To the Editor:

Details of the horrific school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, continue to unfold, and with them comes a sickeningly familiar wave of emotions for parents, teachers, administrators, and those students old enough to imagine the same thing happening in their own classrooms. As a parent and an educator, I know all too well the questions that emerge from seeing these headlines: What if this was my school? My community? My students? Families across the country will close their newsfeeds and turn off the evening news in an attempt to avoid imagining the unimaginable: What if it was my relative? My spouse? My child?

This insistent, intrusive fear will leap into our minds while we’re doing the dishes or putting the kids to bed. And the worst part is that we have been here before.

For those with no immediate connection to the Uvalde community, a growing sense of inevitability is perhaps the most distressing aspect of this tragedy. Even as leaders and politicians leap onto their platforms to offer condolences and outrage, there is a pervasive, gut-wrenching feeling that these shootings have become unavoidable.

“Nothing changed after Sandy Hook” is a common enough sentiment. It’s not entirely true. Many districts have attempted to make themselves safer, whether it is with locked doors or active shooter trainings or initiatives to improve and monitor students’ mental health. But it is certainly not enough. Every headline in America makes that point unambiguously. So, a question remains: are these events truly unavoidable?

We have not yet tried to answer that question. Not really. Not as a nation, not as a state, and not as a collection of communities that value the lives of our children. The debates have been rehashed again and again. Promises have been made on all sides: of gun control, of making schools more secure, of expanding mental health resources. None have been met sufficiently. School shootings should be the type of crisis for which every possible solution is considered. Every available resource should be thrown at this problem.

People should be prepared for serious discussions about what they’re willing to spend, work towards, or give up in order to keep children safe at their school desks. There should be a blank check for schools and communities on the scale of a national emergency. We cannot allow Uvalde and Sandy Hook and the other traumatized communities to become forgotten within a continual, unceasing list of tragedies.

I am sure more work can be done on a local level to accomplish this. Many of us will be watching and listening in the coming weeks to see what we can do to better safeguard our communities. But there is one action that all of us can take easily and immediately: hold our elected officials to their responsibilities. Each should be dragged out from behind their now all too familiar words of condolences and outrage and politicking and be forced to answer the questions: What have you done to solve the school shooting crisis?

What will you do tomorrow to prevent one from happening again? Ask them on social media. Attend a town hall. Send an email. Then send it again. And again. And again.

Just as our students need support and comfort in the coming weeks, our schools need help of another kind. There is not one clear, simple solution. There will be many differing opinions on how we move forward.

But as we navigate yet another tragedy, real action must replace hollow words and gestures. There must be a true effort to make this shooting the last of its kind. No school or community should want resources to address this crisis. Everyone must lift a hand to help, whether they are in Albany, Washington, or in their hometown. As the families in Uvalde grieve, it is the very least that we can do.

Conner Eldridge
Canton