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07/10/2018 12:00 AMWhen North Haven students return to school this coming fall, every school building in town will have at least one new face—a school resource officer (SRO). On June 25, hundreds of residents overwhelmingly voted at town meeting to approve an ordinance that will assign an SRO to each building.
The high school already has an SRO, so this ordinance will add an officer to each of the four elementary schools and to the middle school. An SRO is a certified police officer who receives additional training to work in schools. The addition of the officers in part of the Public School Security Supernumerary program, a two-phase program to enhance security across the district, according to First Selectman Mike Freda.
“This was phase one,” he said. “I wanted to get this done now so that at the start of this coming school season we would have the SROs in place. On a broader level in terms of school upgrades, we have four elementary schools that were built in the ’50s and early ’60s and so I have asked for a plan as to what we need to do by school for the four elementary schools and also the high school needs to be enhanced for security protocols.”
Freda said the plan for each school will be unveiled sometime next year. The Board of Police Commissioners will handle the hiring of the officers and the five positions will first be offered to local police who are either retired or willing to retire to take the position. The town is looking for retired officers because the position does not come with benefits and retired officers can rely on their pensions.
This ordinance was approved after the budget for the coming fiscal year was approved back in May. Freda said to start the program now, the town will pull $220,000 out of fund balance to cover salaries this year and then build the salaries into the regular operating budget in the coming years.
Freda said the ordinance was not ready before the budget went to referendum because it’s a complicated ordinance and the town needed to be sure there would be no pension implications or issues with the police union when the program rolls out.
Once the officers are hired and put in place, they will still report to the Police Department, but will work closely with the Board of Education and associated staff.
Conversations surrounding school security and SROs have been at the forefront of education for some time now, due in large part to the constant stream of school shootings. More than half of all school districts in Connecticut use SROs to some capacity and while some parents are uncomfortable with the presence of a weapon—even in the hands of a trained officer—in a school building, Freda said this is the right move.
“We have 100 percent support from the teachers, the faculty members, and the administrators,” he said. “We met with the PTAs who are on board and the question I would ask is in the event, God forbid, of a breach in the school system with an armed intruder, we feel our children are safer with an armed officer in the school versus not having one in the school.”