By ALEC ETHEREDGE | Staff Writer

JEMISON – Principal’s from all Jemison Schools took the floor at the regularly scheduled Jemison City Council meeting on Monday night, Aug. 15.

With the new school year almost a week in the books, the council thought it would be a good way to start the year by hearing the concerns of the school leaders.

Mayor Eddie Reed repeated over and over again how thankful he was that they could all be there and expressed how much he wants to help the schools in any way that he and the council can.

Diane Calloway, Jemison High School principal, D.J. Nix Jemison Intermediate School principal and Scott Ingram, Jemsion Elementary School principal all addressed the council one by one to voice concern and introduce themselves.

The hot topic from the administrator’s was the need for a School Resource Officer (SRO) in each school to help with safety.

“If there is an SRO the students know that it’s not just an administrative situation, it becomes a law so they think twice before doing something,” Calloway said.

Calloway also talked about how much Jemison has changed with new business growth and people and said she doesn’t know the students and their parents or grandparents like she used to.

Nix, who is in his first year as principal of Jemison Intermediate School, spoke after Calloway and was originally there to talk about a storage unit, but after hearing the speech by Mrs. Calloway he couldn’t resist continuing the topic.

“As an assistant principal at Chilton County High School for the last four and a half years I found myself doing a lot of the disciplining,” Nix said. “When you have a police officer there with you, that makes a heck of a lot of difference.”

Ingram, who is in his first year as principal at Jemison Elementary, came to the meeting to introduce himself to the council, but couldn’t resist chiming in on the need for an SRO.

“The thing that concerns me about my school is that when you go in the front door, you have the cafeteria and gym all within 10 feet of the front door, which has no protection from anyone just walking in,” Ingram said.

Ingram also said that area of the school always has children in it and is a major safety concern.

“This council would love to help in that matter, but at this time we are in the midst of preparing the 2017 budget and are nowhere near done,” Mayor Eddie Reed said. “We need to know what plans the board of education has towards it and how we can fund it and that is the main issue, we have to be able to fund it. We definitely want our schools to be safe and will help in any way that we can.”