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reporting in summary form on three separate discipline hearings conducted by the committee within the space of 10 days in the same month! The cases involved the possession, distribution and use of alcohol (three different kinds), marijuana, and possession of a weapon on school property. One single case involved 12 students, all except one being girls.
The penalties meted out by the committee in the above cases ranged from suspension for three days and being placed on “strict probation” for four weeks, to one case of suspension for the remainder of the school year (then well along), with the promise of the student’s diploma in the mail if he completed his homework assignments satisfactorily, which would be prepared and sent to him. The latter young man was a repeat offender and the subject of a suspension the previous year.
What was going on here? The full School Board, impelled by the majority votes of Masterson, Stokes and Eastham had adopted on Jan. 8, 1980, three years before, a drug policy with teeth in it. We had taken the political pressure off the local Sheriffs Department by making parallel reports of drug cases to the State Police Drug Task Force in Culpeper mandatory.
We had authorized and arranged for the use of U.S. Customs Service drug dogs from Remount, without advance notice of particular visits to the schools to anyone in the county — including all members of the school board itself. (Part of the above self-enforcement provisions were gutted from the 1980 policy by the new school board almost immediately after my term ended on June 30, 1983, Eastham, Stokes, and Masterson being out of the way now. See this newspaper’s issues for July and August, 1983).
What was the difference now? Implementation was breaking down or being undermined by more “compassionate souls” and the full school board, with the final responsibility, being shunted aside.
What is going on now? Why has the board’s and the superintendent’s attention been re-focused on the drug policy/problem now? None of us (or very few of us) know for sure. But the size of the problem usually has to do with the priority it receives. I now have (courtesy of Supt. Gangel) a copy of the new drug policy covered by
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