Marshall County Schools Superintendent Shelby Haines’ report to the county’s Board of Education on Tuesday was an encouraging sign for how the school district will handle one of the biggest black eyes it has suffered in years.

Haines briefed the board and the audience about the steps the administration is taking following the arrests of former McNinch Primary teacher Kiersten Moses, former McNinch Principal Jane Duffy and district Director of Special Programs Erin Cuffaro in connection with the alleged strangling of a nonverbal autistic McNinch student.

(To recap, Moses is accused of strangling the student, Duffy and Cuffaro are accused of not reporting it to the proper authorities and Cuffaro also stands accused of lying to a state trooper about her directives to Duffy in the matter.)

Haines praised the work of new McNinch Principal Jessica Robinette and discussed district administrators’ second on-site visit to the school’s multi-categorical classroom focusing on behavior, which also has a new teacher.

She also mentioned that Education System Solutions of St. Albans was at McNinch conducting an external review of the special education program.

Hopefully, those updates will continue regularly at these meetings. The Marshall County Board of Education and the county’s parents deserve to know every step of the way what is being done to ensure the safety of students, especially the ones who can’t speak up for themselves.