STAMFORD CT August 1 2022  Joe Kennedy has eagerly awaited the start of summer so he can go to work identifying and addressing security issues in Stamford schools.

And for him, that starts with standing outside looking in.

“The method to securing each building is from the exterior inward,” he said during a recent tour of one Stamford school.

The former Stamford Police officer of about 35 years was hired this year as the school district’s security director, but he’s no stranger to school safety. From 2012 to 2021, Kennedy was the police department’s school security and building assessment officer, which meant he was responsible for assessing all school building safety procedures and practices.

Since his hire by the district, the need to beef up security in Stamford schools has only become more timely in the wake of the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in which 19 elementary school children and two teachers were killed by a gunman.

In the aftermath of that event, Stamford schools experienced a pair of lockdowns that put school officials on high alert.

One took place at Rogers International School during a visit from Superintendent Tamu Lucero.

The other was at Davenport Ridge Elementary School, when a 31-year-old man got off at a Connecticut Transit bus stop in front of the school and attempted to enter the building.

So, this summer, Kennedy has been examining blind spots in the school system, and how best to address them.

One of the first issues he identified was the lack of security guards at nine of the city’s 11 elementary schools. He submitted a resolution to the Stamford Board of Education to add workers to those schools; the resolution to hire 15 new security officers and station many of them at the elementary schools was passed by the board July 26.

Beyond that, Kennedy has spent much of his time improving the district’s camera network. During his assessments, he found that some schools were woefully lacking in cameras, in his estimation.

Using money from a grant acquired three years ago — when the district did not have a security director — he has added dozens of cameras across the school district to bring surveillance to areas where there previously was none.

The idea is to cover as many of the common areas and exterior spots as possible, he said. In the two biggest high schools, for example, there are more than 180 cameras in each, Kennedy said

The Davenport lockdown also raised the question of why there is a bus stop in front of an elementary school. Westhill High School also has a city bus stop on school property.

After that event, Kennedy and police personnel looked into moving the bus stop off the school premises to secure the building. But after a recent assessment with representatives from CT Transit, the officials decided to let the stop remain at the school.

Josh Rickman, interim deputy general manager for Connecticut Transit, said getting rid of the Davenport stop would create other problems. For instance, the entrance to the school is not accessible from nearby Newfield Avenue, and passengers would have to walk down a long and sloped driveway to get there, which could prove treacherous to navigate in inclement weather.

Rickman said about 15 passengers use the stop every day; the figure jumps to 18 daily users a day in the summer.

“We want to make sure we’re providing that connection to the community,” he said.

Rickman said all CT Transit drivers take training on how to spot potentially unstable passengers, including the Transportation Security Administration’s “see something, say something” training and the eight-week training for the Transit and Paratransit Company, or TAPTCO, which prepares drivers for emergency situations and to identify security threats.

The Davenport bus stop may be a small issue compared with other security concerns in the district, but it highlights the types of details Kennedy has been examining this summer and trying to resolve. While giving no details about his plan to make the bus stop safer, he said it would be “integrated into the overall security of the building.”

The last time Stamford schools were assessed for security was in 2018, an effort led by Kennedy and Stamford Police Capt. Diedrich Hohn.

Back then, they encountered an issue that still remains: propped doors.

“That mentality has to go by the wayside,” Kennedy said.

He conceded that teachers have a legitimate gripe when it comes to keeping all doors closed since not all of them have keys to get back in.

That’s why district officials are hoping to implement a key fob system in the future that would give all school staff the ability to enter certain doors. But that will likely take many years to adopt and implement, Kennedy said.

Kennedy also said he wants to make school entrances more resistant to potential intruders.

He would like to add a second set of entrance doors at some schools to create an entryway vestibule, or as Kennedy described it, a “man trap.”

A visitor could be held in that space while staff assess any potential threat level, he said.

The design of some schools has also presented certain challenges, he said.

 Many of Stamford’s schools were built well before school shootings became a common occurrence. So, in some buildings, classrooms are near the main entrance, a set-up that is largely avoided in new school construction. In other schools, visitors have to walk past classrooms to get to the main office, another design flaw.

Kennedy said he’s willing to assess any classroom in the district and help teachers make their classes more secure.

“My biggest goal this year is to give these teachers some confidence that they can handle a situation,” he said.

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