Sabattus Central School faces a serious problem that so far has required a costly solution.

The school has been plagued by a spate of bomb threats left in the restrooms. As a countermeasure, the school has deployed a monitor to keep track of bathroom traffic.

The monitor is being paid the daily rate for a substitute teacher: $60. The unexpected expenditure is difficult to make up in an already tight school budget, but it’s the psychological effects that are more damaging.

Ideally, students wouldn’t need to have their bathroom habits monitored so closely. There’s already so much uncertainty and anxiety for middle-school students without more attention being drawn to restroom habits.

But the school has few options, and none of them is perfect.

Four bomb threats so far this year have disrupted the school, and school administrators have a responsibility to ward them off. All bomb threats have to be taken seriously, even when they’re just notes left in the bathroom. To ignore a warning is to invite disaster, a risk no school can take.

The monitors are effective. During times when they’ve been in place, no threats have occurred. But the solution isn’t good for the long-term.

The school superintendent hopes to include money for video cameras in the next budget. The technology would be cheaper in the long run, and less invasive as students got used to the idea that the cameras are always on.

Nobody likes the idea that students need to be monitored every second of the day. Most kids don’t. They’re mature and responsible enough to go to the restroom without a guide. But the few ruin it for everyone. Their joke is in poor taste; their desire to avoid class is ridiculous. The disruption they cause hurts other students, who need or want every second of class time they can get.

Worst of all, their actions put their friends and classmates at risk. Every false alarm, every fake bomb threat increases the risk that a real warning will be overlooked or disregarded.

Sabattus’ answer might at first seem too costly or invasive, but it is an effective deterrent to dangerous behavior.