Tim Matheney has been an educator for 35 years and recently concluded four years of service as South Portland’s superintendent of schools. He is currently an education and leadership consultant.

As students and staff members return to school across the nation, last week’s terrible mass shooting at the Annunciation School in Minneapolis is just the most recent tragic, bloody reminder of our nation’s inadequate response to the firearms-related violence our children experience.

As the former superintendent of schools in South Portland, I know how palpable fear and anxiety is in our schools following events like last week’s horrible act of violence. I know that superintendents and principals wake up every morning wondering — hoping — that they’ve done everything they possibly can to ensure that the precautions they have in place will be enough. I also know that parents see the headlines, and they too wonder and hope if their children will be safe.

Just five weeks ago, at my final board meeting as superintendent, I addressed the continuing threat that gun violence poses to our nation’s children. During my remarks, I noted that gun violence is now the leading cause of death among young people in the U.S., surpassing both
accidents and illness.

Even as school shootings declined by 22.5% during the 2024-25 school year, there were still 254 incidents in American schools. These 254 tragedies not only inflicted trauma on their direct victims, but also on eyewitnesses and the students and staff members who experienced hours-long lockdowns.

What’s happening in our nation does not have to be the case. Children in large, prosperous nations similar to the U.S. do not face the specter of gun violence in their schools and communities like our children do. In fact, firearms-related deaths in other large, wealthy nations is not even among the top four causes of death of children and teens, much less the number one cause that it is in the U.S.

Further, according to a 2023 Kaiser Family Foundation analysis, 97% of firearm-related deaths in all comparable, high-income nations occur in our very own nation where we purport to care so deeply about our children. While gun-related mortality among children has declined in peer countries over the past two decades, the rate in the U.S. has increased.

With talk of American exceptionalism once again common among some political leaders, these data do not speak of the kind of exceptional commitment to our children that they deserve.

So what must be done in order to better protect Maine’s most treasured — and most vulnerable — resource, our children? I would identify three priorities: political courage, improved physical security for our schools and greater accessibility of mental health services.

State and federal legislators must enact common-sense laws including limitations on the sale of high-powered, military-style weapons that have taken the lives of so many children. Even in the wake of the Lewiston tragedy, our own political leaders failed to muster the collective courage to pass something as straightforward and popular as a red flag law. Maine voters will have the opportunity to approve a red flag law through the November ballot’s Question 2.

The Maine Legislature should also appropriate more funding to the state’s School Revolving Renovation Fund to enable more districts to strengthen the physical security of schools. The state’s goal should be for every school to have secure, reinforced entrances with adequate
security camera surveillance.

Finally, Maine’s mental health infrastructure must be strengthened by greater funding and improved collaboration among state and local governments and critical partner organizations. Having worked as an educator in several other states, I know that Maine’s mental health infrastructure struggles in comparison. During my time as superintendent, I listened to a number of families who were deeply frustrated with finding adequate mental health resources for their struggling loved ones.

The children of the Annunciation School, Uvalde, Newtown and our own Maine communities expect urgency from us. With each child victim of gun violence in our nation, our collective hands are bloodied — both the hands of our state and federal legislators who have failed to enact tough, common-sense laws and the hands of those of us who have failed to elect legislators who will take this responsibility seriously.

When it comes to the impact of gun violence on our young people, we can do better. We must do better.