The Medford School Board meeting Aug. 27, where board members voted to investigate a complaint against one of their own, left some officials feeling rattled.

The meeting came on the heels of public outcry about the reassignment of School Resource Officer Josh Doney. Board member Michael Williams publicly aired his concerns about the decision, which he said stemmed from Doney challenging district security director Ron Havniear. Williams is now the apparent subject of the complaint.

During the Aug. 27 meeting, audience members, including district parents and faculty, wore T-shirts and held signs in support of Williams and Doney and offered up the occasional boos and criticism aimed at board members.

When the board held a retreat three days later, Chair Cynthia Wright said, “we cannot have our board meetings interrupted so that we cannot do business” any more than teachers can have disruptions in their classrooms that prevent them from teaching.

District Superintendent Bret Champion reflected on how he felt at the Aug. 27 meeting. “Whenever somebody stood up and pointed at me and said, ‘Bret Champion, you’re gonna have the worst year of your life. We’re gonna make this the worst year of your life!’ I felt threatened. I felt unsafe,” he said.

Board member Michelle Atkinson said the audience made her feel unsafe as well.

“Maybe it’s different for the men in the audience, but as a woman I did not feel safe. In fact, it was pretty much the least safe I have ever felt here on the campus where I grew up and went to school,” she said.

“I did not feel safe to speak my mind. … We are all here because we care about the kids, and I want us to be able to get along and to have meetings where we can address the things that are going to help students. I don’t know if we need a new policy or we need to follow the policy we already have.”

At the retreat, the school board discussed how to handle the audience in future meetings, and whether those meetings will be held in-person or virtually. The topic of whether to start removing audience members came up — an action that, it must be noted, the numerous police officers in the room at the Aug. 27 meeting didn’t feel the need to take.

It is critical that citizens — parents and faculty and community members — feel their concerns will be heard. At the retreat, Williams said he was wary of putting “guardrails” on public comment and that he felt the board should ask itself, “Why is it that people feel compelled to use their voice in the way that they’re using it?” It didn’t help that the Aug. 27 meeting had no opportunity for public comment.

In this age of rampant gun violence on school campuses, the issue of safety is paramount to parents and teachers, and it should be top of mind for school administrators, high-level staff and school board members.

Parents have serious worries about safety in schools. Just last week, a 14-year-old boy in Georgia shot and killed two students and two teachers at a high school. He was taken into custody by SROs.

That said, how people present their comments can go a long way toward finding a solution. School safety is a topic as urgent as it is fraught, inspiring intense feelings and opinions. It also demands searching questions and constructive dialogue. This is best achieved by erring on the side of civility.

The public has a right to expect action and answers from the school board on school safety. And the school board has a right to expect enough decorum from the public to be able to do their jobs — to do and say unpopular things, knowing they can be voted out if the public believes they’re on the wrong side of important issues.

Doney is gone, back on patrol — he has been replaced by Officer Josh Marshall as the SRO at South Medford High School — but the issue of safety in the Medford School District and in every district in the U.S. remains. And it won’t be fully and thoughtfully addressed and remedied anytime soon if all involved can’t find common ground.