By Linda Conner Lambeck

WESTPORT — “Block S” trophies for Staples High School athletes have recently been a hot-button topic on Westport Front Porch, a private Facebook group, but not so much at last week’s Board of Education meeting, despite efforts by board member Robert Harrington.

Hoisting his daughter’s “S”-shaped trophy, Harrington tried unsuccessfully to add discussion about the award — and the decision this year to discontinue the decades-long tradition — to the agenda.

Until this school year, Block S awards were given annually to two students in each Staples sport — one as an MVP award, the other as a coach’s award. That’s 80 trophies, plus a handful of spares, for 40 sports.

Two awards banquets seasons into the 2024-25 school year, the sports community realized the awards no longer are “S” trophies but plaques, which were not engraved.

“If students and super fans are discussing it, why can’t we?” said Harrington, who failed to get a second from a fellow board member to add discussion of the issue to the agenda for an official discussion.

“I have to say to the board I am a little disappointed about the lack of transparency that we are having here,” Harrington continued. “I think the Board of Education is a great time [to] discuss topical issues. We can have a discussion here rather than social media.”

Not the right time or place

Other board members at the meeting took turns explaining why they felt it was neither the time nor place for such a discussion.

“For me, I am all about tradition,” said board member Kevin Christie. “I love athletics in general [but] we trust our superintendent and staff to make decisions.”

Christie suggested a board discussion would amount to micromanaging.

Board Secretary Neil Phillips pointed out that the issue just came to light. “We owe it to our superintendent and athletic director to address it as I believe they are doing and not circumvent the process,” he said.

If the board is not happy with how administrators handled the situation, then it can weigh in, Phillips said.

Board Chair Lee Goldstein said she agreed with Christie and Phillips. 

“I have given a lot of thought to what it means to be responsive to community …,” she began before being interrupted by Harrington, who said, “What about our students?”

Taking if off the table

Goldstein tried to say that students were at the forefront of “the community” before she and Harrington began speaking over one another.

“I am about to table this,” she told Harrington.

“That is usually what you do when it gets controversial,” Harrington responded.

Goldstein told Harrington that the social media posts she saw were written by individuals who know how to reach her and the school district’s administration to lodge a complaint.

“They often contact us … by personal texts so there is no lack of getting to people. There is a way to do it. The administration is doing it. This is not a governance issue,” she said.

What is at issue, said Goldstein, is winning town support for a $153 million education budget for 2025-26. She noted that at recent Board of Finance meetings she was the only school board member in attendance.

“What you are interested in is a trophy,” Goldstein said, pointing to the Block S trophy Harrington held and noting that she had one at home, too. 

Harrington said he voted against the budget because it failed to include the additional assistant principals recommended by the superintendent so that it made no sense to show up to defend a budget he does not support.

A short time later, Harrington got up and left the meeting.

Scarice cites rising cost of Block S trophies

Out of the meeting room when the issue was raised, Supt. of Schools Thomas Scarice said later by email the decision to substitute the Block S trophy with a plaque had to do with cost.

Athletic Director VJ Sarullo annually budgets $9,400 for the trophies — $110 for 85 individual Block S trophies, according to Scarice.

Last summer, months after the school board budget was adopted, there was sticker shock when it was learned the trophy cost would increase to $185 each, or $15,862 total. 

The increase would increase the overall price tag for the trophies to 16 percent of the entire Athletic Department supply budget. Sarullo exercised judgment as an administrator, in consultation with coaches, to go with less costly plaques, the superintendent said.

Scarice added that there are occasions when budget shifts are authorized by central office administrators to cover emergencies. When the football field sound system failed last fall, funds to install an interim system were found so the season would not be disrupted.

The escalating cost of Block S trophies did not rise to the level of an emergency, Scarice said.

It is also not the only tradition to fall to inflation. 

For years, the middle schools took eighth graders on a field trip to Broadway. The cost became prohibitive and administrators are now searching for alternatives.

As for this year’s plaque substitution, Scarice said the athletic director intends to improve the quality of the award next year. As for personalizing the awards, Scarice said that always occurs post-awards banquet, not at the ceremony.

Tradition vs. proper channels

In the hallway after he left the meeting, Harrington said if a proper discussion of the situation had been added to the agenda he would have proposed reinstating the Block S award.

“This is an embarrassment to 70 years of tradition in this community,” he said, adding that if cost was the problem, creative solutions could have been sought.

Back at the meeting, after Harrington left, Phillips said his intention was not to shut Harrington down but to give deference to district officials looking into the issue.

“It has to go through the proper channels,” he said.

Board member Abby Tolan said her concern with discussing an item not on the posted agenda was that the public didn’t have the opportunity to be there and comment.

Calum Madigan, a Staples senior and student representative to the school board agreed. “If we are to talk about the Block S award it should have been on agenda so people can speak about it,” he said.

Later by email, Harrington called the lack of discussion a “terrible look.”

“It’s pretty simple,” he wrote. “A mistake was made. Mistakes happen all the time. We need to reverse this mistake immediately and retroactively give our Staples student athletes the real Block S award that thousands of students have been awarded over the past 70 years. This is such an easy one.”

In her own followup email, Goldstein said she respects tradition and the importance of the Block S trophy and its meaning to the community.

“But I’m not setting … hair on fire every time there’s a Facebook post,” Goldstein said.

Freelance writer Linda Conner Lambeck, a reporter for more than four decades at the Connecticut Post and other Hearst publications, is a member of the Education Writers Association.