Executive Director Bio - Dick Caster

Dick has been a public school administrator for over thirty years. His assignments included principalships as well as numerous central office positions including assistant superintendent of schools. He holds a Bachelor's Degree in English, a Master of Science Degree in Technical Education with a concentration in Criminal Justice and a Doctor of Education Degree. During his master's degree work, he taught "Introduction to Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice" at the University of Akron. He has worked directly with school resource officers for sixteen years. In his last assignment, Dick worked directly with the seven SROs assigned to the Dublin, Ohio City Schools, by the Dublin, Ohio Division of Police. He was responsible for the school district support of these officers as well as working closely with their commanding officer and chief of police. He represented the school district in collaboratively developing the SRO Memorandum of Understanding with the Dublin Division of Police. He was part of the team working with Ohio Emergency Management in developing a tabletop exercise involving multi-agency first responders in a school crisis exercise. He was trained as a presenter for Ohio TAP (Terror Awareness Program) and trained by the State of Ohio in Incident Command. Dick was also trained by the Franklin County, Ohio Sheriff's Department in their Train the Trainer "Operation: Street Smart" concerning the most recent information on street drugs. He is a past president of the Ohio Association of Secondary School Administrators and also served as Deputy Director of Board Development for the Ohio School Boards Association. Dick has been a NASRO instructor for three years. He is a member of the Ohio School Resource Officers Association. He has presented at their annual summer conference and retraining. He has also served as an adjunct professor at the college level teaching a course in psychology. Dick served as a reserve deputy with the Stark County, Ohio Sheriff's Department achieving the rank of sergeant. He currently is a firearms instructor with Concealed Carry Training of Central Ohio and a licensed Utah firearms instructor. He has been trained in tactical handgun by the Tactical Defense Institute in West Union, Ohio. He has been married for thirty-six years to his wife, Kathy, and they have two sons.