Board Adopts MOU for SRO Program

August 13, 2023
By: Dwayne Page

The number of DeKalb SRO’s will remain at five for now!

During Thursday night’s regular monthly meeting, the Board of Education adopted a state required Memorandum of Understanding regarding the state grant funded School Resource Officer Program.

Under state law, the MOU serves as the template for the SRO program authorized by Public Chapter 418 of the 113th Tennessee General Assembly and must be executed between a local law enforcement entity (Sheriff’s Department) and the LEA (DeKalb School District) and presented to the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security as part of the application process for grant funding. That agreement has been finalized and approved.

The purpose of this MOU is to set forth the obligations of the Parties with respect to the placement of School Resource Officers (“SROs”) in schools and with respect to planning and funding related thereto for the purpose of providing a law enforcement presence at each school.

“The MOU we have with the DeKalb County Sheriff’s Department is part of the new law the Governor has put in place for support of school resource officers in our county providing one in each school. It has been signed by me, the sheriff, and the county mayor. It is in place and our SROs are already actively working,” said Director of Schools Patrick Cripps.

As in the past all DeKalb County Schools continue to have one school resource officer, but no more SROs are planned at this time.

Different from the past is that all five SROs are now funded by the state rather than the county and school district.

Sheriff Patrick Ray has said he would like to see another SRO added at the high school but whether that should ever be funded either by the school district or a partnership between the county and school board has yet to be determined.

Meanwhile, Director Cripps publicly thanked local law enforcement agencies for their participation in the “Intruder Drill” walkthrough of the schools last week.

“I do want to thank the sheriff and chief of police and their officers and deputies. We have been doing Intruder Drills this week and we have one more to do. I want to thank them for going through our schools during their drill to help keep our kids safe,” he said.

Director Cripps also repeated a warning he first issued in April that any threat made toward a school, even if it is a prank or joke, will not be tolerated and students will face full consequences.

“I want to reiterate to our parents to talk to their kids about things they say. They may be saying things jokingly, but it is imperative that they talk with them about what they say. There’s a new law out and it says anybody that threatens mass casualties is committing a zero-tolerance offense. That’s a year
expulsion. We are taking this seriously. You can’t take any threat lightly, so we ask all parents to talk with their kids about that. I know how kids are. They will say things and think nothing of it but their neighbor next to them may take it seriously. We have to take all threats seriously, so parents please help us with that situation by talking to your kids,” said Director Cripps.

In other business, the board approved a pay rate adjustment for drivers of school buses on field trips and sports events.

“Its been a struggle getting bus drivers to run daily routes but now is the time of the year when we are doing ball trips and field trips and its getting harder to find people to do that too. This starts my ninth year as director and during that time and even before that the pay rate has not been adjusted so I ask that you consider those increases as we discussed in the workshop so that we don’t have sports teams waiting on a bus and no bus shows,” said Director Cripps.

In his monthly personnel report, Director Cripps reported that the following have been hired since July:

Bethany Poss-teacher at Smithville Elementary School

Reagan Owens-teacher at Smithville Elementary School

Victoria Stanley-teacher at Smithville Elementary School

Mary Cantrell-teacher at Smithville Elementary School

Ashley Dugaw-teacher at Smithville Elementary School

Alivia Jared-teacher at DCHS

Lesa Davis-teacher at Smithville Elementary School

April Moore-teacher at Smithville Elementary School

Cole- Dziekiewicz-teacher at DeKalb Middle School

Colter Norris-teacher at DeKalb Middle School

Caitlin Fox, Speech- Countywide

Leave of Absence as requested: Misty Agee and Sarah Storey

Resignation/Retirement: Loree Hall, teacher at Northside Elementary School.

August 11, 2023
By:

DeKalb Telephone Cooperative, Inc. d/b/a DTC Communications will host its annual meeting on Saturday, Sept. 16, 2023, at the DeKalb County Fairgrounds in Alexandria.

Directors will be elected in the Milton, Norene, and Woodbury exchanges.

Incumbents Jim Vinson – Milton exchange, Terry McPeak – Norene exchange, and Brian Alexander – Woodbury exchange are running unopposed.

Voting for directors will take place at the cooperative’s annual meeting on Saturday, Sept. 16. Gates to the DeKalb County Fairgrounds in Alexandria will open at 8:45 a.m., with voting from 9 a.m. until 11 a.m. The business meeting will begin at 11 a.m. or once the last person in line at that time has voted.
Only DTC members may vote, and each member must present proper photo identification. For a single membership, only that individual may vote. Either member of a joint membership may vote, but not both. In the case of a business membership, a business affidavit is required.

The last day to make changes to your membership or to be eligible to vote in the 2023 election will be Thursday, Sept. 7.

For questions regarding membership and voting, call DTC at (615) 529-2955.

August 11, 2023
By: Dwayne Page

Doubling down on school safety!

The DeKalb County School District, in cooperation with local law enforcement agencies, have been exercising safety protocols in recent days at the schools to help guard against any possibly future outside threat.

It’s called “Intruder drills” and it is something the state requires local districts to conduct at least once a year. Such drills were conducted Thursday at Smithville Elementary and Northside Elementary School. Similar drills were held Tuesday at DCHS and DeKalb Middle School. Another drill will be next week at DeKalb West School.

According to Joey Reeder, safety director for the DeKalb County School District, the school conducting the “intruder drill” is locked down and local law enforcement officers are called upon to make a walkthrough of the school to make sure all doors are locked. That means greater fortification of schools to make it more difficult for an intruder to enter them. Participating in the drill were members of the DeKalb County Sheriff’s Department, Smithville Police Department, and Emergency Management Agency. The Alexandria Police Department is expected to participate with the sheriff’s department at DeKalb West School.

“The new state law says we are to conduct intruder drills at every school but it’s been that way for a few years now,” said Reeder. “In the past we have always done it prior to school starting without students being here but with the Covenant shooting in Nashville and all that’s gone on we felt like, after consulting with our law enforcement people, that maybe it was time we did it with students in the building. Later on, our plan is to maybe do an unannounced drill, where we lock everything down and have law enforcement come in but in a case like that you have to be really careful especially when you’re dealing with smaller kids because you can cause them to become anxious and scared when they really don’t know what’s going on. In the world we are living in today, you never know what could happen so we are doing the best we can to be prepared,” said Reeder.

“Basically, an intruder drill is where our entire school building is locked down and wherever you are at you get in the closest room,” Reeder explained. “If it happens between class changes or lunches, that’s things we’ll have to work on, but if it happens during a normal school day when kids are in class, we lock the doors, get the kids away from the windows and doors, and try to be as quiet as we can. Our teachers have done a tremendous job this week. We have had very few problems. It’s sad we are at this place in the world that we have to keep our doors locked at all times but it’s a new state law that all exterior doors have to be locked and we are encouraging our teachers to keep the interior doors locked also. It causes some aggravation but its another layer of safety. That’s what we are about is trying to keep as many kids, faculty, and staff as safe as we can.”

The intruder drills serve a twofold purpose, according to Reeder, by putting into practice the school safety protocols and by making local law enforcement officers more familiar with the layout of the schools and they are welcome to stop in anytime.

“Our feeling on these drills is that not only does it help our schools but it’s a great deal of help to our law enforcement. Anytime we can get law enforcement in our buildings, walking around we believe that is a good thing and they are more than welcome to come. I don’t care what department they are with, Smithville, Alexandria, Sheriff’s Department, they are welcome in any of our buildings at any time,” said Reeder. “We have a lot of officers who just stop and walk through the building, and we appreciate that. Anytime you go by and see a police car outside a school, we believe it serves as somewhat of a deterrent. Fortunately for years we have always had a tremendous relationship with all the law enforcement agencies, and you can tell that by the crowd of them we had here today,” Reeder continued.

“We did drills at the high school and middle school on Tuesday, and it was amazing to see how many of those officers had children of their own in that school at the time. Most of them have a vested interest with a kid somewhere in school in DeKalb County and anything we want them to do they are always willing to do it. They take a lot of pride in their service and our schools, and we certainly appreciate them for that,” added Reeder.

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