All of the reasons why a 10-year-old Moraine Elementary School pupil decided to bring a pellet gun to school on March 1 might never be known.

But Slippery Rock district residents have reasons to be troubled about how the school district handled the situation — particularly in regard to how the district failed to alert residents immediately, in particular parents of children attending the school, that an incident had occurred.

Parents had a right to know from the time the investigation into the incident was launched that authorities had begun a probe. Such information, a general summary of what was believed to have occurred, and the assurance that district officials were doing everything possible to verify the accuracy of what was alleged, would have gone a long way toward easing the concerns of parents and other district residents.

Instead, the muddled way in which the situation initially was handled suggests the need for a thorough evaluation by the school board and district administrators.

By now, district officials already should have learned a lesson based on parents’ reaction to not immediately knowing that a gun — even a pellet gun — had been in the hands of a student in the Moraine Elementary building.

Slippery Rock Superintendent Kathy Nogay said Wednesday that she could not give out much information on March 2 or March 3 because of a police investigation.

Not so. Parents are entitled to some basic information about an incident so potentially serious.

Nogay said she sent home a letter to parents Monday as well as an electronic “instant alert” discussing the incident.

That alert, not very instant, wasn’t much consolation to district parents three days after school officials were told about the incident by the parents of a Moraine female student — and a day after a meeting by the school’s crisis team Sunday that was open to the public.

For parents, the crisis team meeting should have been an additional source of information, not a meeting for finally learning what had happened — what they reasonably should have known days before.

The boy who allegedly brought the pellet gun to school showed the girl something in his coat that looked like the outline of a gun. Police concluded that the boy did, in fact, have a pellet gun at the time in question.

Nogay attempted to assuage parents and quiet rumors by pointing out that the gun was not found in the building and that the boy did not have a “hit list.”

Hit list or not, the gun was brought inside the building and that is grounds for the boy’s expulsion from school for enough time to make an impression on him about the seriousness of the incident.

Meanwhile, the boy, who currently is under suspension, is being charged with possession of a weapon on school property, terroristic threats and disorderly conduct.

With no official information on which to immediately rely, it’s clear why rumors were rampant in the school district.

Nogay said the district handled the incident to the best of its abilities. If that’s true, district officials need a refresher course on keeping the public informed whenever such unfortunate situations take place.

Even if police requested secrecy, an alert that indicated that a pellet gun incident was being investigated and no students were in danger would have been sufficient on the day the investigation began.

There will be people on both sides of the issue as to whether officials overreacted in charging the boy with a crime and, in fact, bringing in the police. That can continue to be debated.

But what’s certain is that the district’s procedure for keeping parents informed needs to be reworked.

In this pellet gun incident they weren’t. And residents’ concerns were — and are — justified.