School caps camera idea, will build a fence

Mariners Elementary School announced plans this week to build a fence around its playground, canceling an earlier proposal to protect the school with a security camera system.

The announcement garnered mixed reviews among parents, some of whom praised the school’s plan while others quibbled with the placement of the fence.

After a parents group began campaigning for a fence around the school last year, the Newport-Mesa Unified School District declared that it would instead place cameras on the playground to help keep out intruders. The plan displeased a number of parents, who argued that cameras would only detect prowlers and not bar them from entering the school.

Mariners Principal Pam Coughlin announced plans to have the camera system installed early this year. Last week, however, she and Supt. Robert Barbot called a meeting with Mariners parents to discuss the issue of the fence again. On Wednesday, Coughlin issued a letter to parents saying that the school would erect a fence around its blacktop area.

The principal would not comment on why the school had reversed its decision, but said, “The safety of the children at Mariners has always been the priority of the Mariners staff.”

Tim Marsh, Newport-Mesa’s facilities director, said his department had begun implementing the camera system when Coughlin made her latest announcement. Marsh said the technology would be used elsewhere.

The fence, which the district will pay for out of general funds, will likely be installed by the end of the school year.

“I think that the fence is going to provide a greater level of comfort to people than the cameras do,” Marsh said. “We are concerned about the safety of the kids, and this certainly means the campus is secure during the day. Personally, I don’t believe there’s anything safer than having adults there monitoring the children.”

When the parents group began its campaign last year, it proposed a fence that would run along the school’s property line, which cuts through neighboring Mariners Park. With the school formally announcing plans to fence off the blacktop, several parents repeated that a deeper boundary would be fairer to students ? even though the fence, in the school’s plan, will allow children onto the grass during recess.

“I can see in the future where it’s just going to be too hard to play on the grass, and they’ll have to play on the blacktop because it’s easier,” said Howard Denghausen, a former member of the parent campaign. “When you’re going to school and you’re a kid, you should be able to play on the blacktop and play on the grass.”

But Jennifer Blanchfield, another parent who attended last week’s meeting, called the blacktop boundary “a perfect solution.”

Over the last five years, police have come to Mariners Elementary twice in response to calls about attempted abductions. In April 2001, a man was arrested after entering the girls’ bathroom and cornering a 6-year-old student. In October 2004, a girl told police that a teenage boy had tried to beckon her to him; no arrest was made in the case.

Parents cited both incidents when they first approached the district last year. Few in the community, however, could agree on a place for the fence. When the parents proposed running it through Mariners Park, officials from the American Youth Soccer Organization and Newport Harbor Baseball Assn. both objected, saying the fence would interfere with their playing space.

Barry Zimmermann, the regional director for the soccer group, said he applauded the school’s new plan.

“They want the fence for obvious reasons, so we completely understand,” he said. “I think we’d rather have no fence, but if they’re going to have one, that’s the place to put it. A lot of us have kids who go to that school.”