With a new school year comes big changes, and Elizabethton City Schools has one particularly big change for its elementary school students: new school resource officers to improve security for its younger student population.

Elizabethton elementary schools now have school resource officers for the new school year, and officer Logan Peek is just as excited to begin his new posting at East Side Elementary as he was when he started working for the Sheriff’s Office.

Peek said he has had about six months of SRO experience before coming to East Side at Unaka Elementary.

“It has been awesome,” Peek said of East Side. “They have a great staff here.”

He started working with the Sheriff’s Office in October of 2015, first as a jailer for a year and then a patroller for about two. Then he went to Unaka Elementary for six months before going to the city police department in February.

“I enjoyed the SRO role,” he said. “It is fun interacting with the kids. It has gone very well.”

Peek and others are now in city elementary schools due to a new grant for the city police department. Now East Side, West Side and Harold McCormick have SROs, who started their new school year just like the students did.

“Everybody has bad days,” Peek said. “Law enforcement is here to help them.”

Outside of his work with law enforcement, Peek said he has taken up fishing in the last year, a recreational activity he said is peaceful and a great stress-reliever.

“I fish wherever in Elizabethton,” he said. “I just enjoy it.”

He also said he loves the Tennessee Volunteers, a sentiment shared by several of the school’s administrative staff.

Above all, he said he wants to let his community know he is there to help them, not scare children with an armed officer in the schools.

“It is important the parents and students know they have a safe place to go to,” Peek said. “I want to build relationships with the students.”

Peek described himself as “simple,” not too complicated.