New Director Of Security Starts Work With Some Plans

By Eliza Hallabeck

The position for the school district security director was filled this week as Mark Pompano started work on Wednesday, August 20. Mr Pompano was living and working in the Los Angeles when his sister-in-law, a police officer in Newtown, told him about the open position for security director of the Newtown School System.

“I guess you could say all the planets were aligned,” said Mr Pompano.

 Mr Pompano said he grew up in Naugatuck, where he also worked for the Naugatuck Police Department before moving to Los Angeles.

He said he also worked for the Connecticut Statewide Narcotics Task Force, and during that time he did work in Newtown. He said it helped him familiarize himself with Newtown.

“I heard about the position and thought it was perfect,” Mr Pompano said.

While living in Los Angeles he was thinking about having a less active job for the sake of his two daughters. His oldest daughter is 10 and she is going into fifth grade, and his younger daughter is 6 and is going into first grade.

“As I prepared for the interview, I had done my research and read the Maureen Will report and the response from the Assistant Principal Scott Clayton,”

In June, Ms Will, a former police captain in Brookfield, was hired by the school district to provide security consulting services on the approach to security in the district. The 30-page report highlighted aspects of the security practices and procedures, and Ms Will made suggestions for improvements. The former security director’s contract lapsed in June after an incident in March.

“The security, at least for Newtown High School, had plans in place that were working,” said Mr Pompano.

He said he has a few plans that he will first be implementing at Newtown High School.

“My job is districtwide, but NHS is my pilot program,” Mr Pompano explained.

He said he will be implementing a program that includes documentation for incidents and establishing security safety committees at each school.

“There was a mechanism to file reports, but the ability to retrieve them wasn’t there,” he said. When he started the job, Mr Pompano said, he realized retrieving paperwork on incident reports was difficult.

“I’m hitting the ground running here, and looking over things,” he said.

The security safety committees that he would like to set up would most likely include at least one student at the higher levels of education. Mr Pompano added that students are an important part of school security, but he also said that he does not want to make the students informants in the community.

“Everybody is in this together,” said Mr Pompano. “That’s the approach I’m coming at this, a community approach.”

Other members that could be on the security committees are members of the security staff, teachers, and school officials.

“The students themselves definitely have to be a component for the schools’ safety,” he said.

Mr Pompano explained that many times students know what is happening long before the teachers suspect anything. He referenced Columbine, and said an incident like that could have been prevented if students had talked to school officials or security about their feelings of being uncomfortable.

“The overall goal as security director of the schools is the whole school community. Making sure everyone comes to school, can have a positive learning environment, and can go home safe everyday.”