Text books, pencil shavings and puppy-love crushes are back for this year today.
That's right. School has started and all the young kids get their own experiences with bullies and members of the opposite sex they're too shy to approach.
But teachers and fresh-to-the-world faces aren't the only types roaming the halls. No, there are several who wear a badge and a blue uniform.
School Resource Officers Sgt. Jim Eissler and Sgt. Joe Parker are set to patrol the passages of Baldwin County High School and Bay Minette Middle School respectively. Officer Jason Lamey – when he's not giving Gang Resistance Education and Training at Bay Minette Middle and Intermediate Schools – will do the same at the intermediate school.
They are there as tools for the principals, and not to be the supreme authority.
"The principal is like the mayor," said Eissler, a native of upstate New York who moved to Bay Minette for his wife, Kelly. "We let them handle what they can handle."
But they're primed to intervene into anything from bathroom fist fights to their "worst nightmare: a kid walks in with an AK-47 (assault rifle) and camouflage," according to Parker, a lifetime resident of Bay Minette and a 23-year-veteran of the police department.
In addition, they look out for drugs and file reports on stolen personal items or other issues. At Bay Minette Middle School alone there were 71 arrests last year, 17 of which were drug related. Parker estimates 20 of the students involved were expelled.
"It's not that the schools are bad," Parker said. And they don't attribute it to the students either.
"The kids are wonderful," Eissler said. "You're always going to have a few bad apples who spoil the whole thing. We're just right there to assist or step in if we have too."
Mainly, they're there to provide a watchful eye.
"At all times, there's got to be somebody monitoring the kids when they're outside the classroom for any reason," Eissler said. "There always has to be an adult watching them."
All three attend every dance, basketball game and other school function, which can some times last until 10 p.m.
"Not everybody realizes the long hours we have," Lamey said.
Last year was Eissler's first year in the schools, and he's confident the ties he made will strengthen his ability to protect and serve the children.
"This year will be a lot easier because I know a lot of the kids," he said.
And he has developed a personal relationship with some of them based on mutual respect.
"You treat people how you want to be treated," Eissler said. "Just because I'm in a uniform doesn't mean I'm above anybody and the kids respect that."
While Eissler and Parker act solely as friendly sentinels, Lamey graduated 550 4th and 7th graders from the Bureau of Justice Assistance GREAT program last year.
"We call him our great officer," Eissler joked.
The program is a thirteen-part course for the middle school students and 6-part for the 4th graders. It's meant to prevent the kids – in their most impressionable years — from turning to gangs, violence, drugs and crime, according to Lamey, a native of Mobile.
"As the chief puts it, it's yesterday's DARE," said Lamey, the only certified GREAT officer in Baldwin County.
In between his teaching, he still watches over the students like the other SROs.
"Kids come to me and say 'so and so is picking on me.' That kind of stuff," Lamey said. "They will come and tell me if there's going to be Pa fight in the bathroom. I've prevented several of those."
