At the WW-P Board of Education meeting on January 15, two West Windsor parents, Eris Carmel and Peter Perla, voiced their concern on the security at WW-P schools.
Following the tragic event in Newtown, CT, Carmel met with Lieutenant Garofalo of the West Windsor Police Department. Both parents had extensive discussions with the security supervisor at the Marlboro School District and the superintendent of the Passaic School District. They wanted to understand what security measures other districts have in place and to learn from their knowledge and experience.
Children’s safety and security is the number one priority. The two parents and a group of other parents created a school safety taskforce, WW-P Parents for Safer Schools. They plan to review many measures to enhance school security in addition to and independent of off-duty police officers. The group can be reached at wwpsafeschools@gmail.com.
I want to acknowledge my appreciation of the effort by these parents. The WW-P school district has taken some steps, such as working with the police departments of both towns and creating a crisis management plan. School administrators have been communicating with parents. While there are many improvements to be made on school safety, it takes two villages, West Windsor and Plainsboro, to make WW-P a safe district. All the stakeholders, including district, school, townships, police departments, parents, students, and businesses, need to work together on this issue.
The WW-P school district is top-ranked academically in New Jersey. Let’s make it one of the safest districts as well.
Yu “Taylor” Zhong
Plainsboro
The writer is a candidate for WW-P Board of Education, representing Plainsboro Township.
