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The facts known so far about this incident should give some pause: A Guilford County sheriff's deputy used a Taser last week to subdue a 15-year-old girl at Ragsdale High School. The girl was apparently unarmed. Her alleged crimes: threatening two teachers and, when a deputy tried to handcuff her, resisting arrest.

The girl is the fourth Guilford County Schools student to have been on the receiving end of a Taser since some law enforcement personnel started carrying the stun guns on campus two years ago. She most likely will not be the last.

So was the deputy's use of a Taser justified? Probably. It's hard to draw many conclusions -- the Guilford County Sheriff's Office has said little about the incident, but the deputy apparently has not been disciplined, and the District Attorney's office is pursuing no charges against him.

From the perspective of law enforcement officers, the Taser remains a good intermediate weapon, one that's potent enough to subdue an out-of-control suspect without killing him. Pepper spray can affect others, including the officer, which makes it tricky to use in a confined area such as a school classroom or hallway. A retractable baton can bruise or bloody someone. A firearm is a last resort. So the Taser is it, although "Don't Tase me, bro!" has become a national punch line.

But sending thousands of volts of electricity into a human body is serious business. The use of a Taser on a child, no matter how unruly, remains an unsettling thought. True, the possibility of death or serious injury is remote. A 2007 study by the Wake Forest University School of Medicine reviewed nearly 1,000 instances where law enforcement personnel used Tasers. In 99.7 percent of those cases, the person shocked suffered no more than some scrapes and bruises.

But since then, there have been some recent -- and close-to-home -- reports of deaths. In March 2008, a Charlotte police officer's Taser killed a 17-year-old. In August, 38-year-old Ronald Eugene Cobbs, an inmate in the Guilford County jail, died after being shocked by a Taser. Cobbs' death is still under review.

So it's for good reason that Guilford County Board of Education members Deena Hayes and Amos Quick want more information about last week's incident at Ragsdale. While they're at it, they and other school board members would be wise to set up some sort of formal process any time a Taser is used on a student. The idea should not be to second-guess law enforcement, but to confirm that a Taser was used with care and discretion. It makes sense for the school board and the Sheriff's Office to be on the same page because there are children involved.

The chance that a student might suffer a serious injury or even death seems remote, but it's possible. The death of a jail inmate has barely made a ripple on the public consciousness. The death of a child in a school hallway would do more than just give one pause.