"New Alliance Provides for Collaborative Effort in Keeping Georgia Schools Safe"

Over the years, Georgia has had school resource officer associations come and go. At the same time, other county, state and federal agencies have provided different training opportunities for SRO's and other disciplines that play a part in the safe school environment.

In 2019, the last of the previously active school resource officer organizations dissolved.

During this same year, the Habersham County Sheriff's Office initiated a dialog with the Georgia Public Safety Training Center (GPSTC), the Georgia Emergency Management/Homeland Security Agency (GEMA/HS), the Georgia Peace Officers Standards and Training Council (GA P.O.S.T.), the Georgia Department of Education (GDOE), and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Georgia to form a new alliance. The alliance would incorporate and merge all of the separate efforts being made to improve school safety into one collective body known as the Georgia Alliance of School Resource Officers and Educators or GASROE. Its mission - to provide basic, intermediate and advanced collaboration training programs for school resource officers, administrators, teachers, school safety coordinators/directors, emergency management directors/personnel, nurses, bus drivers, custodial staff, counselors and other school support personnel. Additionally, GASROE will provide instruction and training that addresses current issues and new trends and provide participants with the latest tools available to address them.

The alliance has also resulted in the combining of the GEMA/HS Safety in Schools conference and the annual SRO conference into one annual training conference that brings all of the school safety disciplines together at one training event known as the Georgia School Safety Summit or GS3.

On June 1st and June 2nd, GASROE held its first conference event, known as the GS3 Regional Mini-Conference at the Georgia Public Safety Training Center in Forsyth, Georgia. Approximately 200 law enforcement and educator professionals attended the training. The event was a tremendous success.

All of us that are a part of the GASROE alliance wish to express our sincere appreciation to all of the participants and vendors that took part in the first regional mini-conference event. We look forward to growing these new relationships for years to come and partnering with each of you to provide a safer school environment for all of our Georgia primary and secondary educational systems.

June 2021