Fear, terror and anxiety are emotions that students across the United States have experienced at a place they shouldn’t: school. This is a fact known by many, including the new school resource officer, Chad Curtis. 

Curtis began working as a school resource officer in Lampasas at the beginning of this school year.

“We are proud that our school district allows us to have a full-time SRO to help keep our school safe,” Principal Joey McQueen said. “We are excited to have Officer Curtis as our SRO at LHS.”

Curtis has been working in the police force for over 22 years.

“I started in the Houston Police Department working on the Southeast side of town doing night shift patrol,” Curtis said.

After patrol, he worked in field training, tag teams, recruiting, the training academy and spent his final three years in the HPD working for the chief police.

“I’ve done everything I can think of, and in HPD we didn’t have resource officers,” Curtis said. “When I came out here I was on patrol, which I’ve done before, and this is something new I don’t know how to do yet and want to learn.”

Curtis’ day-to-day consists of greeting students, patrolling the halls and keeping students safe. 

“When there’s narcotics on campus, missing kids in classes, or from their buses, I take care of that,” Curtis said. “Sometimes there’s problems going on at home that’ll be addressed to me. I just try to be a part of everybody’s life and help make their situation better.”

Sophomore Phoebe Rounds said that having the presence of an officer on campus helps students feel safer.

“It’s always good to have someone on campus that knows what to do if that sort of incident happens,” Rounds said. “We can only do so much when that certain incident occurs, but resource officers are trained for that.” 

Culinary arts teacher Jason Walsh said that having an officer on campus at all times not only helps students feel safe, but reassures parents that their children are safe.

“It’s hard to be 100% confident that nothing’s going to happen, but you have the security blanket of knowing somebody is there that is going to have the right tools if anything does,” Walsh said. “They will be there to help the kids. It’s a little nerve wrecking, but I know that Lampasas is doing the best they can for all of our kids here.”

Art teacher Judith Brown said Curtis and many others are doing their best to keep LHS safe.

“I will say over the summer watching the tragedy in Uvalde definitely had me thinking back to my past three years here at school and how I don’t think that our practices in the past were providing a secure enough campus,” Brown said. “I do think that a lot of the things that we are implementing this year, as long as everybody will stick to it, will better the security.”