A Drug Policy Clampdown
The East Hampton School District now has tougher anti-substance abuse rules in its policy manual.
“This is just tightening things up,” Richard Burns, the district superintendent, said during the May 17 school board meeting before the board unanimously approved the updated language. “I’m very upset. One of my moral imperatives is to make sure the education and well-being of our students is looked after. I’m putting out the message now: Don’t bring drugs to school,” Mr. Burns said.
The school board amended its existing search-and-seizure policy to expand searches to students’ vehicles in the school parking lot. Adam Fine, the high school principal, explained that the district will implement rules requiring students who wish to bring their cars to school to first sign an agreement giving the administration the ability to search cars “by reasonable suspicion, which is our guiding regulation when we search a student.”
The policy will also give students assigned parking spaces. Signs detailing this policy will be posted in the school parking lot, and more security cameras will be added. If students do not oblige, Mr. Fine said, they will lose their parking and on-campus driving privileges and be subject to discipline for insubordination. He said more information would be forthcoming for parents and students.
The school will also expand its use of drug-sniffing police dogs, which previously were used in hallways. Mr. Fine said the dogs will now also be used in classrooms. The district will continue to conduct these canine searches unannounced.
“Not on students, specifically,” he said. “I want to be very clear. We are allowed to sniff the air.”
East Hampton Town Police Chief Michael Sarlo said last week in an emailed statement, “We commend the schools for continuing to look for ways to impact the drug and alcohol problems that are inherent to all high schools. Continuing education, increased awareness, and consistent accountability for teens can only help the situation.”
Mr. Burns said superintendent-level hearings related to drugs are up 25 percent this year over last year, and Mr. Fine said thus far there have been 10 drug-related incidents that have resulted in suspensions.
In March the school district held a community forum on substance abuse prevention, at which Steve Chassman, the executive director of the Long Island Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, told the crowd that “all of us, collectively, are in the midst of a health epidemic at a rate we’ve never before seen.”