Soon every school in Westbrook will have security cameras outside the buildings to help prevent vandalism and to make the schools safer.
In cooperation with the police and fire departments, the school department applied for and received a Homeland Security grant to purchase and install the cameras. The cameras will primarily be stationed at entrances to the buildings and playgrounds and other sensitive areas, such as the area around school generators.
The first school to get their cameras will be Canal School, which is the target of a good deal of vandalism in the evenings and on the weekends. Canal School Principal Jeremy Ray said he thinks the semi-secluded location of the school in a wooded area at the end of a street makes it a target for vandalism.
“It’s a really hidden place for stuff like that to happen,” said Ray.
He said the school often has broken windows and graffiti on the walls when the faculty and students come back from the weekend. He said he considers it a waste of school resources having to buy new windows and clean up paint all the time. He said he is very interested in having the cameras installed at his school.
“Vandalism in general-it’s such a useless act,” he said. “It becomes frustrating.”
Ray and other school and city officials hope the cameras will help deter vandalism in the future as well as acting as another layer of security.
Westbrook Police Capt. Tom Roth of the said police have received many complaints about vandalism at the schools, and he believes the cameras will deter some of it.
“We consider the use of cameras in any setting, be it a business or a school, to be invaluable in both preventing and investigating crimes,” he said.
“I think it’s good,” said School Superintendent Stan Sawyer. “It kind of warns people.”
Tyler Dunphy, director of technology for Westbrook, said the cameras will act as “another set of eyes” to monitor the comings and goings at the school both when people are there and when they aren’t. Dunphy wrote the proposal for the grant.
“The physical security of the schools is a definite necessity,” he said.
Dunphy said the school department received just over $80,000 in a regional grant to provide cameras at Westbrook High School, the Westbrook Regional Vocational Center and Congin School, which is considered regional because it’s defined as a shelter in emergency situations. Dunphy said just over $30,000 came from a city Homeland Security grant to equip Congin School, Canal School, Prides Corner School and Saccarappa School.
Dunphy also said the high school and vocational center would be getting a keyless entry system that would allow school staff to enter even if they don’t have their keys with them in the case of an emergency. The keyless entry system will also allow the school to monitor doors being propped open during the day when they’re supposed to be locked and shut.
He said the high school will also get cameras inside the building once the city and school can establish a policy to govern them. He said they need to make sure they don’t infringe on anyone’s rights. Obviously, there would be no cameras in bathrooms, only in very public places like hallways, he said.
The school department has already begun to install the outside cameras.
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