School officials generally strive to prepare themselves to handle emergencies. They oversee fire drills. They invite emergency personnel to their schools to conduct active shooter drills. They carry emergency equipment to athletic events and medical supplies on field trips.

Yet when it comes to preparing to handle a heroin or opioid overdose, local school officials appear to have come down with a serious case of denial. In explaining why school nurses aren’t being equipped with and trained to use the opioid reversal drug naloxone, also known as Narcan, Groton Schools Superintendent Michael Graner’s recent comments were pretty much in line with those of superintendents throughout the region. He said while officials recognize heroin and opioid addiction is a huge problem, “it typically is not a school grounds issue.”

Given the time, money and energy school districts already spend to prepare for other types of emergencies that seldom if ever occur, we think this is a flimsy excuse indeed, especially given the life-saving drug is being offered to schools for free by the pharmaceutical company Adapt Pharma.

A spokesman for Adapt Pharma this week said some 1,100 schools have already taken the company up on its offer, an offer on which the company is putting no time restrictions. Some examples of preparedness: Pennsylvania’s state Department of Health adopted the practice of equipping high school nurses with the drug and the agency is overseeing distribution; while schools throughout New Hampshire and Kentucky also already stocked Narcan. In addition, Rhode Island passed a law requiring middle and high schools to keep the drug at the ready.

There is plenty of data to support this preparation. Connecticut’s Chief State Medical Examiner’s office logged more than 200 accidental drug deaths in the first three months of 2016 alone. The vast majority of those deaths involved heroin or some type of opioid-based drug. Between 2012 and 2015, the overdose death rate more than doubled in the state. While most of these victims were older than teenagers, numerous victims were in their early to mid-20s.

Also consider results of a round of surveys released in August that show local high school students nearly tripled their illicit use of prescription drugs in recent years. Those addicted to prescription opioid painkillers are 40 times more likely to be addicted to heroin, according to information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Preparedness is not just about the potential to save a student’s life. Schools are centers of the community. Adults are employed there. Parents and residents attend events there.

Given these facts, southeastern Connecticut school officials must start preparing and stop denying. If they need policy to support equipping their schools with Narcan, superintendents must advocate their school boards adopt such policy as quickly as possible. There is no down side to being prepared to save a life. Being unprepared is the problem.