What is scary

To the Editor:
It seems you misquoted me in Tuesday’s article, “Outrage flares over failed school alarms, septic backup”. You wrote that I stated that I was scared, when in fact I’d said I was furious. These are very different words: not even synonyms.
That being said, let me tell you what does scare me: indifference towards the importance of safety in our schools. Our School committee Vice Chair Eugene Nadeau was quoted in a rival publication as saying he is “unconcerned” about the officials who knew had good reason to keep it to themselves. Most certainly the Vice Chair has never been charged with ensuring the safe exit of up to 28 children during the evacuation of an entire building. It is a huge responsibility that every teacher and staff member takes very seriously.
Let me be clear, for Gene Nadeau’s sake as well as any other skeptic who attempts to minimize this circumstance: the situation at Norwood School is not a simple case of replacing batteries in a smoke detector. It is the complete failure of the fire alarm system. Any safety mechanism that feeds a signal through the system (smoke and heat detectors, fire doors, sprinkler systems, etc ) is now rendered useless. If anyone were to pull the red fire alarm, nothing would happen. The fire department would NOT be notified.
This situation has been known by the school department for at least a month. At least a month passed when every person in that building could have been in a state of increased vigilance and a school wide plan, such as the one we have now, could have been implemented. How wonderful that Mr. Nadeau has complete confidence in the “officials who knew”, but in actuality, he and those officials have hit a new low. I certainly do not share the depth of his trust.

Mary Mason
Norwood School teacher