Two members of the Staples Class of 2008 are all smiles following today’s graduation ceremony. (CLICK TO ENLARGE) WestportNow.com photo

Proud parents. grandparents, other family members and friends crowded Westport’s Staples High School field house for today’s graduation ceremony. (CLICK TO ENLARGE) WestportNow.com photo

Staples Assistant Principal Karyn Morgan reaches out to hug senior Alex Gendell during the graduation ceremony today. Alex will attend Duke University in the fall. (CLICK TO ENLARGE) Dave Matlow for WestportNow.com

Led by faculty, the Staples High School Class of 2008 marches in to the graduation ceremony today. (CLICK TO ENLARGE) Dave Matlow for WestportNow.com

John Dodig: prank “intended to cause disturbance.” WN file photoUPDATE The principal of Westport’s Staples High School, in a frustration-filled letter to parents, today defended Friday’s arrest of a senior girl and her father for bringing a pony to school as a senior prank and said their intent “was to cause a disturbance.”

If Sarah Friedson, 17, and her father, Ronald, 50, had worked with the school’s environmental clubs to promote energy savings and wanted to park her pony on campus, that would have been fine, said John Dodig in the two-page letter.

“This was not their intent,” he said. “The intent was to cause a disturbance. The intent was for hundreds of students to file out of the school to watch the pony parade around campus. The intent was to put administrators in a position that would make them look silly.”

Friedson, responding to the Dodig letter, said that the principal had his facts wrong. He said they were not there to cause a disturbance, there was not a large crowd, and it was not a dangerous situation.

Westport’s Greens Farms Elementary School held a fourth and fifth grade chorus concert tonight under the direction of Ellen Hardy (left foreground) and Suzanne Propp. (CLICK TO ENLARGE) Lawrence J. Zlatkin for WestportNow.com

First grade students in Katie Farrington’s class at Westport’s Coleytown Elementary School visited Sherwood Island State Park today for a morning of exploration, looking for sea life and birds in a marsh. (CLICK TO ENLARGE) Ariane Stiegler for WestportNow.com

The Staples High School Tuition Grants Committee handed out $193,000 in financial assistance tonight. Among the 68 recipients, 24 will graduate from Staples this month and 44 are currently attending college. Among the recipients was 2007 graduate Eric Goldschmidt, a second year student at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. He received his first Staples tuition grant from Leslie Wolf (behind podium) and Pam Collins, committee treasurer. (CLICK TO ENLARGE) Dave Matlow for WestportNow.com

Elliott Landon: “Feeling of failure this could happen.” Dave Matlow/WN file photoWestport Schools Superintendent Elliott Landon says there is a “feeling of dismay” among Westport educators and parents over nude photos circulated electronically by middle school and high school students.

Breaking a silence on the matter he first reported in a letter to parents earlier this month (See WestportNow May 15, 2008), Landon told The New York Times: “There’s a feeling of dismay and a feeling of failure that this could happen.”

Landon, who has refused to comment to local news media about his letter, told the Times Sunday Connecticut section that parents and school officials are working to develop more effective teaching tools to warn Westport students of cyberspace dangers.

He said it was too late in the school year to launch new programs but that the Westport schools would beef up their cyberspace initiatives in the fall.

Students at Westport’s Coleytown Elementary School today enjoyed the annual field day. Among those experiencing the water slide were these fifth graders. (CLICK TO ENLARGE) Ariane Stiegler for WestportNow.com