By James Lomuscio
By a vote of 4 to 2, Westport’s Board of Finance tonight rejected a Board of Eduction request for $320,000 to add two school resource officers (SROs) to the middle schools to join one already funded at Staples High School.
Schools Superintendent Colleen Palmer — who made a last-minute impassioned plea — and Police Chief Foti Koskinas had strongly recommended the appropriation. It still could be approved next month with a Representative Town Meeting (RTM) super majority (70 percent) vote overturning the finance board action.
Soon after the vote, Palmer sent out a tweet reminding parents that funding for the Staples SRO will come from the cost of a DARE officer, a position which is being phased out.
“The WPD will be able to reallocate the funds from the DARE officer to hire one SRO for SHS this fall,” she said.
Vice Chairman Michael Rea and Andrea Moore were the dissenters in the vote. The money would have come out of the town’s police budget.
“There is no item on that ($100 million capital forecast) list that is more valuable than our kids,” Rea said. “We all have to grow up here. We live in a different time.”
Rea, who was raised in town and went through the school system, insisted, “Times have changed.”
“The solution we have here tonight, that’s only the beginning,” he said.
Other board members, however, said armed security on campuses was not the solution. Instead, they stressed better security systems and interventions with troubled students.
“It’s all about prevention,” said Chairman Brian Stern. “When we have accidents in factories, you don’t hire more nurses. You make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Stern also reiterated what board member James Westphal said about the greatest threats to students’ safety: car accidents, suicide and drug overdoses.
Stern and others who spoke against the appropriation said that over the years the costs of hiring SROs could add up to $20 million.
“We are the only district in our DIRG (district reference group) that does not utilize SROs,” said Palmer as she made the funding request.
When it was obvious which way the finance board would vote, Palmer made an impassioned plea.
“I know how to do SROs,” she said. “I’ve been doing that for 25 years. I’d cut something else before I would cut SROs. My job is to keep the students safe.”
Palmer has been asking for SROs since last fall, and her request gained traction following the Parkland, Florida high school shooting in February, claiming 17 lives and leaving another 17 injured.
The threat hit home in Westport in February when Staples was locked down after a student was overheard saying he was going to shoot a teacher and go on a shooting rampage.
At a news conference that day, Koskinas said that the student’s father had rifles similar to those used in other shootings locked in a home safe.
“All it takes is one child on a bad day, and this can happen,” said Palmer, adding that in her past roles in other districts, officers had to escort her from the building following a bomb threat, another time when a student had caustic chemicals in his locker.
The public comment part of the meeting drew mixed reactions, with most supporting the appropriation.
State Sen. Toni Boucher said the state and the nation had changed in December 2012 with the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that left more than 20 elementary school children and faculty dead.
Will Haskell, a 21-year-old Democrat who is running against Boucher, a Republican, in November, said SROs were necessary not only for students’ safety but for them to feel secure enough to learn in a school environment.
“When I was a student at Staples that was not the case, but something has changed,” he said. “It’s not only a necessary step, but a sad one.”
Candace Banks, former PTA council president, said parents were clamoring for as many as eight SROs following the Parkland shootings.
“Three seemed like a good number to start with,” she said. “It’s cutting down on response time that just reduces potential harm.”
Greg Kraut, an RTM member and the Republican candidate running against state Rep. Jonathan Steinberg, a Democrat, said that as the father of two young boys, “I support highly trained and qualified SROs” as the first line of defense.
“I’m also very uncomfortable that we are the only town in our area without SROs,” he said. “This is not a fad. It is an unfortunate reality we are all living in.”
RTM members Peter Gold and Kristan Hamlin, however, opposed the expenditure.
“I ask that we defer a decision on the other two and approve one at the high school,” Hamlin said. “ … This is a $20 million question.”
“We should be putting our money into stopping it before it happens,” said Gold, describing SROs as “armed police officers with bullet proof vests.”
Resident Robert Harrington, who admitted that he had been at odds with the Board of Education during budget season, vocally speaking out against certain expenditures, surprised educators by throwing his support toward funding the two SROs.
“It should be the cost of educating a student,” Harrington said. “We have a moral duty to make this work.”
