According to Education Week’s 2022 School Shooting Tracker, the school shooting at Robb Elementary is the 27th school shooting in the U.S. this year.  By my calculation that means there is a school shooting somewhere in the United States roughly every three and a half days. Is this how a civilized society educates its children?

This is trauma, pure and simple — and we, as a nation, are allowing it to happen, over and over and over again. Trauma repeated is trauma multiplied. 

I have never lost a child in a school shooting, but I have grandchildren attending school. I can’t turn away from this. None of us should. If I had it in my power, I would make every member of Congress sit down face to face with parents who have lost a child, or had a child witness a school shooting, and simply listen.

To my senators, Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, and my representative, Peter DeFazio, please reach out to your colleagues.  Find a way to save our students, our teachers, ourselves.

Joan Rawlings-Boyd

Eugene

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