are known to some of the students and teachers, and, if troubled, have never before pulled a gun. No one recognizes a shooter in advance because these are one-off crimes. It does not take 10 minutes to empty the standard 22 shot clip of an unmodified Glock, it takes less than 10 seconds if you don’t care about aiming.

As an educator, a former Board member, and someone with two grandchildren in PHS, I would much rather see as rapid a response as possible to a school intrusion and be reassured that what has been practiced actually works, than play the odds. Then when I turn on the evening news and see yet again bereaved and bewildered residents of some other town saying, “we never thought it could happen here,” I would at least have the assurance that we are as prepared for such a horror as we can possibly be.

Play the odds with money, not with lives.

Jeffrey Spear
North Harrison Street