Board focuses on alcohol, drugs and sex

WESTFALL — A handful of decisions — both tentative and definite — was made at the July 17 meeting of the Delaware Valley school board, including one to fully enforce the district’s zero-tolerance policy when dealing not only with drug, but also alcohol cases. According to board President Bob Goldsack, alcohol is a drug, and its possession, consumption, or distribution on school grounds should warrant the same punishment drugs currently do. After deliberation at the meeting, is was agreed that any student who violates that drug and alcohol policy will now be referred to the superintendent and brought to the board for an expulsion hearing, instead of only receiving a 10-day out of school suspension and facing police charges. There were five alcohol abuse-related incidents in the district during the 2007-2008 school year. While board director John Wroblewski warned the district may face a “community backlash” when it begins to enforce zero-tolerance of alcohol, Goldsack was adamant. “We need to be consistent,” he said. “The administration has been lax, and the inconsistency bothers me. This is a society problem. If you’re drinking, you’re breaking the law ... and [school] is not a sanction for you to break a law.” Goldsack said that problems still persist when students are disciplined on a first and second offense basis, so the board needs to take a firm position. He also said he has two programs in mind that would help students and parents in regards to alcohol abuse, but said he would elaborate at a later date. Pregnancy and disease statistics questioned These issues also came up at the safety committee meeting that took place two hours before the regular board meeting. District nursing chair and high school nurse Ellen Orben was at both meetings, during which she too reiterated statements about the June letter about sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Orben said that Maternal and Family Health Services, (MFHS) “Family Planning,” called her late in the school year to express their concern about the “increased amount of STDs and pregnancies” in the district. MFHS had developed a presentation to emphasize the “rampant” STDs, but the administration decided it was too late in the year to show it, and that a letter should be sent home instead. Before authoring the letter, Orben called MFHS to request statistics, which she said they then gave her. Yet shortly after the letter’s contents were made public, the Department of Health said the statistics were incorrect, and the CEO of MFHS told Orben that she “must have misunderstood,” she said. “But whether it’s 100, 200, or 1000 [pregnancies], it’s a problem,” the nurse said. During the past school year, 12 girls went to term with their pregnancies, Orben said, while the rest of the reported 25-30 positive pregnancy tests did not. In response, the district will provide an open house presentation where the nurses and an outside speaker will be featured. The board further agreed that the health and sexual education curriculum should be looked at and possibly revamped, but that as a public school, there is a fine line between “abstinence and handing out condoms.” Superintendent, Dr. Candid Finan made it clear that values and judgments cannot be pushed on students, and the curriculum would be disease prevention-based.