Meet the Dickson County Schools SROs for 2022-2023 academic year

Nine Dickon Police officers were again approved for seven school campuses by the Dickson City Council and county school board.

The officers, called school resource officers, or SROs, were on campus for the first day of school Monday.

Under the agreement, the Dickson Police Department will provide a supervisor/detective to oversee the SRO program and two SROs at Dickson County High School.

An SRO will also be provided at Centennial Elementary School, Oakmont Elementary School, Dickson Elementary School, The Discovery School, Dickson Middle School, and Dickson County High School Lower Campus (formerly Sullivan Central Elementary School).

For 2022-2023, the school resource officers from the Dickson Police Department will be Supervisor/Detective Sgt. Eric Chandler and officers Cameron Stinson, Holden Foster, Charlie Mullins, Daniel Lewis, Jamie Patterson, Larson Petty, Curtis Robertson and J.D. Sumerour.

Some SROs also serve as instructors for the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) program in their schools. When school is not in session, SROs return to assignments with the police department.

Under the terms of the agreement, the City of Dickson will fully fund the salaries and benefits of all nine officers. The school system will reimburse the city the equivalent of 185 days of salaries and benefits for five of the officers, to cover the 180 days of the school year and five days of required training.

For the nine officers assigned as SROs for 2022-2023, the total salaries and benefits committed by the City of Dickson will be just over $650,000. The reimbursement of about 71 percent of the cost of the five SROs will be nearly $260,000, an increase of nearly 11 percent over the previous year.

“The City of Dickson is committed to doing everything possible to create a safe educational environment for students in our public schools,” said Mayor Don Weiss. “We know this program has been effective in promoting healthy relationships between students and law enforcement officers and has contributed to preventing potentially dangerous situations on local campuses.”

Sheriff’s office SROS

Dickson County Government also again approved SROs from the county Sheriff’s Office.

The county SROs include the following: Sgt. Keith Dearborn at Vanleer Elementary; Greg Clayborne at New Directions Academy; Autumn Wood at Charlotte Middle; Josh Liberty at Charlotte Elementary; Jesus Coreno at White Bluff Elementary; Gary Myers at William James Middle; Andrew Nicholson at Stuart Burns Elementary; Holly Meader at Burns Middle; and Joe Lovelace at Creek Wood.

Dickson SRO history

Using a grant, the Dickson Police Department placed its first SRO at Dickson Elementary School in a pilot program in 1998 until the grant expired.

In 2008, the Dickson City Council agreed to place an officer at Dickson County High School as a full-time SRO funded by the city.

In 2011, the city and school board approved an MOU to add an SRO at Dickson Middle School with the school system reimbursing the city for 185 days of the officer’s salary and benefits.

Following the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Fla., in February 2018, Mayor Weiss asked the city council to fully fund two more SROs for a period of three years. In 2021, the council agreed to extend those two positions for another three-year period through 2024.

In July 2018, the Dickson County Commission approved a schools budget that included SROs at all campuses in the county. The Dickson Police Department added four more officers to be reimbursed by the school system to cover all seven schools in the city by the end of Christmas break in January 2019, bringing the department’s total to eight.

The SRO supervisor/detective position was added in 2020 at the request of Chief Jeff Lewis for nine Dickson Police Department officers working full-time inside seven schools, all fully funded by the City of Dickson with reimbursement for five from the school system.

Herald staff contributed to this story. 

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Dickson County Schools SROs assigned for new academic year