School Drug, Alcohol Numbers Up

With a renewed focus on finding solutions to problems facing local youth, officials are taking a closer look at some alarming statistics.
Last week, more than 100 local community leaders attended the Greater Hernando County Chamber of Commerce's Summit for Youth, a daylong event designed to spur discussions about particular issues: child welfare, domestic violence, teen pregnancy and drug abuse and gang violence.
Now, officials are looking at the numbers.
The School Environmental Safety Incident Report, a state study released in the spring, shows the Hernando County School District's rate of public school incidents involving alcohol, tobacco and other drugs is more than double the rate in other districts across the state: 9.35 per thousand students, compared with an average of 4.27 per thousand statewide.
While the study shows that Hernando schools boasted lower numbers of property crimes, fighting and other nonviolent incidents, it also shows that local schools have higher incidents than state averages of harassment, disruptions on campus, violent acts against people and weapons possession.
"That's pretty blaring," said Capt. Mike Maurer of the Hernando County Sheriff's Office. "We've got to at least bring our numbers down to state levels."
During the 2007-08 school year, district substance abuse staff responded to 422 intervention situations involving students. Of those, 171 involved drug abuse violations for middle and high school students, while the rest were students who exhibited symptoms of drug abuse.
The majority of the referrals were related to alcohol, followed by prescription pills and marijuana, student services director Jim Knight said.
Hernando County Sheriff Richard Nugent said he has also been studying the results of the Florida School Indicators report - also released each spring - that lists data for the district and by individual schools on drugs and alcohol, fights, crime and weapons.
"It appears that there's more school crime activity going on now in elementary schools than ever before," he said, referencing statistics that show that elementary school crime is nearly double what it previously was during the 2004-05 school years.
Nugent also pointed out that the rate of reported crime in middle and high schools is roughly equal.
"That's a little disturbing, because you'd expect it to be higher in high school - but in reality, it's been dead even for the last two years," he said. "What does that mean? I'm not sure. But it's certainly an indicator of what's going on in our schools."
Officials gave varying reasons for the higher incidents of crime, and said that, often, devising solutions requires a complex understanding of broader issues, which is what last week's summit was designed to do.
According to the Florida Youth Substances Abuse Survey in 2007, high risk factors in Hernando include a highly mobile society with low neighborhood attachment and lax parental attitudes toward drugs, Knight said.
Last year, district staff conducted 81 family crisis sessions, 29 visits to parent homes, 226 drug screenings and 16 petitions for student treatment. They provided 13 classroom drug presentations.
The state's study showed Hernando's suspension rates also are significantly higher than state averages. The district's in-school suspension rate was 33.4 per thousand students, compared with 21.2 statewide, while the district's out-of-school suspension rate was nearly 19 per thousand, compared with 15.5 statewide.
Lisa Hammond, project director for the Hernando County Community Anti-Drug Coalition, said the number of in-school suspensions needs to be even higher to be effective.
Hammond said alcohol is the most commonly used drug among Hernando students, and that unsupervised students typically access it from their parent's refrigerators after school, while their parents are at work.
She said area parents are often struggling to make ends meet by working multiple jobs and often do not have an appropriate level of supervision over young teens and adolescents during the highest-risk time period between 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. each day.
Hammond said officials are currently working on solutions that will keep students engaged in positive activities and said that needs to carry over into suspensions, as well.
"Out-of-school suspensions just allow students to be (further) unattended to and engaged in bad behavior," she said.
One of those solutions is a pilot program premiered this year at Parrott Middle School that allows students to serve out-of-school suspensions in a portable on campus, learning about positive choices.
Hammond said it appears to be working and hopes other schools follow suit.
While school district officials would like to do more, the district's grant funding has been cut by about 10 percent a year for the past three years, Knight said.
But they and other officials at the summit - including Hernando schools Superintendent Wayne Alexander - agreed that students need as many "hooks" as possible to keep them engaged and out of trouble.
Maurer, who participated in a committee at the summit that will continue to work to combat drug and gang activity at local schools, said ideas for future student engagement include expanded after-school programs with local law enforcement deputies and a youth mentoring program with local business owners.
"We've got to find a reason to keep kids in school," he said. "We have to broaden the availability of options, because not every kid wants to play football or chess. We've got to give them something to strive for."
For more information, go to www.hernandoantidrug.org.