Schools

Principal: 'We Have Drugs In Fairfax County'

Administrator says drug use at James Madison High School is no worse than at other schools in the county, but his policies to keep the school drug free are "more draconian"

Mark Merrell has been a part of James Madison High school either as a teacher or an administrator for more than 25 years — even longer if you include his time there as a student. That time and experience, he said, has shown him there are "unequivocally" drugs at his school.

"I will also say unequivocally there are drugs at the school my kids go to as well," he said. "We're expelling kids in every high school in this county. We have drugs in
Fairfax County."

, but to Merrell, the better question is whether Madison’s drug problem is worse than other schools.

“I don’t think that it is," he said. "I think that if you got a group of high school
principals together I think we'd all say we all have some drugs in our schools, we all
would agree that we want to do whatever possible to get them out of our schools
and I want to say I believe that we’re trying to be as aggressive as possible with
that."

According to the county's Student Responsibilities and Rights code, any suspected
cases of alcohol or drug use should be referred to appropriate staff. Merrell said
the school is in compliance with this policy. Requests for a copy of the procedure by Patch were not fulfilled by publication time.

A Madison High School teacher, who spoke with Patch on condition of
anonymity for fear of losing their job, say some students they’ve reported verbally
have simply been detained for the day in the school's security office, without a call
home or report filed.

Merrell said if he were to do that, he’d be breaking the law.

He said the school also was in compliance with a Virginia law that calls for each
school to have a procedure for handling violent, disruptive or illegal activities by
students on school property or during a school-sponsored activity. Merrell said
Madison was in compliance with the law, but could not provide the procedure by
publication time.

Before this year's meetings with the Vienna-Madison Community Coalition,
staff only reviewed any changes to the SR&R, Merrell said. The entire code is reviewed when a teacher is first hired, Merrell said. He said he now intends to review the code with teachers at the beginning, middle and end of the school year. There is no district policy requiring principals to notify FCPS officials that training with teachers has occurred, said Paul Regnier, a spokesman for the system.

Merrell reviewed the reporting procedure with teachers during a Jan. 31 teacher
workday, in a 30-minute session that also reviewed suspected bullying incidents,
texting, Facebook bullying and threats, as well as classroom emergency procedures.
Attendance at the session was voluntary.

He said he will also begin reviewing these policies with game managers every season. Previously, the school had gone over the policy only with new game managers.

School resource officers go through training when they are hired, and then again in
a one-week seminar every summer to refresh rules and regulations, said Fairfax County Police Sgt. Bill Fulton, who coordinates the county’s school resource officers.

Merrell said he’s always had the same three-step policy for teachers to follow:
identify, report, investigate.

When a report is made, either by telephone or through a call button in each
classroom, security officers respond to remove the student from the classroom.

There are four security staff at Madison High School who work with teachers to make preliminary investigations of reports, Fulton said. The officers and administrators determine if there is sufficient reason or evidence to investigate for alcohol or other drug use.

Merrell said when dealing with students suspected of using cigarettes, alcohol
or other drugs, the burden of proof is always on the school. He said if he smells
cigarette smoke on a student, for example, he couldn’t discipline that student for
smoking.

“They could have done it in the bathroom, outside, in a car … the burden of proof is
on me. I’ve got to catch them smoking,” he said.

The situation becomes more difficult in a large public forum, like an athletic event or a classroom, when you can’t pinpoint the source of the substance or behavior to one student, Merrell said.

Alcohol is easier to pinpoint, Merrell said, because if a teacher reports a student to
security and they can pull that student out into the hallway, they are usually able to
smell alcohol on the student’s breath.

Because many drugs can’t be detected that way, it becomes harder for teachers to
detect and harder for administrators who have to prove students are under the influence.

“When we talk with students at expulsion hearings typically they’ll tell you they
don’t smoke marijuana on school property,” Merrell said. “They go off school
grounds. They might come back on school grounds, so it's much more difficult with
a student who has been smoking marijuana or on other drugs. We don’t have an
instant test right there [like a breathalyzer]. Can we ask them to take a drug screen,
yes, but I’m not going to get that information right away.”

If an administrator or security team member does catch a student using a substance, or searches them and finds a substance, Merrell is required to notify the parent or guardian of the student, and calls a conference with them, along with a counselor or school nurse, he said.

The principal is not required to notify the school resource officer unless a
substance is found, Merrell and Fulton said.

“We allow the administrative investigation to run its course. Principals don’t have to involve the police unless they determine it’s a criminal violation,” Fulton said.

Merrell said his enforcement of the policy is “more draconian” than other schools in
the area. And based on conversations he’s had with his staff, he said Madison is in a
better place than it was 15 years ago, in part, he said, because of the school board’s zero
tolerance policy.

“The school I’m at in 2011 is much different than the school I was in 1994, 1995,”
he said.

Merrell points to the low number (52) of alcohol, tobacco and drug incidents
at Madison from 2007 to 2009 as an indication that what the school is doing is
working to keep drugs out of the building. But parents say those numbers are
actually an indication that there is either not enough enforcement, or, not enough
reporting.

Madison has one of lowest reporting rates — 52 incidents 2007 to 2009 — in the
county, but one of the highest self-reported use rates — 25 percent of seniors saying
they’ve used marijuana and 53 percent reporting alcohol use within 30 days of the
most recent youth survey for which school-specific data is available.

McLean High School reported 126 incidents in that two-year time frame, more than
twice that of Madison.

One vocal request from the community has been an anonymous “safe” process for teachers and students to use to report students who seem under the influence.

“One teacher told me that, yes, they know who deals and uses but they would never
come forward out of fear of retribution from staff and students and parents. That is
a perception that must change,” a parent said in an e-mail.

Merrell said nine out of 10 incidents at the school are reported by students.

Heather Barber, a parent, teacher and longtime Vienna resident, said a
noticeably absent voice from the past few months of conversations is the teachers.

“We’ve heard what everyone has been saying. What have the teachers been saying?
They haven’t said anything. That concerns me,” Barber said.

What the school should look at is the lack of trust between school personnel at all
levels and parents — and that comes from both sides, Barber said. No matter what
inquiry teachers make, parents become defensive and claim 'teachers don’t know
what they’re talking about.’ On the other end, it’s easy for teachers or administrators to label parents as “helicopter parents’ and try to avoid confrontation.

“It’s frustrating, I’ve played both roles. The most effective approach is having the
family and the school work together as a team to help a child develop and grow,
early on in the elementary school years," Barber said. "I have not seen a lot of that happening. Which is why when we reach the high school level, and the issues become drugs and not academics … situations like this arise. I’ve seen a lot of finger pointing. I haven’t seen a lot of working together.”

Tomorrow, Patch will look at the other policies Merrell has introduced as a result of community meetings this year.


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