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The Hamblen County School’s new Safety Resource Officers trained at TCAT Morristown Monday to prepare for the upcoming school year.

Early Monday principals, SROs and other school district staff gathered at TCAT to learn and discuss ways to keep students and staff safe at each facility.

Superintendent of Schools Arnold Bunch thanked the county and the city for their dedication to the students.

“Mayor Bill Brittain and Sheriff Chad Mullins thank you,” he said. “You all heard us going through the budget dialogues. You heard what I asked for and you heard what I said the other day at the welcome back that we want to stay in the education business and not the safety and security business.

“I just appreciate you all stepping up and getting into this as quickly as you have because you’ve really gotten into it.”

He explained how the city showed its support with the SRO project, giving the district $150,000 to cover for equipment while the rest comes from the state. With the county heading the project, the city will continue maintain safety at each school.

“There are some people that believe that because it is now with the county that the city won’t respond if we have some sort of emergency. That is not the reality,” Bunch said.

“It’s a big team effort, the safety of students and faculty and staff is critical and everybody’s going to be working together to make that happen, a 911 call goes, you’re going to get a lot of response to make sure that happens.

“We’ve got a lot of moving pieces and we need to get as wise about it as we can, we need to keep talking about it with the kids and keep following our policies, if we have something come up we need to treat it seriously,” Bunch said.

David Cribley, Hamblen County Sheriff’s Department Operations captain, introduced the SROs to district staff, highlighting his excitement to have this program in the county.

“This has needed to happen for a long time and we are thrilled about it,” Cribley said. “We are tickled to death, the bulk of them have already been through the police academy and are experienced in law enforcement.”

Cribley echoed Bunch’s statement, saying that city police officers and regular sheriff department officers will still be active in the schools.

“I spoke with Chief Roger Overholt and they’re still going to be coming by and doing patrols of the school, and so are our guys as well, our regular patrol guys will still be coming by as well,” he said. “I don’t foresee you getting any less service that you previously got when MPD was handling SROs, the same amount of people is going to be responding, they’re all here in the room all these entities that are here represented, they were coming before they will be responding now.

“The good thing about Hamblen County is we have a big group of first responders who work well together and will continue that process.”

With the SROs in the schools Bunch explained that staff should still work to maintain safe environments.

“If you are going to be entering and exiting through other doors besides the main entrance, you have to document how and when so that if Law enforcement comes by, we’ve just got to document what we are doing to meet legal requirements.”