Chappaqua to Bring in Two More School Resource Officers Next Year
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The Chappaqua School District will add two full-time school resource officers (SROs) next academic year after a wide cross section of parents pleaded with school officials to consider that option to help bolster on-campus security.
One of the new officer’s time will be split between the district’s two middle schools while the other will be shared among the three elementary schools when classes resume in September, Superintendent of Schools Dr. Christine Ackerman said last week. Currently, Chappaqua Schools’ only resource officer is at Horace Greeley High School.
Adding two new officers is one piece of a strategy that the district is employing to make sure all buildings are secure. At the high school, there will be the introduction of license plate readers as well as a platform called SchoolPass that students can sign up for on their phones or a badge that will help district personnel know where each student is during the school day.
A full-time social worker will also be added to each middle school next year. Additional fencing will also be erected at schools districtwide.
The $36,140 for SchoolPass and $143,000 for additional fencing will come out of the technology and operations and maintenance lines, respectively, to pay for those enhancements, Ackerman said.
However, to cover the $276,000 cost for the two officers, she proposed using $225,000 set aside in next year’s budget for two contingency elementary school-level teaching positions to keep class size to about 20 pupils a section in the event there was an influx of students during the summer. Another $50,000 will come from the central administration line.
“It’s important for the community to realize that in order to respond to the needs that are being voiced to us, to support more policing in our schools, that money needs to come from somewhere and this is where it’s going to come from at this point in time,” Ackerman said.
The district conducted a survey earlier this year as parents urged school officials to do everything to make the buildings as safe as possible. Some parents called for a school resource officer at every school.
Board of Education President Jane Shepardson said safety and the question of whether to add school resource officers became the largest topic of concern from families during this year’s budget season.
At last Wednesday’s meeting, the board supported what will effectively be a one-year pilot program for the additional officers, which will be re-evaluated next year. The SRO retained for the high school was contracted for three years.
“We live in this community with everyone. We know that people are frightened because when you turn on the television and you see the gun violence in this country, it is frightening,” Shepardson said. “So we as a school district are really trying to keep our students as safe as possible given the constraints of the lack of regulation on certain firearms (and) what our budgets are.”
One board member, Ryan Kelsey, voted to support the plan but was unconvinced that the district should be taking away money set aside for academic needs for an SRO because “in my judgment the evidence doesn’t support their value.”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t care about school safety, that doesn’t mean that I don’t think that there’s many things that we could do,” Kelsey said. “I’m excited to see what happens with some of the other improvements that we initiated, but I hope we can just think carefully about the value we might get with shared officers in the community.”
On the other hand, board member Hilary Grasso said she would have supported an officer at every school, but said the solution for 2023-24 is a good compromise.
“I think this is a good plan for the coming school year,” she said.
The new measures are in addition to previously approved plans to maintain a high level of security, most of which are already in place. Those include electronic locks in all buildings, door alarms, additional cameras at the secondary schools and video access for the New Castle Police Department.
There has already been an unarmed security guard at each of the elementary and middle schools, and multiple unarmed guards at the high school.
Although there has been the lone SRO at the high school, all of the measures taken by the district have already provided a safe environment, Ackerman said.
“Even before we had any SROs, I was really comfortable with the response time of (the) New Castle PD to any of our buildings from their hub,” she said. “That to me, while that was brought in as a concern from our community, based on our interactions with New Castle police, that was not necessarily a concern for us.”
Martin has more than 30 years experience covering local news in Westchester and Putnam counties, including a frequent focus on zoning and planning issues. He has been editor-in-chief of The Examiner since its inception in 2007. Read more from Martin’s editor-author bio here. Read Martin’s archived work here: https://www.theexaminernews.com/author/martin-wilbur2007/