The Habersham County School System’s number one priority is safety, and they showed that by appointing a School Safety Director for the county, one with whom they are quite familiar.
“This is about school safety. Everything I say tonight is about school safety and it’s about our schools being among the safest in the state and our effort to ensure that happens,” Superintendent Matthew Cooper said.
During Monday night’s Board of Education meeting, Cooper had a lot to say about the appointment of Chief Deputy Murray Kogod as the system’s School Safety Director. Following some misinformation released over the weekend, the superintendent sought to clear the air.
“It’s my hope that we can get some facts out tonight and set the record straight on some things and let’s all get behind our new Director of Safety for the sake of our students, for the sake of the safety of our schools,” Cooper said. “The school system still has a police department on file with POST. The school system police department will have only one employee, and that’ll be the Director of School Safety. Again, the emphasis here is not to hire a police chief. The reason that’s in the job description is because we want the Director of School Safety to have the full powers of a law enforcement officer. The way to make that happen is to have the police department on file with POST and to have the Director of School Safety listed as our Chief of Police on file with them.”
The position of school safety director has been posted for almost a month, and despite having multiple applicants, the Board of Education moved forward with approving Kogod to step into the position on March 20.
The new position comes with new responsibilities for Kogod, including, but not limited to serving as the leader of the system safety team, working closely with the school administrators on anything considered a safety issue, working with other law enforcement agencies in the community and responding to incidents at schools that are safety related. On the top of that list is that the director will have the full powers of a Georgia Law Enforcement Officer, meaning he is able to carry a firearm.
After confirming Kogod would be the appointee, Cooper instructed him to reach out to POST (Georgia Peace Officer Standards and Training Council) to check on the status of the school’s police department and see what he needed to do to prepare to step into the new position. According to a letter from Executive Director of Georgia POST Council Mike Ayers, Director of Operations Julie Bradley informed Kogod that “the agency had never been inactivated, and the only preparation necessary would be to change the demographic information in the POST system to reflect the new leadership.”
In the letter, it is confirmed that if Kogod did not receive the position, he would be removed from POST’s database. Prior to Monday’s meeting, it was erroneously stated by web site Now Habersham that POST was investigating Kogod’s approach to have his title changed on their database.
Ayers’ letter proved this to be false, stating “There is no POST investigation being conducted on Chief Kogod, as there was no violation of law or of POST rule by his request or granting of his request by POST staff.”
North Habersham Middle School Principal Dr. Adam Bagwell was among those in attendance at Monday’s meeting. Bagwell has served as the system’s safety director for the past eight years and is in support of Kogod’s appointment to the position.
“The main reason I know Murray Kogod is the right man for the job is because more so than anybody that I know, Murray Kogod understands the mission of the Habersham County School System. He understands that his job as a School Resource Officer was to serve students, and he understands his job moving forward as a Director of Safety for Habersham County Schools will be for the service of students and the service of student safety, which is our number one priority,” Bagwell said.
Habersham County Sheriff Joey Terrell has answers to questions citizens may be asking themselves after Kogod takes his new position March 20.
“We won’t have a chief deputy. We will continue with our current rank structure,” Terrell said. Regarding the School Resources Officers, Terrell said that “The SROs will continue to be my employees. The Habersham County Sheriff’s Office and Habersham County Board of Education are partners, have been partners and will continue to be partners.”
During the meeting, Terrell wanted to further emphasize the relationship between the Habersham Sheriff’s Office and the Board of Education.
“We’ve been one team for a while. We are so thankful that you opened the door to allow us to come in and bring School Resources Officers to our schools. Through all this, we’ve seen how other agencies and other municipalities and other board educations and other counties and other states, how they do things. We don’t like the way they do it, so Murray came up to me with an idea about an organization. It wasn’t my idea, it was Murray’s idea, I just pushed him into it,” Terrell said.
After the meeting, Kogod and his wife Jennifer were surrounded by those who support his new position.
“I’m extremely humbled and very appreciative of all the support. You know, my passion is safety and specifically my passion is school safety in the Habersham County School District. I’m just so tremendously appreciative of all the support and of the blessing of being able to continue to be a part of the school system,” Kogod said.