ORANGE PARK – Deputy Rob Troxel took a familiar stance at the same hallway intersection inside Orange Park High Tuesday, just as he’s done on the first day of school for the past five years.

But this time, his uniform was green, not blue. And unlike the previous four years, his badge was issued by the Clay County Sheriff’s Office, not the Clay County District Schools Police Department.

Other than that, everything else seemed routine.

“It’s nice to get back to some normalcy,” the school resource officer said. “We’ve been rockin’ and rollin’ with sheriff’s office training since July 1. We’ve had our hands full getting everyone trained before we started today. Returning to the schools and seeing the kids again is nice.”

The school board voted in November to disband its police department and send a deputy back to each of the district’s 43 schools. CCSO deputies took over on July 1 and immediately began an accelerated training schedule to prepare for the first day of school.

“We’re pretty proud of the training we put all of our officers through, our deputies through,” said CCSO Chief Patrick Golemme, Director of School Safety and Youth Programs. “We believe that the better prepared our deputies are, the more likely they will have a successful outcome should something happen. We need to give them the tools necessary to do it, both the fiscal and training tools.”

Golemme said deputies trained on Monday, the day before the first bell rang.

“I have to applaud the team, the men and women who are part of this department sometimes were outside their comfort zones,” he said. “Many times, we worked under some harsh conditions. We were out there with over a 100-degree heat index. We were out there in the rain, and we were out there during the hurricane. They were exposed to a lot of new concepts, new training styles, and some state-of-the-art tactical training. And they all persevered.”

Sheriff Michelle Cook said it’s vital for the SROs to establish a report with the students to gain their trust, build relationships and understand their needs.

For Troxel, returning to see old friends, both students and teachers, was good.

“There are a lot more policies and procedures we have to memorize, and you have to learn all the paperwork again,” he said. “What I like is when the kids come up to me. They hunt me down. It’s always a pleasure to see them and see how much they’ve grown up a bit more, how they’ve matured a bit more. It’s nice watching them from ninth to 12th grade, seeing them go from a pup to grown adulthood.”