Nearly 100 SROs to graduate from Tennessee Law Enforcement Training Academy this year

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — The Tennessee Law Enforcement Training Academy is providing free training for school resource officers across the state, and 96 cadets will have graduated from the program this year by the end of June.

Tennessee’s Enhanced School Safety Work Group, which is made up of several state agencies, came up with the idea for the SRO training program after the Uvalde school shooting in 2022.

“We had an advanced school last year. That was sort of dipping our toes in the water of SRO training,” William ‘Chip’ Kain, the executive director of TLETA said. “This year we were able to add a basic SRO training school onto that.”

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According to Tennessee law, SROs are required to undergo 40 hours of basic school safety training and 16 hours of annual training on top of the training needed to become a law enforcement officer.

Thanks to $24 million in state-appropriated funds, the basic SRO training at TLETA is free for law enforcement agencies that don’t have a training facility or academy of their own.

“I have the freedom to be able to provide this training and not have to worry about what it’s costing our academy to put it on so that SROs have the very basic skills when they leave here to be able to do their job effectively,” Kain said. “It is one of the most complex jobs in law enforcement.”

On Thursday, Kain took News 2 around the TLETA facility and described some of the training officers must go through in order to become an SRO, including an emergency driving course, shooting range exercises, and real-life scenarios where their de-escalation skills are tested.

“They’ve tactfully put this course together to best equip all of the SROs coming through,” Cadet Kayla McVey with the McNairy County Sheriff’s Office, who is training to become an SRO said.

According to the TN Dept. of Commerce and Insurance, which oversees TLETA, interest in becoming an SRO has increased since the General Assembly budgeted $140 million to put an SRO inside every school in Tennessee last year . However, n ot every district has taken advantage of the funding due to an officer shortage .

Educator turned TLETA instructor, Dee Reynolds, has watched the SRO program grow from start to finish, first as a middle school teacher, and now as a law enforcement officer and instructor.

“In the beginning, I feel like the SROs were more there as protectors, there when they were needed in emergencies. Now I see those SROs more as mentors for those children that may not have that person in their lives,” Reynolds said.

Cadets like McVey hope to make a similar impact.

“To get to be that positive impact and be in a little sliver of their life, I only have them for three years, but hopefully those will be lifelong connections for me,” McVey said.

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The state broke ground on a new, $415 million Multi-Agency Law Enforcement Training Academy, (MALETA) in Sept. 2023. TLETA will move into the facility once construction is complete within the next few years.

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