Women's Tribute: Lisa Norris

Dr. Lisa Norris is the director of schools for the South Carroll Special School District and for decades has been a pillar of both education and criminal justice in Carroll County.

She was born in McKenzie to Diane and Bobby Hargrove and graduated from McKenzie High School.

She earned a bachelor’s degree in Social Science from Bethel College, and began her career in law enforcement.

Her senior year at Bethel, her professor, Dr. Jim Potts, facilitated a Criminal Justice internship with the Carroll County Sheriff’s Department through Sheriff Joe Parker.

Lisa told The Banner, “There weren’t many females in law enforcement in the mid ‘80s, so that helped open the door for me. Sheriff Parker hired me as the first female deputy in Carroll County. I had the chance to go to the Tennessee Law Enforcement Training Academy and graduate from basic police school.”

She finished her senior year of college as a deputy, and worked for the sheriff’s department for around two years.

Lisa spoke about being the first female deputy in the county. “Well, you have to have somebody who helped you open the doors, and Dr. Potts did that for me. He was willing to go and meet with Sheriff Parker and say, ‘hey, will you give her a chance.’ Joe was willing to give me a chance, and I think probably if I hadn’t done an internship, it would have been a little harder to get my foot in the door, but I worked as hard as anybody did as a volunteer, a lot of hours, I tried to learn as much as I could about the sheriff’s department and about law enforcement.

After that, she had the chance to join the juvenile court. “It just felt like that was a better fit for me,” she said. “So I went to work for Judge Larry Logan. I was a youth services officer, learned the ropes of juvenile court, and did some things in the state with children’s services.

“I became the juvenile court director, and Judge Logan and I created the intensive day treatment program known as Carroll Academy in 1994. At the time, I was getting calls from guidance counselors that said ‘We don’t have the services that we need for these children, and they don’t need to be in our schools.’ So fine, we’ll create a school for them.”

Lisa spoke about entering the world of education from a criminal justice background.

“At the time I had a bachelor’s degree. I really wasn’t a good student in high school. I was average. And college wasn’t important to me, particularly the first two years. But it was when I really got into the social services field my junior and senior year, and particularly the internship with law enforcement, that education made a difference to me.

“So when I created Carroll Academy, I didn’t want to be the only one without an education degree. I’d started a school, so I needed one. So I worked on my master’s degree, and then did some further study in special education and criminal justice. Later I earned a Doctorate in Education with an emphasis in administration, teaching and learning.

“The whole purpose of CA was to reduce the number of juveniles that were coming into costly state custody. The state was seeing a lot of kids coming into care that was costing the state tons of money, and it was because there were no services.

“My love has always been criminal justice. So that’s been kind of what motivated me. However, I do believe the equalizing social justice force is education. We see those kids falling through the cracks in the early elementary grades. If we can get them and help turn them around, that’s a lifetime of change for them. One teacher can truly make a difference in those kids’ lives. We worked on behavior first, academics second. Academics was the tool we used to work with behavior.”

In addition to operating Carroll Academy, Lisa remained the director of juvenile court until 1999.

In 2000, Lisa departed CA and spent about six months with the Department of Children’s Services in Kentucky.

She then returned to juvenile court and created a career and technical education program for high school students based at Bethel. The program ended after about a year due to a reduction in grant funding.

Lisa next worked for Bethel University in many roles, beginning with director of institutional research. Her experience as a grant writer led her to be director of institutional effectiveness, a title she held until her departure from Bethel. She also taught in the Success program, the College of Arts and Sciences, Professional Studies and the School of Education.

In between stints at Bethel, Lisa was the director of government relations for Generations Gaither Group, a mental health service provider that operated briefly in McKenzie.

After Bethel, she taught Criminal Justice at the Carroll County Technical Center for five years before she was hired as the director of schools at South Carroll in June 2022.

As director, she established two innovative programs, Clarksburg Virtual Academy 6-12 and Clarksburg Virtual Adult High School, which began accepting students in 2025.

Lisa and her husband of 36 years, Chuck, have two sons who both have entered law enforcement. Tyler is a sergeant with the Tennessee Highway Patrol, and Murphy is in the THP criminal investigation division and works with the U.S. Marshals Service’s Twin Rivers Fugitive Task Force.

Lisa and Chuck have four grandchildren.

She says of her husband, “He’s always been super supportive. I couldn’t do everything I’ve done because a lot of what I’ve done has been grant positions, and if he hadn’t had a stable position, I couldn’t have done all of those. He’s always been very supportive of that, and so have the boys.”

She spoke about the progress of women in her lifetime. “It’s been equalized. Even when I started at the sheriff’s department in the ‘80s, I remember a male elected official walking through looked up and said, ‘Who are you to wear a weapon?... Do you know how to use that gun?’ I remember that conversation very clearly, and I said, ‘Yes, do I need to show you?’ Certainly I wasn’t threatening him in any means, but I think when you’re trying to open doors and create a new avenue, you have to be kind of savvy in the way you do that and not just say ‘Oh, I’m here’.

“You have to work hard to be able to open those doors, and society has helped us come a long way with that, but it goes back to your background too. My mother always was a very strong personality and taught me to be that way. She always told me, ‘you can do anything you want to do, just put your mind to it.’ And so I never knew that I couldn’t.

“But a young female today can do anything they want to do. There’s been a lot of pain that’s allowed that to happen over the years.

“I’m just thankful always for my family and for my parents and for a husband that was always very supportive, and a society that was, I’m not going to say the word accepting, but where the avenue was there to be able to make change.”

Besides her various occupations, Lisa served for two years on the McKenzie school board, reaching the level of vice chairman.

She was the co-founder and president of the Carroll County Prevention Coalition and has served as president of Carroll Arts and the Carroll County Republican Women.

Lisa has published two books, the historical “A Sign of Hope: The Carroll Academy Story” and realistic fiction “Political Vultures,” and is writing another.