On Tuesday, October 31, the co-chairs of the Five Town CSD School Board heard about why gun-related classes should be banned from our district’s school properties. (For those wondering, the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife now offers its Firearms Hunter Safety course online rather than in person.)

At our meeting, we were informed that the Board had, to date, only heard such a message from the two of us and would need more community input supporting our position in order to possibly reconsider theirs. 

Today we are alerting the public to this situation and encourage people, parents, students and family members, neighbors and local property tax payers, to speak out against the “unbelievable mixed message this sends to our children,” as one older Camden resident said.

Or as another said, “There is no place for guns in our school at all, ever!”

Please let them hear from you. Call or email board members and the Superintendent, write letters of support to our papers, and/or sign the petition we are circulating. Attend the next board meeting at 7 p.m. at Rose Hall on Wednesday, Dec. 6. You won’t have to speak. Your presence by itself will convey the clear message that our children are more important than any gun-related adult ed class.  

Remind the Superintendent and the Board that, as they themselves posted at the entry of our high school: Weapons of Any Kind Are Prohibited.

Elizabeth Dailey, Camden
Mary Orear, Rockport