Parents Question District Response After Teen ‘Non-Student’ Trespasses at Wilton HS During School Day; Superintendent: “Safety and Security is Our Primary Concern”

The Wilton community is asking questions after a non-student teen tresspassed at Wilton High School during the school day on Tuesday morning (Feb. 27). The individual, who gained entry when an enrolled student let him in through a locked back door of the school, was in the school for at least 20 minutes before school officials knew an unauthorized person was in the building.

According to statements by the Wilton Police Department and Wilton Public School officials, the teen exited the building shortly after and was later located by WPD officers after he had already left the high school campus. Police then placed the teen in the custody of his parent.

WHS Principal Dr. Robert O’Donnell sent a brief statement to WHS students, staff, parents and caregivers on Tuesday that gave limited details but said there had been “no threat” to anyone in the school. It mirrored a report put out by Wilton Police and was issued to reassure parents who had seen a post on social media that — erroneously — said there was ‘a gunman in the high school.’

With little more information to go on, several parents took to social media to vent, and rumors about the individual involved swirled. Several parents were unhappy with both the school’s response in the moment — there had been no lockdown protocol exercised despite an intruder in the building — and afterward. The communication, they felt, fell short of what they expected.

High school parent Sarah Beach was upset enough to keep her child home from school on Wednesday, until officials provided more information about what happened and how school and police handled it. She told GOOD Morning Wilton that the communication was insufficient and response protocols need to be reexamined.

“I appreciate that if an individual wants to cause harm it’s very hard to actually stop them, [but] I’m also not reassured from the information we’re been given so far that everything possible was done yesterday to protect our school. I also think this incident raises important questions about communication and should serve as an opportunity for us to think about whether or not the protocols we have in place work and are sufficient,” Beach said.

“Whilst I appreciated quick emails yesterday telling us there was no immediate threat it strikes me that if any of the information circulating is correct, yesterday could have played out very differently. In my view parents need to be given more information to either allay our concerns or to get involved in a conversation about what could be done differently and if there are lessons to be learned here,” she added.

Margaret Denham reached out to GMW to reflect on a similar security concern that occurred at Miller-Driscoll School in January. “I would love to see a follow up from WPS/Wilton police to show that they have self-identified some of these issues and are taking steps to address them in the future. I also think that the schools really need to work on their communication and transparency. They owe the parents more in-depth discussion on these topics.”

Lindsey and Wiliam Blake shared an email they sent to Superintendent Kevin Smith and the Board of Education. They took issue with the communication from the district, which, to them, seemed to downplay the incident and did not provide enough information. They also questioned how the school personnel handled the immediate response to a perceived threat.

“Today’s incident is a security breach. To be clear, there’s no such thing as a minor security breach,” they wrote.

In an email to school officials that she also shared with GMW, Amy Dickerson said the impact on students was highly concerning.

“As a psychotherapist, I know that when a person does not feel safe, they cannot learn. I am guessing that there were a lot of kids yesterday that did not feel safe and were not available for learning yesterday due to this incident. After years of lockdown drills, when there was an actual threat in their school, no action was taken. I wonder if these kids, our kids, question your ability to keep them safe as I do now?” she wrote.

Dickerson concluded, “We are putting our children in your hands every day. Please help us feel safe.”

O’Donnell issued a second communication Wednesday afternoon after the school day had ended. It was a lengthier letter that offered a few more details on the incident and referred to a change in how such instances will be handled in the future.

“We analyzed the events from yesterday and evaluated our responses. While each situation is unique and requires the use of professional judgment, we agreed that automatically engaging our Standard Response Protocol will be among the first steps taken for similar incidents in the future.”

That ‘Standard Response Protocol’ moves from a “Hold” (clearing halls and locking classroom doors) to “Secure” (getting indoors and locking exterior doors) to “Lockdown” (locking doors, turning out lights and moving out of sight with total silence).

Superintendent’s Response: Security and Safety is Primary

GOOD Morning Wilton spoke with Superintendent Smith at the end of the day Wednesday. He said he had met with O’Donnell, Police Chief Thomas Conlan, Deputy Police Chief Robert Cipolla and the school district’s two school resource officers.

GMW: There’s conversation around Tuesday’s security incident that’s happening in the community, people have a lot of opinions and questions and many are upset.

Smith: I know people are interested in more details. There are some things we just can’t talk about because [there are] kids involved, and so we’ve always had to toe that line.

GMW: You mention privacy issues around minors. Lt. Anna Tornello of the Wilton Police said the same thing — that with a juvenile involved, there are laws about privacy, and the district also has regulations and policies and laws around privacy that the school has to abide by. But how do you balance the need for privacy of one person — who isn’t even a student at the high school — or one or two students who have transgressed somehow, against the feelings of safety and well-being and mental health of 1,200 students in a building, all the staff, their families, the wider community? There are people who are asking for answers to questions and some of whom seem to have really serious concerns.

Smith: That’s a great question and a really challenging paradigm all school administrators have to negotiate. Even in a situation like yesterday, we often are confronted with that dynamic when we’re responding to student conflicts or student discipline issues.

As a school, we are beholden to all of the laws. My personal approach has been to be as clear and upfront in my communication as I’m able to be and try to answer questions plainly — but also take steps to not run afoul of FERPA [Family Educational Rights and Privacy] laws or things like that. It’s not easy.

In this case, go back to some of the language in [WHS Principal Robert O’Donnell]’s letter that he sent, laying out a sequence of events: what happened, what were the decision points and when, where are the areas that we need to examine more carefully and look for opportunities for improvement.

That was some of the conversation we had today. That’s always part of the process here. And when people [in the community] are feeling fragile, none of that helps. So, I’m sensitive to the challenge.

GMW: Looking at some of the things that Dr. O’Donnell wrote in his letter Wednesday afternoon, it seems like there is a 23-minute period where, if I’m following the timeline, it seems that a juvenile non-student who entered the building at 10:14 a.m. and left at 10:37 a.m. So, what happened in those 23 minutes?

Smith: There was a time gap between the time the kid enters the building and before administrators were notified. That’s what this experience has surfaced, one of the vulnerabilities that all schools have. We had a situation here where one of our students allowed this other child into the building through a back door, and it took some time before people were aware of that. There was not necessarily a way of knowing immediately.

What this raises is this recognition that every member of this school community, whether you’re a child, a parent at home talking to your kids, an adult staff member, we all have a shared responsibility to follow our procedures. And one of the clear rules and procedures we have is, you don’t let people in through back doors. That’s a concern for sure.

GMW: I’m reading between the lines in Dr. O’Donnell’s statement, that the administrators and your team probably would handle it differently if it happened again, going into some sort of tighter lockdown. What’s the takeaway lesson about the protocols and procedures?

Smith: There’s several, going back and looking at the touch points of yesterday’s situation. Immediately, we need to address our culture of safety in our school. Going back to students, and parents too — really, we have to partner differently with our parents to help communicate the importance of some of these messages. The first step is we just have to reinforce the responsibility of everybody to promote the safety of all in all of our schools and on our campus.

By that, I mean really following the rules as they are established. All of our doors were locked. That’s been a long-established procedure. We have procedures for coming and going through the front door, visitors signing in and out, and so on. Those are pretty standard and effective procedures. But we have to have compliance with not letting people in a backdoor that’s locked. That’s the first thing, reminding everybody — our kids especially — they’re part of the solution here and part of the safety obligation.

Beyond that, especially here at the high school, I think there is a healthy practice of kids (and adults, too) that when they see something awry, they speak up. I don’t know that it’s pervasive, that everybody does it, but this incident offers us the opportunity to remind ourselves again about our responsibility, and that we have agency — if we see something that looks out of place, we have to speak up, we have to call an administrator or alert a teacher. We have the Gaggle Speak Up tool that kids have used. Those pieces are really important.

What I like to do whenever we have any kind of safety or security incident, we go back and we review all of our protocols and response and decision points, and we put them all on the table and look at them — how well did they work?

What I’m going to share with the Board of Education tomorrow is a change [in approach] of automatically, if there’s an unauthorized person in the building, we revert to a hold and sort it out and then we can get on with life again.

GMW: One of the things that I heard from parents in the district today and throughout this period between Tuesday’s communication and today’s letter was that people thought there was no additional police presence at the high school Wednesday, that there was not a police car in front of the school.

Smith: Today? There absolutely was. We had School Resource Officer Elise Ackerman, a second SRO was here on site. We had a patrolman in the neighborhood here. I can’t tell you that the patrolman was here all day, but we absolutely did and we shall for the remainder of the week at least.

Factually, I got here at 7:30-7:40 a.m. and they had both pulled in police cars parked outside my office in the visitor lot. At some point, maybe after arrivals, they put their cars in the bus lane, facing each other. So, I also observed the third officer driving up School Road.

GMW: The statements [from Dr. O’Donnell and Wilton Police] all said there was no threat to anyone in the school. Some people are having a hard time believing that. How can anyone know that this is a situation that’s not going to repeat itself? That’s it’s not going to escalate? How can you be certain that the situation has been handled?

Smith: That’s an excellent question. We’ve been engaging the Wilton Police throughout, and there is engagement with all of the parties involved. We’re in good communication with the people involved.

Everybody involved recognizes the seriousness of the situation. And people are cooperating. People are very open and are cooperating, that’s a shared understanding.

GMW: Is there anything else that you want the community to know, beyond what Dr. O’Donnell said today in his statement? In terms of the level of communication from the school, to the wider community, to the students, about communication, about safety, about the way even parents and the community communicate on social media?

Smith: What’s most important in all of this for me is that our families and the community know that we take the safety and security of our children and school community very seriously, there are layers of safety measures in place, and we examine and adjust practices as we learn and encounter new situations.

I underscore the points that Bob made in his letter. For me, for him and the rest of our Board [of Education] and our administration and our teachers, safety and security really is a primary area of focus for us. We have procedures, we review procedures, we have our emergency operations committees that meet regularly, we are looking at these things.

There are lots of layers of security apparatus in place. And when I diagnose this — I’m not casting blame, I’m just trying to understand where breakdowns occur — in this case, it was a human breakdown. And by that, I mean, one of our students elected, for whatever reason, to allow another student who doesn’t go to the school into the building. That’s where the breakdown occurred. That’s where we have to redouble our efforts with our kids about the importance of our procedures, and why. Then beyond that, through our emergency operations teams with the Wilton PD and our emergency responders. Looking at all of the safety protocols. I think we have a practice of being rigorous and diligent. We’ve already started, we’ve had some conversations — yesterday, today again, and we will continue to — to use this experience, to help us be better in service to the safety of everyone in our community.

That’s a serious commitment, it is our first commitment. I’m serious about it, and we’ll see it through.

GMW: You mentioned the seriousness of where that breakdown happened, in terms of the student letting the non-student into the school. People don’t have an understanding of what the protocol is following that, in terms of — and again, I know there are privacy concerns and I understand the constraints you’re under, but I have to ask it. How does that get handled from a consequence perspective? How can people know that there are consequences?

Smith: I get it and it’s a tricky, going back to trying to balance the [community’s] desire for information and the [student’s] right to privacy. That’s a tricky one. I’m sorry, this is going to sound like a stock answer, but it is the factual answer. We have policies that speak to all of our rules. So we’re following that policy.

So I can’t really say any more than that out of respect for privacy concerns, but we are responding. We recognize the seriousness of the situation and are responding accordingly.

Wilton Police Response

GOOD Morning Wilton also spoke with Public Information Officer Lt. Anna Tornello of the Wilton Police on Wednesday. She explained that the information she could release was limited given laws surrounding juveniles and privacy. She also deferred to the school district officials as the agency primarily responsible for communication with the public regarding school safety and procedures.

GMW: Your statement said the person was located off campus and then placed in the custody of a parent. Is that typical when there’s an intruder in the school? Was this person brought to headquarters? Is that typical for a juvenile if trespass in a school they just get released to a parent?

Tornello: Before we proceed with charges, we need to make sure that we have the correct charges. There is an investigation that needs to be done once the emergency is resolved. There are degrees of trespassing and juvenile law is pretty specific. We don’t take into custody juveniles if there is a parent available, there’s no need for them to be taken into custody at that time.

GMW: There are certain things being said by parents indicating this particular person was a significant level of threat.

Tornello: As you can very well understand, Oh, that is part of an investigation so no disclosure is going to be made on that topic as this time.

GMW: Do you have any idea in terms of the time and progression for the investigation?

Tornello: I’m not really sure. We’re still waiting to speak with a few parties, and then also know that this is a juvenile so whatever is going to be available to full disclosure to the public is very limited. As frustrating as that might be, but our laws are very clear about protecting juveniles whatever the circumstances might be, unless they become charged as adults. So as long as this remains a juvenile case, unfortunately, the laws for disclosure are very strict.

Because it’s a school matter we tend to not overlap or to or interfere with whatever they need to disclose in their communication with the community. It’s their job. If you need to fill in any the gap, as far as the police response goes, I’ll be happy to help you with that. But as far as their explanation of what happened, please let them explain because I think that the parents are mostly concerned about the security at the school. It’s the school’s administrators’ right to give an explanation — right and duty — to explain to the parents what happened and to reassure them, that measures are in place for the safety of the kids.