Clock is ticking: Where is Seattle Public Schools on student safety?

It has been 10 weeks since a child was murdered on a Seattle high school campus in front of multiple witnesses. And still, no arrests.

In two weeks, another school year begins, and despite the shooting of 17-year-old Amarr Murphy-Paine at Garfield High School in June, and the killing of 15-year-old Mobarak Adam across the street from Chief Sealth High School several months earlier, and the slaying of 17-year-old Ebenezer Haile at Ingraham High School nearly two years ago, Seattle Public Schools has announced no new safety plan.

This paralysis cannot be awarded any grade other than a massive “F” for the adults running SPS, the Seattle Police Department and City Hall.

No question, the school district is fielding a crush of high-level problems, including a $104 million budget deficit and a list of some 20 schools that could be slated for closure. But the safety of students is a nonnegotiable, a basic standard that must take priority.

Merely writing that sentence is absurd; it should go without saying.

Yet, not even the seven members of Seattle’s School Board have any idea what will look different when students return on Sept. 4 — if they do.

Garfield parent leader Alicia Spanswick said the kids she knows are showing a reluctance to go back that’s different from the usual end-of-summer malaise.

“It feels bigger,” she said. “They don’t want to go back on a much deeper level, and they can’t articulate why, but their anxiety’s very high.”

For Garfield, specifically, there may be changes to cellphone policies and a requirement that all students and staff wear visible IDs, so anyone who doesn’t belong there can be quickly recognized.

But by whom? A neighborhood patrol? Murphy-Paine’s slaying took place outside the school building, in a parking area not far from the bus stop where another shooting had injured a student three months prior.

Beyond Garfield, the district hasn’t said whether it plans to install armed security — meaning police — at any school. First, parents were told the school board had banned such measures. Then they heard that the board would defer to the superintendent’s decision. Then the superintendent said the district needed to survey students about their wishes. Of course, that could have been done in June, when kids were still around, in order to have a response in place by September.

Instead, it’s pass-the-buck confusion and a damning lack of courage to act.

In the meantime, Haile’s family has filed a lawsuit against Seattle Public Schools, charging negligence. They are seeking $45 million in damages for the district’s failure to keep the high school junior safe from a freshman who’d already brought weapons into Ingraham weeks before shooting Haile to death in a hallway.

No response — neither police nor unarmed guards nor metal detectors — will be perfect. But weighing the risk between possible choices seems like a no-brainer: Either present some sign of determination to keep students safe. Or prepare for the next lawsuit over a dead kid.