Everyone has been to a place like Sandy Hook Elementary. Every day, countless parents drop children off at school and take their safe return as a given. That illusion of safety was broken last Friday.

That the victims were so young is almost unbearably heartbreaking. That the site was an elementary school, a place so familiar and usually so full of comfort, is horrifying.

“Our school community is deeply saddened by the tragic loss of lives in Newtown, Connecticut on Friday,” said a letter to parents by Meredith Nadeau, superintendent of schools in Cape Elizabeth, one of many school officials in the area who reached out in the aftermath of the shooting. “For all of us, the violation of a school building, where our children should feel safe and secure, is difficult to accept. This event is a sobering reminder that terrible things can happen anywhere.”

That reminder has school officials reviewing safety procedures and reassuring parents of their efficacy. Nadeau said lockdown drills were held last month, and that additional information on emergency management work will be shared at an upcoming school board meeting. George Entwistle III, superintendent in Scarborough, said he has asked leadership teams at the schools to “reassess current plans and practices for the purpose of improving” school safety. Superintendent Sandy Prince of Regional School Unit 14, in Windham-Raymond, used his letter to parents to list the ongoing safety work being done in the district.

It is important that the schools be diligent as they institute and update safety procedures. Those in place at Sandy Hook – locking doors, thorough emergency training, a communication system – certainly saved lives when paired with the heroic acts of the adults and children in the building.

There is also serious debate to be had on gun laws and our nation’s outsized predilection for gun violence, as well as on the treatment of the mentally ill.

But there are always going to be those who are sick and evil. There will always be access to a weapon of some kind. We can’t wall in every school, mall and movie theater and surround them with armed guards. And as the events at Sandy Hook Elementary School show, the best emergency responses, in protocol and personal bravery, only slow down a determined madman.

However, the perpetrators of these mass killings always plan for some time before the shooting, and they always leave signs, however unclear and cryptic. In schools and at work, we need to be better at reading those signs, and at dealing with the people who show them. It can be difficult for students to properly interpret the signs, and the social separation between students and school staff means they don’t always get reported. Teachers themselves may brush off the signals if they only see the student intermittently.

People need the tools to read the warning signs and enlist help when necessary, because by the time a would-be killer picks up a gun, it is already too late.

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