For the second time in less than two weeks, Mathews High School came to a screeching halt this Monday after what again proved to be an unsubstantiated threat.

Classes were immediately stopped, and students and faculty were loaded on buses and sent to the middle school where they had to wait until the all-clear was given from the Mathews County Sheriff’s Office. They went through the same thing back on Jan. 30.

In today’s world of school shootings and other senseless acts of violence, schools have little choice but to err on the side of caution and protect the students in their charge. Yet it’s also a massive waste of classroom time that students need to prepare for the upcoming SOL tests, a waste of time and resources on the part of the sheriff’s office and other law enforcement agencies, as well as an unnecessary stress on parents who suddenly have to worry for the safety of their children.

We can only hope that the person or persons who made these threats a...