Westport to finish school year with ‘heightened’ police presence

WESTPORT — There will be a “heightened police presence” at the schools for the rest of the academic year, the Board of Education announced.

Board of Education Chairwoman Lee Goldstein didn’t go into the specifics about the additional measures during the meeting Monday for security reasons.

“We all take our responsibility very seriously and there’s no higher priority for any of us than our student and community safety,” she said at the meeting. “We approach this work intentionally, carefully and I hope intelligently.”

Westport usually has a school resource officer at the high school and another police officer whose beat it is to patrol the schools, she said.

Goldstein said there have been previous community discussions about school resource officers, as well as police inside and around the schools. The district will revisit the topic with public discussions in the fall.

The announcement comes in the wake of an elementary school shooting in Texas where a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers.

Westport added officers throughout the district the day after the shooting though officials stressed there was no threat to the district and it was more for peace of mind.

“Westport Schools and Westport Police have a very robust and mutually respectful partnership,” Goldstein said Monday, adding Superintendent Thomas Scarice and Police Chief Foti Koskinas talk regularly and the police help the schools with their safety plan.

She said school and police had recently met in executive session to go over school safety even before the shooting happened in Texas.

“We will meet again early this summer to ensure we are optimizing our security and taking whatever measures necessary,” Goldstein said.

Both Scarice and Koskinas emphasized their partnership last week where Koskinas also touched on some of the police’s trainings for shootings.