Bob Smallridge
The Oak Ridge Board of Education will discuss a plan to possibly add more school resource officers during a meeting this evening.
The board will also consider a new timeline in its search for a new superintendent.
Interim Oak Ridge Schools Superintendent Robert J. Smallridge, who is a former superintendent in the Secret City, said he would like to have one school resource officer, or SRO, in each school. There is currently one SRO at the high school.
Adding SROs is an idea that other local officials have also supported, particularly after the Dec. 14 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., where 20 first-graders were killed, along with six adults, the gunman, and his mother.
But the question of how to fund the extra officers in Oak Ridge, or even across the state or country, hasn’t been resolved.
The Oak Ridge school system once had three SROs: one at the high school and two at each of the middle schools. The officers have primarily been funded by the city, but Oak Ridge Board of Education Chairman Keys Fillauer has suggested some funding priorities might need to be reconsidered to add officers.
“It has to be a partnership between the schools and the city to fund that,” Fillauer said.
Fillauer has said Oak Ridge schools are, for the most part, very secure. Visitors to many local school buildings have to be “buzzed in,” and that security feature is being added at other facilities. All the local schools have features designed to keep people from walking in undetected and unimpeded, Fillauer said in a December interview.
The Oak Ridge Board of Education agreed to hire Smallridge on Jan. 7 after four of five finalists withdrew from the board’s first attempt to hire a new superintendent. Smallridge was Oak Ridge Schools superintendent from 1978-1998.
During that Jan. 7 meeting, the board also agreed to raise the pay range for the job up to $175,000 per year, hoping that the higher potential salary will attract new candidates and better reflect market conditions. The earlier salary range of $140,000 to $150,000 was reportedly cited as an issue for at least a few of the candidates who withdrew from the initial search.
The school board has reset the application deadline to March 1 and set a start date for the new superintendent of no later than June 15.
Tom Bailey, the most recent superintendent, retired at the end of the year.
The superintendent search started last summer with the help of executive search firm Ray and Associates of Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Tonight’s meeting begins at 7 p.m. in the School Administration Building Board Room on New York Avenue.
Sam says
It has to be a partnership between the schools and the city” said Fillauer. Hmmm.. How did that “partnership” work out on the high school mortgage? Word on the street is that the schools are stiil hiding their share of the mortgage payment in mason jars buried behind the SAB. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me comes to mind.
Yes, it is going to raise the ante on any new super, now that they are aware of the hornets nest that they are stepping into with the adversarial relationship that the school board has fostered with City Council. Thank goodness that Dr. Smallridge is there now to keep the ship from completely sinking!