Ashland Police Officer Michael Bates comes from a family of educators
By Holly Dillemuth, Ashland.news
After nearly a decade hiatus, Ashland School District is starting the school year with a full-time school resource officer again.
Ashland Police Officer Michael Bates officially started in his new special assignment as SRO for ASD on Monday. Bates is a 2010 Ashland High School graduate and has spent the last nine years as a patrol officer, including previously for Talent Police Department. In addition, Bates sits on the Jackson County Threat Assessment Team, which encompasses threats to schools county wide, as well as on the Jackson County Gang Task Force.
“My mom’s an educator, my wife’s an educator, her entire side of the family (are) educators, so it’s really nice to put those two pieces (education and law enforcement) together,” Bates told Ashland.news on Monday. “I’m the only police officer in a family of educators … we all kind of speak the same language now, which is really interesting.”
Bates, who has been with APD the past three years, was interviewed by a panel that included Ashland High School senior and All Student Body Vice President Mckenzie Locklin in May. The two-year position is fully funded by the Ashland Police Department, according to School Board Chair Rebecca Dyson.
Bates was selected out of three candidates to fill the role, which he emphasized will serve not just as a law enforcement officer on campus, but as a connector to community resources for students and staff.
“I think it’s very important to just be as open and up front about what our goal is at the high school,” Bates said. “The goal is not to go out and enforce every single ticket or violation or crime that we see, but find the root cause, basically the totality of the circumstances for what is causing the issues in our schools.
“I’ve met absolutely zero resistance,” he added. “It has been extremely positive, encouraging, people are stopping me in the halls, saying ‘thank you for being here,’ ‘we’re so excited about this,’ so I haven’t had any resistance or anything like that.”

Total cost of the position is about $155,000 per year, including benefits and other overhead costs, according to Ashland Police Chief Tighe O’Meara.
“We want to continue that position indefinitely in the interest of building relationships with our young people,” O’Meara wrote in an emailed statement, “and providing the best security to our schools.
“Ensuring that a young person’s first interactions with a law enforcement officer are friendly and innocuous, instead of in a more professional capacity, will help build long-term relationships and, hopefully, build legitimacy of the police department in the community’s eyes.”
Hopping into his patrol vehicle on Monday, Bates took Ashland.news from the police station to Ashland High School, where he now has an office near administrators.
He may have changed primary duties, but his APD black uniform stays the same.
“The goal is basically to look like every other police officer,” Bates said. “So we want the police officers in the schools to look interchangeable to the other police officers, so when the students and families see this uniform, and there’s any relationship built, hopefully they transfer that over to the other officers.”
He’ll likely spend a majority of the time at Ashland High School, but earlier on Monday morning, he was at Ashland Middle School to welcome new students as well, in addition to being at Walker and Helman elementary schools that day.
“Best job that you can have is being outside and handing stickers out and greeting new sixth-graders,” Bates said.
Over the course of the first week of school, as well as the week leading up to the start of school, he’s been meeting with staff at various schools to go over standard protocol response training. He’s also had a chance to introduce himself to staff and provide resources depending on the need.
Already, he’s received a mass email from a high school teacher needing a beach ball, which he said he had in his car — it was swag from a SRO conference, which, he said, “worked out very well.
“I’m sure she wasn’t ready for a response, ‘Hey, I have a beach ball in my car,’” Bate said, noting that he wants to be there for staff as well as students.

“You never know what (students and staff are) going to need,” he added.
As for his schedule, he’s keeping it vague, but open and available as needs arise on all of the district’s campuses, which include Bellview, Walker and Helman elementary schools, in addition to Willow Wind and TRAILS Outdoor School.
“I want to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time,” Bates said, noting he wanted to keep his schedule open and a bit on the sly.
“The plan is to be at the schools as much as we possibly can. That’s also parent nights, anything that’s extracurricular outside of regular school hours, we want to make sure that we have a presence there.”
Bates said he likely will spend a lot of time at AMS and AHS due to the needs being higher at both locations for a police presence.
“The high school campus is very unique,” Bates said, “and it’s a beautiful area, but it presents its own set of challenges for safety and security, so we want to find that balance between keeping it … the beautiful high school campus that I went to … as secure and safe as we can for the students.”
Bates said he became interested in the role a couple years ago.
“We were pretty thin on staffing,” Bates said of APD, “but I wanted to make sure we were going to games, we were going to dances.”
After seeing an inquiry from students at AHS about wanting to know their police department and the services it provides, Bates said he wrote a letter to superiors about the need to bridge the gap for students.
His interest in becoming a SRO was influenced as a student at Ashland High School, though, where he was mentored by officers Bob Smith and Bon Stewart.
“Bon was always around,” Bates said.
Bates also recalls his former DARE officer, Smith, who made an impact on him as well.
“He’s always been a great, positive influence,” Bates said.
While Bates said he doesn’t recall if either were officially serving in a SRO role at the time, he recalls positive experiences between himself, his friends, and both officers on campus.
Stewart is, fittingly, now Bates’ direct supervisor.
He spoke with Ashland.news about the return of a SRO on campus. Stewart served in the same capacity between 2013 and 2015.
“I responded to whatever the school wanted me to respond to, but I had an office and I would hang out on campus,” Stewart said.
“It was a friendly police face on campus,” he added.
Stewart advises Bates to have fun and be present with students.
“I had a lot of fun with the kids, I’d sit down with them at lunch and talk to them,” he said, “and a lot of them would seek me out, especially kids that had interactions with me and saw that I was fair.”
“The kids really pushed it,” he added.
Locklin, who was on the SRO interview panel, was among those in the leadership class last school year who were proponents for a SRO.
Bates greeted Locklin cheerfully after arriving at the campus quad Monday.
Locklin shared her thoughts on the addition of a SRO, an outcome she helped to bring to reality as part of student leadership.

“I think it’s a really important change, I think it’s a good change,” Locklin told Ashland.news on Monday, of having a district SRO. “I know that a lot of students are apprehensive, especially about the ‘student to prison’ pipeline. That’s been the biggest issue. But when I was on the interview panel, all of the interview candidates were pretty good candidates and I had a feeling that whatever officer they chose would’ve done a good job, and I’m excited that Bates is here.”
Locklin, 17, was part of a small group of leadership students who came to Ashland School Board members earlier this year, asking for the return of a SRO for the past two years.
She also noted that seeing an officer in uniform might be a little shocking at first for some students, especially since there hasn’t been a SRO on campus since 2014-2015.
Locklin said affinity groups on campus, including the Black Student Union, Asian Student Union, Native American Student Union, and Queer-Straight Alliance, will be part of an ongoing conversation surrounding the role of the SRO.
Bates said he’s excited to meet with affinity groups, with guidance from leadership students.
“That’s what I would like to do is get out in front of anything, dispel any myths,” he said. “I want to be there for the students.
“I think the big myth is that we’re there to just micromanage and enforce the laws that are on campus,” he added. “I have nothing to do with administration, I have nothing to do with the student handbook. I’m there to ensure the students are safe, the faculty is supported as they need, because we’re a big resource for the students and the faculty. A lot of the stuff that happens outside of the school district will spill into the school and we want to make sure that we can support and be a nice liaison for DHS or advocacy as they need.”
“If it’s a school policy issue, then that is a school issue,” he added. “We’re there to assist as we can but it’s really one of those things, if you’re not calling the police currently for it, it’s not likely something we’re going to be involved in.”
Bates noted as an example, if a student were to steal food at Safeway over lunch, his job would include finding out if the student had enough to eat at home.
“Hopefully we can look at the totality of that situation and focus a little bit more on not just the enforcement, but helping the student’s family fix the problem,” Bates said.
Bates served as a speaker at an Ashland High School talk about the presence of drugs, such as cocaine and fentanyl in schools, including at AHS.

He said when it comes to drug use, his role will be to look into where it’s coming from and how it’s getting into the schools, if at all.
“The SRO can dig in a little deeper and find the bigger picture of what’s happening,” he said.
Locklin expressed excitement at having Bates on campus and said leadership students will continue to work closely with him.
“I do think it’s important and I’m actually really excited to work with APD on this,” Locklin said. “I know Ashland (High School) leadership (students are) really excited to keep (him) in the loop.
“I think the most important thing about this is we’re going into this with an open mindset and a positive attitude,” Locklin added.
Leadership students have held cornhole tournaments with an APD presence on campus for the past two years, part of an effort to see how students interacted with local officers.
She anticipates bringing back cornhole tournaments with officers this school year, as well as spikeball.
“We’re going to try to have those events with APD not only because it’s fun — kids do look forward to cornhole events — but it’s also just really good to know that it’s not just one officer there to support, it’s all of them, so I think we’re going to keep having those events throughout the year,” Locklin said.
Superintendent Joseph Hattrick will meet with Bates on an ongoing basis to ensure expectations are met.
Both were at Ashland Middle School welcoming incoming students on Monday.
“I’d like to meet with him every two weeks, but then ongoing will be at least monthly because I know that the board and the community made it really clear that they have a certain set of expectations and I want to make sure that I continue to evaluate on those expectations,” Hattrick said, “just to make sure that we’re meeting the community and board expectations as we go forward.”
Bates echoed that the role, which will be a two-year assignment with an option for an extension, will have accountability.
“We just want to be as transparent through this process as we possibly can,” Bates said.
“Be very forthcoming, answer any questions or bring out any information that we can before the board.
“They want to know what the actions are, they want to know the results of the impacts that we’re having on students,” he added. “And then what we’re involved in. Are we just going to campus or are we just going to the plays and the games and the leadership activities outside of that.”

Bates expressed interest in remaining a SRO as long as he can, but also is aware there may be interest by others for the role in the future.
“My ideal picture is that this program goes so well that the school district goes, ‘Wow, this is awesome and we need another one full-time at the middle school,’” he said. “That would be my dream to see.”
In other important-yet-lighthearted SRO duties, Bates said, if asked, he will play in a basketball game the high school holds each year as part of his duties.
“It’s not gonna be good, but I will absolutely play,” he said. “Any of that stuff, I want to be involved, (however) I can.”
Email Ashland.news reporter Holly Dillemuth at [email protected].