NORTH HAVEN

Town electors decided to renew the Public School Security Supernumerary Program Ordinance at a special town meeting held on June 26.

The ordinance, introduced in 2018, will extend for another five years the daily presence of a school security officer at all North Haven Public Schools (NHPS) buildings through the 2028 fiscal year.

First Selectman Michael Freda summarized the program’s undertaking in its first run and spoke to the universality of its position in the school district amongst its demographics.

“This has been an outstanding program. It has been a program that has been widely accepted by the school system, the management of the school system, the faculty, the parents, the grandparents, the aunts and uncles of those students…in the schools that this program supports,” said Freda.

The components of the program have not changed due to its perceived universal success, according to Freda.

“This program has a 100% acceptance in the community from what I could see. In these five years, I probably talked to about 7,000 people on this program itself,” Freda said. “There has not been one person, one parent, one student, one school faculty member, or part of the administration that is against this program.”

Freda mentioned his colleagues on the Board of Selectmen in regards to the program, as well as the support of the Board of Police Commissioners, four of whose members were present at the meeting. Although no members from the Board of Education (BOE) were in attendance, the education half of the program was still present at the meeting, with NHPS Superintendent Patrick Stirk in the audience to support the program.

North Haven Police Chief Kevin Glenn acknowledged the success of the program and its primary goal to provide “the safety and security of the students, the staff, and the faculty,” he also talked about the ancillary benefits of it. He specified one of these as the positive relationships that police officers in school buildings have established with students “who otherwise, the vast majority of them, would not have ever met or talked to a police officer,” he said.

Glenn said the program’s function has been bolstered by the “well-established relationship” between the police department and NHPS and the contact between Freda and leaders of other municipalities “after tragedies occurred throughout the country.”

“It’s a model program that is well-respected and looked upon from a lot of people, and we’re really proud that we’re able to pull this off,” said Glenn. “A supernumerary police officer is a sworn police officer who is certified through the State of Connecticut, through the POST [Police Officer Standards and Training] Council, that only works and is compensated hourly when school’s in session, providing school security, in our public schools.”

Freda acknowledged opposition from four citizens to the supernumerary program introduction into NHPS when the town held its first meeting to formally adopt it five years ago. Jennifer Caldwell, one of the people who initially expressed skepticism about the program, gave her perspective on the matter.

“I felt at the time that it should have gone out to referendum, and I had some concerns about the impact of having resources officers in the schools because of the research that there can be a negative impact for students, specifically minority students, and students with behavior [and] emotional disorders,” said Caldwell.

Caldwell referenced her professional work with Area Cooperative Educational Services (ACES), during which she observed difficulties in students with behavioral and emotional distress experiencing outbursts as a result of the presence of a resource officer.

“It was not to any police officer’s fault, but just seeing a police officer walk in with their uniform would escalate the situation,” said Caldwell.

She also mentioned her concern five years ago of there not being enough involvement by the BOE on what the best approach is to provide safety in schools, starting with more direct participation by the school district. She referenced research by gun control advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety, which has found that up to 95% of students who return to school after the summer were able to inform someone else that a supernumerary-type program is becoming a part of the school.

“That ability to be able for them to feel safe to report is important,” said Caldwell.

Caldwell asked Stirk if the BOE could be more involved in examining quantitative data related to significant changes in areas such as out-of-school suspensions, expulsions, and arrests due to the supernumerary program. Stirk responded to Caldwell’s concerns, saying that any increases in suspensions and expulsions were more closely related to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic than the program.

“We are monitoring those [numbers]. Unfortunately, some of those numbers have increased as a result of, we believe, the pandemic and coming off of that. There was no immediate impact to expulsion [or] suspensions back in 2018 when the program was first instituted,” said Stirk. “But upon our return from the pandemic, coming back to full-time in-person, there’s some mental health issues and concerns from elementary through 12th grade, and I do not attribute any of them to the SRO [school resource officer] program, but it is something we’re monitoring.”

Stirk also said that the BOE could more regularly review and discuss the program more frequently at its meeting, as well as its other goals on “how we increase mental health support in our schools.”

Following public comments, electors voted to reinstate the supernumerary program.