My opportunities to observe the staff at Sobrato High School have shown me they are acutely aware of safety issues and really look out for the kids. In this school year alone that is barely half over, Principal Richard Knapp and his staff have interrupted a sexual predator trying to trick students, saved another from dying on campus from acute alcohol poisoning, and caught others who have been high or in possession of alcohol or narcotics. (And these are just what made the paper). When I think of what I need from an institution that educates my children, foremost is safety. From what I’ve seen, no private school could do better.
They must chafe at the demands for increases in student achievement when they must pay daily attention to situations in which their responses literally mean life and death for a student. With antennae highly attuned to scoping out, among the student body of 1,500, the kid under the influence, or the one who may be dealing, and separate them out in a way so that, for the rest of the student body, it’s just another day at high school, they are the crème de la crème. And yet, they don’t get a lot of credit for it. It’s probably little consolation for them to know I say little prayers of thanks for them every day I pick up my son.
Perhaps, then, the principals and staff at high schools, who must enforce zero tolerance for substance abuse policies, met the news of the Morgan Hill police chief’s recommendation for a strengthening of the town’s Social Host Ordinance to project a zero tolerance policy for underage substance abuse in homes with a sense of relief: Now they’re not alone anymore. It has to be frustrating for school officials to have to be the police all week, and then battle the repercussions from the weekend’s parties in the community in which kids wind up drinking and drugging.
Because, basically, what happens in the community is spilling onto school campuses. In focus groups in Gilroy and conversations with adults and teens in Morgan Hill, Substance Abuse Prevention Partnership members hear what is backed up in numerous studies across the nation: that youth have easy access to alcohol, and the most common place where kids party is in their homes, or the homes of friends. The results of the 2005 California Healthy Kids Survey show that in Morgan Hill, 17 percent of freshmen and 26 percent of juniors report having been drunk or high at school. In Gilroy, it’s 13 percent of freshmen and 28 percent of juniors (both higher than the state averages of 12 percent and 23 percent, respectively).
In the chief’s report to the Morgan Hill Public Safety Committee, he noted the dangers of underage substance abuse and concluded that the city needed to communicate a zero tolerance policy toward underage substance abuse, a stance for which I heartily applaud him.
One of the responses from some adults who’ve heard about this is “if kids are going to drink, they’re going to find a way.” That may be true, but the intent of this comprehensive plan of consequences is to prevent adults from letting kids drink while under their watch or responsibility. With all the research on the impact of binge drinking and other substance abuse on the development of young brains and emotions, there is no justification for allowing youths to drink alcohol in their homes, or making it possible by their clueless absence.
Another response is “I talk to my children about making good choices.” “Other people’s kids drink to excess, not mine.” That’s great. Even still, I ask that they put their taxpayer hats on, and recognize there are few to no services to help a youth climb out from under the avalanche of troubles from addiction. Consider this an effort at prevention of a host of expensive social ills that early addiction leads to: kids in the juvenile justice system from alcohol or substance abuse-related crime, academic failure, and adult addiction that leads to dysfunctional relationships at best, joblessness and homelessness at worst. Remember that adult on the street with the sign, for whom there is very little sympathy, very likely started out very much like the youth hanging out with our kids who drink to excess at house parties. So to you, I say, “Why don’t we save some money?”
Columnist Dina Campeau is a wife, mother of two teens and a resident of Morgan Hill. Her work for the last seven years has focused on affordable housing and homeless issues in Santa Clara County. Her column will be published each Friday. Reach her at
dc******@ch*****.net
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