District Administration - February 2012 - (Page 46)

A New Prescription for Fighting Drug Abuse “We think it’s really important that students understand all of these life decisions. The idea is to have students set a behavioral goal around prescription drugs,” Howley says. “Until now, most students would finish high school and not have one conversation about this subject.” The NEA will distribute 10,000 of the new curriculum packets, with an eye toward state and local health education coordinators, who would pass them on to health and science teachers in schools across the nation. The materials will also be available online.Both the NASN and NEA initiatives are funded by pharmaceutical companies—Janssen Pharmaceuticals in says school counselor Loretta Kron. “And we said, ‘Let’s find some stakeholders and people as passionate as we are. Let’s do something to help our small community.’” The result was the creation in 2007 of the organization Prescriptions for Life. The effort was spearheaded by fourthgrade teacher Sherry Tilla and her husband, Jim, whose daughter Hayley first tried OxyContin in her sophomore year in high school and became addicted. Besides circulating a DVD telling her story, the parents make the rounds of schools as far as an hour away to speak with students in assemblies and classrooms and with teachers in staff development sessions. Middle School and tapped “student ambassadors” from the neighboring high school to focus on prescription drug abuse and other issues affecting students, from bullying to the proper use of social networking. “It’s about more than drugs,” explains school counselor Jeff Rase. “It’s building a positive culture in our school.” At the same time, Rase adds, prescription drugs are a primary topic, and with good reason in a poor community with a high unemployment rate. In a survey of Valley Middle School students before the program began, 42 percent identified prescription drugs as “very dangerous,” compared to 75 percent and 56 percent when asked about marijuana and alcohol, respectively. “Pills have become not only something to abuse and something addictive, but a driving force in our local economy. They’re like money here,” adds Roberts, also a nurse with the Portsmouth City Health Department in Scioto County, Ohio. “We’ve got little old grandmas and grandpas selling their pills (to drug abusers in the community) to supplement their Social Security income.” Through a $5,000 grant, Roberts is funding the ambassador program for eight districts in the county. The program trains high school students who are already leaders in student government and sports teams to work with their middle school peers about prescription drug abuse. “We’re not going to be able to solve poverty,” Roberts reasons. “But we can do some education in the schools so kids realize that prescription drug abuse isn’t normal.” “It adds another relationship that they can look up to,” says Rase, who plans to have middle school students become ambassadors to the district’s elementary schools in the near future. When it comes to any kind of drug abuse, Rase says, “we all know that peer influence is one of the biggest things we have to fight. So why not put a positive spin on peer relationships?” DA Ron Schachter is a contributing writer to District Administration. District Administration “Kids were dying, suddenly, and so young.” —Mark Selle, superintendent, Chewalah and Valley School Districts, Washington state the case of “Smart Moves, Smart Choices” and Purdue Pharma for the forthcoming NEA materials. Lessons From Experience Some districts that have come face-to-face with prescription drug abuse and its consequences have embarked on prevention programs of their own. Mark Selle, the superintendent of the Chewalah and Valley School Districts in rural eastern Washington state, has witnessed no shortage of tragedies. In one case, a 12-year-old brought hydrocodone tablets to a slumber party. In another case, a 21-year-old former student died after smoking the contents of a Fentanyl patch, originally prescribed for pain management. And an eighth-grader had died from a methadone overdose. “Kids were dying, suddenly, and so young,” Selle says. “I knew a principal who had OxyContin prescribed after a skiing accident and became addicted. He stopped cold turkey but described to me the hell it was to break the addiction. “In our little town of Chewalah, drugstores were getting held up all the time,” 46 February 2012 Kron recalls the Tillas’ first presentation at the Valley Elementary and Middle School four years ago. “A lot of kids had the attitude, ‘That won’t happen to me.’ When the Tillas told their story, you could probably hear a pin drop. It was affecting a fourth-grade teacher whom these students knew.” Selle and other school leaders were active in advocating for a statewide prescription monitoring program, a shared database for pharmacies that keeps track of anyone receiving a prescription and prevents abusers from “pharmacy hopping” to get multiple prescriptions filled. The program started collecting data from pharmacies around the state last October. “It’s essential that the schools be involved,” Selle insists. “In terms of advocating for legislation, the voice of school personnel speaks loudly. We have the stories, and the more kids we can get speaking out the better.” Last year in the Appalachian community of Lucasville in southeastern Ohio, the Valley Local School District implemented a 30-minute bimonthly period at the Valley

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration - February 2012

District Administration - February 2012
Contents
From the Editor
News Update
District Profile
Administrator Profile
Conversations
Product Focus
What Can U.S. Schools Learn From Foreign Counterparts?
A New Prescription for Fighting Drug Abuse
The Game Changer
The Legal Implications of Surveillance Cameras
CIO News
Mobile Devices Drive Creative Instruction
Products
Crisis Response
Professional Opinion
Problem/Solution
New Directions

District Administration - February 2012