They aren’t pranks or jokes or anything to be taken lightly. This past week, there were five known incidents at area school districts involving threats, and they must stop.

We’re told one of the incidents involved a “kill list” that included the names of teachers and students. At another school, investigators gathered documentation of credible threats of death or injury to individual students.

Although she did not reference a list, Spring Hill ISD Superintendent Penny Fleet said an incident occurred at the high school that required coordinated action by “district administration, the school resource officer and Longview police.”

A recurring theme across the information we received about the threats is that school officials responded with appropriate gravity and speed and included law enforcement early in the process. For that, we applaud them.

Longview police said in the Spring Hill incident, a person of interest was in custody.

“The administration and staff will remain proactive in matters regarding school safety,” Fleet said in a statement.

Officials at Longview ISD’s Foster Middle School on Wednesday evening sent an all-call to parents that the staff had received “news of a potential threat” and that administrative staff and a student resource officer investigated and communicated with law enforcement.

The Smith County Sheriff’s Office said a 17-year-old Winona High School sophomore was arrested and given a $1 million bond on a charge of terroristic threat.

At Kilgore ISD, the spokeswoman for the district said a former student was found at the high school with a toy gun. That former student was “arrested and removed” by Kilgore police.

In Marshall, a reported threat at the high and junior high schools led to a brief lockdown but was later deemed “not credible.”

Still, the lockdown was in place as officials investigated after, according to the district, students came forward with information about the potential threat.

We can’t write about these instances without thinking of the recent events just this past week at a Michigan high school in which officials say a 15-year-old student opened fire and shot seven students and a teacher. Four of the students have died.

The almost unfathomable tragedy in Michigan shows in a concrete way why school administrators, teachers, law enforcement — and even students — must take very seriously threats of any nature involving a school.

We don’t know what it must be like to live through a situation like that in Michigan. We hope to never find out.

Unfortunately, we do know the sinking feeling parents feel when they — when we — receive emails or all-calls about potential threats at their child’s school. At our child’s school.

To reduce these incidences, we all must do our part.

School administrators and law enforcement must continue to take threats seriously and to react quickly and with appropriate force. They must, unfortunately, put in place training and protocols for how to handle a potential or real situation. As they did in some of these cases, students must take action when they see or hear something that could be a danger to safety in school and tell a trusted adult. Parents must keep their eyes and ears open and communicate with their children.

We cannot lose our heads because of a recent rash of threats at local schools, but we owe it to our communities to calmly do everything we can to reduce them.