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Schools

Fairfield County Schools Invest in Security

Local districts are beefing up their personnel and leveraging technology to create safer environments for students.

Chances are that when you were in high school, you didn't participate in lockdown drills or have to show your ID to security staff, let alone worry about being tracked by video cameras.

But in Fairfield County, such measures increasingly are becoming routine for public school students.

Though serious crime may not be as high here as it is in other parts of the nation, Fairfield County superintendents and board members told Patch that student safety has emerged as a top priority. So much so, in fact, that all schools in county have taken serious measures in just the last few years to bolster their facilities, personnel and systems.

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Wilton Public Schools Superintendant Gary Richards said his district made a major upgrade to his schools' security three years ago, thanks in part to state grants earmarked for the purpose.

Among the improvements in Wilton: a new access-management system for teachers, faculty and students that only grants access through designated doors. Students may only enter through the front doors via student IDs, and doors are locked from the outside in so they cannot easily enter without an ID.

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Teachers and staff members, however, are allowed to enter other doors so long as they use special ID badges embedded with programmable smart chips.

To complement the high-tech system, school visitors cannot enter public buildings without a background check. Upon arrival to school premises, visitors must hand over driver's licenses so their name may be checked against a sex-offender database.

"A lot of schools doing this," Richards said. "The idea is that when school's in session, we should know who's in our buildings."

Darien schools have taken similar measures to improve security — both technologically and through the addition of security personnel.

"I look at safety and security of our students in two respects," said Stephen Falcone, superintendent of schools in Darien. "First, in the relationships and understandings that our adults have of the students in the building, ll the teachers knowing the kids, all the administrators knowing the kids, being approachable. We very much value that and cultivate that. The other piece is the more technical piece."

In the past two years, Darien middle and elementary schools have instituted a buzzer entry system for visitors, similar to that of an apartment complex. This allows security staff to see who is entering through a video monitoring.

Falcone said that he hopes to add the technology to Darien High School soon to supplement the three on-premises video cameras the school installed a couple of years ago.

"I think there's a heightened awareness of screening who is entering the schools," he said. "I think our parent community — for some of them it might seem like an inconvenience, but they've been receptive to that inconvenience, because it's being gone to provide security to students in the school building."

Falcone also noted that lockdown drills, which are practiced in Darien as well as other Connecticut school districts, have gained momentum in the years following the Columbine tragedy in 1999.

"I don't think we're more or less secure than any other place in the country," said Falcone. "It's totally unpredictable. It could happen in a rural area, it could happen in a suburban area. That's why we practice these drills."

Following last weekend's reports of a roving gunman in the area of Fairfield Ludlowe High School — reports that turned out to be false, but led to a frightening 30-minute lockdown for Ludlowe and New Canaan field hockey players, parents and coaches — officials in the county seat say they're eyeing new protocols and possibly a notification system that would bolster communications and control information flow.

Tom Cullen, director of operations for Fairfield Public Schools, said lockdown drills have become part of a security protocol that's intensified over the last five years.

For starters, Fairfield installed dozens of video cameras in the past few years (including several this year) in its 16 public schools, and issued emergency flip charts to every employee in the school district.

The flip chart tells teachers and other staff what to do in every possible emergency, "so if there's a gun, fire, explosion, there's a flip chart and they can flip to every emergency and know what to do," Cullen told Patch.

"I think all the districts are working on a strong safety and security program, since 9/11," Cullen said. "As far as security and safety goes, we take each school differently." For example, because older students are allowed more freedom to go to and from their cars and on field trips, all high schools are armed with video cameras, security guards and a front-door-only entrance policy.

"I can't speak to other school districts, but I do know that we get a lot of calls from other schools, asking us how we do our flip charts, and the kinds of systems we're buying," Cullen said. 

In Ridgefield, a number of measures are used to keep the district's nine public schools safe, said Deborah Low, superintendent of schools.

A couple of years ago, Ridgefield's department of education added security system and buzzers to the doors of all of its schools, as well as the loading docks of school buildings. Next, the town added video cameras inside the high school and some of the middle schools, Low said, "to help deter behaviors that are least desirable" such as theft and possible drug use.

Ridgefield also practices screening and fingerprinting employees and volunteers who have regular contact, and relies on the police department's drug-sniffing canine unit, Low said.

"We typically do a baseline read with a trained police dog on the inside of the high school at the beginning of the year to get the dog familiar and bring the dog back periodically throughout the year, just to make sure there aren't any residues or substances that we have to worry about," Low told Patch. "I think it's a deterrent in that kids understand that we're serious about the message."

Meanwhile, New Canaan school officials have started looking at a student-tracking system based on Radio Frequency Identification technology. The system would involve RFID "tags" -- which are similar to smart chips -- to be embedded into student badges worn at all times. RFID emits short radio waves into "readers" installed on school premises, so administrators could always know the whereabouts of students. An RFID-tagged card would have to be within the read‐range of a reader and the maximum range is 1,500 feet outdoors.

The proposal to use RFID in New Canaan schools was made at summer Board of Education meeting by Louis Parks, CEO of SecureRF, a Westport-based security company that seeks to conduct a pilot program in an existing school system.

The proposal is months away from becoming reality, as SecureRF is still in the $100,000 federal grant that would help fund the project. So far, the proposal received some favorable feedback, though student privacy was cited as a chief concern.

"We have an open campus," Board of Education Chair Nick Williams said during a recent meeting, which was covered by Patch. "God forbid if there's an incident in the school…it lets you know who is in the school and who is not."

Westport school officials declined to comment for this story, only stating through a spokeswoman that "the Westport Schools have a security plan in place, and we do not discuss any aspect of security with anyone."

For many, one major benefit of extra security is fewer school-day interruptions.

Robert Rader, executive director of Connecticut Association of Boards of Education, said that having scores of people in a school building interferes with normal activities.

"I think the parents appreciate it, and it makes for a more controlled environment," Rader said.

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