Sheriff notifies BOE he will pull SROs out of schools on Dec. 19
Elbert County School Superintendent Jon Jarvis said he received notification Monday afternoon that Elbert County Sheriff Melvin Andrews was canceling the intergovernmental agreement between his office and the school system in which the sheriff provides school resource officers (SRO).
“I never heard anything from the sheriff until this afternoon when I opened this letter,” Jarvis said at the BOE’s monthly meeting.
Andrews wrote in the letter, dated Oct. 13, that “due to changes, Covid Pandemic and shortage of officers, I hereby give written notice the Elbert County Sheriff’s Office agreement will terminate December 19, 2021 at 24:00 HR (midnight).”
Andrews’ withdrawal of SRO from the school comes after the county commission last week approved a request from Elbert Partners for Health for $10,000 to provide drug education and safety materials to the Elbert County School System.
The request, which was on the September county commission meeting agenda in the amount of $18,680, was removed just a few days after Sheriff Melvin Andrews spoke out against the county approving the request at the September work session.
Andrews told the county commission he was “not in favor” of using money from the drug education fund because the sheriff’s department uses the money to fund their own programs like junior deputies and explorers.
Last week Commissioner Chris Alexander and Casey Freeman Jr. voted in favor of the approving the request with Commissioner Kenneth Ashworth opposing. Jones, as acting chairman, spoke in favor of the request. Commission Chairman Lee Vaughn and Commissioner Horace Harper were not at the meeting.
In the sheriff’s Oct. 13 letter, sent to the BOE a day after the commissioners approved the Elbert Partners for Health request, Andrews wrote “The Elbert County Sheriff’s Office is disappointed in changes of the Elbert County School District. During our meetings discussing the 21-22 school year, I was under the understanding that the Elbert County Sheriff’s Office would continue providing services as done in the past several years.”
Those “21-22” school year discussions and subsequent restructuring of the SRO system evolved from Andrew’s firing of SRO Marc Fleming, who, in a similar letter-writing notification method, was fired without cause just hours before students returned to school after the Christmas Holiday season.
Fleming was hired by the school system when the 2021-22 school year began, where he works as a part of the school system’s security department.
After Monday’s meeting Jarvis said the Oct. 13 letter notifying the school system that Andrews was withdrawing SRO from the schools was the first communication he had had since the spring, when the school board reached agreement with the sheriff’s office on a new contract.
“We had $180,000 set aside to pay for the SRO, and the sheriff asked us for more funding for the officers so we upped it to $200,000,” said Jarvis. “I have had no conversations with the sheriff since we discussed our agreement.”
“I am shocked that there was no conversation with the sheriff before the (school) board got this letter,” said BOE member Samantha Rucker.
Jarvis told the school board that he would have some alternative plans at the Nov. 8 school board work session.
“We got some of the legwork done on this when we were working on some alternative plans to the agreement with the sheriff in the spring,” said Jarvis. “We should be able to come up with some alternatives because we had a bit of a head start on it last year."