Dec 4, 2018 1:37 PM

Two concerned parents in the Eastport-South Manor School District recently circulated a petition asking the School Board to add a proposition to next year’s school budget ballot: a referendum on adding armed security guards to the district’s schools.

Peter McGuire of Manorville and Mickey Byrnes of Manor Park collected 625 written signatures from district residents after knocking on doors and spending a day outside of the Manorville King Kullen. Other community members also helped get signatures on the petitions, which then were presented to the Board of Education.

The petition calls for adding a proposition to the ballot to approve the hiring of four to six trained armed guards for the five schools in the district. They created a Facebook page that promoted the petition and informed residents of when they were planning to be at King Kullen.

“The main reason for the armed guards is to reduce the response time during an emergency. It most likely won’t prevent them, but it will reduce the response time,” Mr. McGuire said.

The two men met earlier in the year, when they attended a School Board meeting in which members were discussing ways to allocate the district’s $2.2 million Smart Schools Bond state grant to improve infrastructure and security. They were dissatisfied with existing school security measures and wanted to voice their opinions on what could be done.

“With everything else that’s going on, I’d rather be proactive than reactive,” Mr. Byrnes said, referring to school shootings in the country and calls he has received from the superintendent on incidents at his daughter’s school. “I don’t want to be the person to sit there and get a phone call.”

Mr. McGuire, an accountant in Rocky Point, has two daughters, one in fifth grade and the other in eighth grade, and Mr. Byrnes, a detective for the New York Police Department, has a daughter in fifth grade.

The board formed a security committee in June not long after that initial meeting, co-chaired by board members Jeffrey Goldhammer and Marie Brown, and made up of community members, including Mr. McGuire and Mr. Byrnes. The two men said they felt that not enough steps were being taken by the committee, so they took matters into their own hands.

“The security of the children is not something that can wait. Something has to be done now,” Mr. McGuire said.

After presenting the idea to the School Board, the men said that members refused to vote on it themselves, but considered letting residents vote instead. However, the men were told that despite the number of signatures they get, the board will not be forced to add anything to the ballot.

They presented the 625 signatures at the November 14 board meeting, and members were “definitely more open to the policy of having armed guards outside of the school” than when the idea was first introduced, Mr. McGuire said.

To compare the number of signatures to the number of votes on the district budget, this year’s budget in May received 1,484 votes and last year’s budget received 1,244 votes.

Now, the men are reaching out to other schools on Long Island that have implemented armed guards and plan to present their findings at the January 9 board meeting.

Assistant Superintendent of Business Timothy Laube estimated the cost of having six full-time armed guards, plus one part-time officer to monitor after-school sports at the high school, at a base number of $470,600. He added that the cost is ultimately dependent on who wins the lowest bid and excludes possible staffing for summer programs and special events, like weekend sports games and graduations.

The high school currently has four to six unarmed guards monitoring the halls during the day, which Mr. Laube said they will keep regardless of whether a decision is made to add armed guards.

“We don’t want armed guards interacting with children,” Mr. Laube said. “If, for example, a fight broke out between students, armed guards would not intervene—unarmed guards would get involved in that situation.”

Superintendent of Schools Dr. Patrick Brimstein said that $1 million of the Smart Schools Bond funds will be used to install improved security cameras and glass-enclosed security booths at school entrances with ID scanners, among other enhancements. He added that the administration is constantly engaging with the Suffolk County Police Department, the Sheriff’s Department, Homeland Security and the Secret Service, whose officers are as equally concerned about school safety.

“Technology is one aspect of it, but we do need other aspects,” Mr. McGuire said, referring to armed guards.

Dr. Brimstein also said that they are planning to focus more on helping students with mental health issues and offer more social and emotional learning as a way to prevent potential school violence.

“My strong talking point is this: Proactive early intervention prevents violence,” he said. “There is a segment of the community that believes armed guards will be helpful. This is not a question of, are you for armed guards or safety? The question is, how do we best take from research and from officers and implement the best practices?”

Dr. Brimstein did not say whether he was in favor of bringing armed guards to the schools—he said the board would decide how to proceed and he will act accordingly. The board has not yet voted on whether to add the proposition to the ballot. Board members did not respond to requests for comment on the measure.

Some other schools on the East End have implemented either armed security guards or school resource officers assigned from local police departments to patrol school grounds. Many of them were added as a response to recent shoot shootings across the nation.

Montauk School added three armed guards in June, with only one on duty at a time. East Hampton School District has one SRO for the high school and another SRO for the middle and elementary schools, and Westhampton Beach School District has one SRO for its three schools.

“There is a sense of greater safety. All of my faculty have expressed that they feel safer,” Montauk School Superintendent J. Philip Perna said when asked about the benefits of having an armed guard. “Any parents who have spoken to me have always said that they appreciate that we have them.”

Westhampton Beach School Superintendent Michael Radday said he is pleased with their SRO program that began this school year. Unlike armed guards, SROs also provide educational services to the school’s student body.

“It’s going exceptionally well. Officer Andrew Kirwin is highly respected by our faculty and students,” Mr. Radday said. “Overall, it’s part of a comprehensive approach to school safety and security. But in a way, it’s much more than that. He acts as a liaison to faculty and staff as a school and community resource.”

Officer Kirwin has educated students in all grades on topics including stranger danger, social media danger and anti-bullying, Mr. Radday added.

Mr. Byrnes and Mr. McGuire said they also pursued the idea of SROs, but were told by Suffolk County Police that there was not enough personnel to assign officers to their school district. The Eastport-South Manor Central School District is split between the towns of Brookhaven and Southampton, but most of the campuses are in Brookhaven.