Schools

Berkeley High students at risk because of pot use

July 9, 2010 7:22 am by Frances Dinkelspiel

Berkeley High School

Students from Berkeley High are getting stoned in the park across the street from the school and in alleyways and other “out of the way” places in the downtown area, “morning, lunchtime, and mid-afternoon,” according to a new report which presents a plan to curb student drug and alcohol use.

Drug and alcohol use among Berkeley ninth graders is twice the state average and some students may be getting their pot from medical marijuana cardholders, the report contends. Eleventh graders also use drugs and alcohol at higher rates than students at other high schools do.

Making matters worse is the fact that the school district does not have an effective truancy program to trace students who skip school, so there are no repercussions if they hang out in Civic Center Park all day.

“During the daily school lunch break, numerous students go across the street to Civic Center Park and indulge in ATOD (Alcohol, tobacco and other drug) use and other negative behaviors, according to the report, which was drawn from information gathered from a 2008 California Healthy Kid Survey. “Due to limited police monitoring, school security and availability of other school staff during BHS lunch breaks, students find it easy to “get high” while on lunch break in Civic Center Park.”

Berkeley School Superintendent Bill Huyett was not available for comment Thursday but he told the Oakland Tribune that, “We do need to do more in the park across from the school. The school has to do more and so does the city. It doesn’t seem like we supervise that space very well. We need to have a conversation with the city about that.”

But some Berkeley High students contend that the report does not expose the full extent to which students are smoking pot and drinking. They are also getting high in school, the students said.

While smoking marijuana on campus is grounds for suspension or expulsion, it is not uncommon for students to smoke pot in the high school’s bathrooms, eat brownies laced with cannabis, or even use a vaporizer to smoke pot during class, according to several students interviewed by Berkeleyside.

Students smoking pot in class usually do it when a teacher steps out of the classroom or has their attention diverted.

“There are so many nooks and crannies in Berkeley High that it’s easy to do what you want,” said one student, who asked that her name not be used.

Students also fill their Kleen Kanteen thermoses with vodka and sip them throughout the day, according to another Berkeley High student.

And numerous students at Berkeley High celebrate “420” day. Started by students in San Rafael in 1971 and named after the time they smoked pot every day after school, the term now signifies April 20, when many kids attracted to the marijuana subculture come to school stoned, according to the students. Many students also drink or get high during Spirit Week.

But the rampant drug use does not mean most Berkeley High students are stoned,  said one student.

“It doesn’t make Berkeley High a bad school because for all the kids who do that (get stoned during lunch and on campus) there are people who don’t do that stuff.”

The report, put together by a task force of school, community, and city officials over a 10-month period, acknowledges that Berkeley’s tolerance of drugs, and focus on drug dependency by adults, may have contributed to lax oversight of teenagers. The report points out the dangers of using drugs and alcohol at a young age and sets out a series of steps to curb risky behavior.

“The fact that little attention has been focused on ATOD (alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs) youth prevention in the school district and in the city and that most of the services during the past 20 to 30 years have been provided to adult ATOD treatment has left a major service gap,” said the report.

It calls for a citywide coalition to address the problem.  Instead of focusing on suspensions or expulsions – punishment – the report recommends emphasizing positive behavior as a way to make teenagers change.

The report calls for:

  • Transforming discipline systems by implementing positive behavior systems for all grades, such as:
  • Support Building Effective Schools together (B.E.S.T) at each school in order to change the patterns of suspensions, expulsions, and office referrals for behavior
  • Reduce suspensions and create alternatives to suspensions at secondary schools by developing and implementing intervention strategies
  • Keep students on campus
  • Address the current racial problems that exist in schools
  • Focus on ATOD as one of the obstacles to student success and develop and implement a variety of interventions to address the obstacles
  • Strengthen the transformation of the discipline systems and address racial inequities.

BUSD Healthy Kids Survey 2009 Report presented to Berkeley school board from Mark Coplan on Vimeo.

26 Comments

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  • JNG

    But isn’t it great that it will be SOOOO much more convenient for them to buy their brownies down the street now once we set up commercial operations in Berkeley? They won’ t have to bother with the more troublesome and obvious “smoke inhalation” delivery system now in place. We’ll have the most popular city in the East Bay for kids to come visit and buy cheap in Berkeley. Hey, we can use that slogan for the Chamber of Commerce since nothing else is apparently working on the business front.

  • s z underwood

    JNG is exactly right. This is “trickle down” drug abuse coming from the City Elders. Get kids hooked on dope at a vulnerable period to ensure a steady tax revenue stream down the road off of their addiction. The City is, in effect, functioning like a drug overlord/cartel here, which pawns off the actual “street dealing” on pseudo-legitimate front businesses. The “addiction” the city is funding is its limitless need to pump up revenue to meet its every increasing employee payroll needs and obligations.

    Yes, technically, no underage minor will be allowed to purchase “smokes” legally, but as we now know from many years of tobacco industry lawsuits, cigarettes were being surreptitiously marketed and pushed on teenagers in a myriad of ways to get them hooked for life. Like the tobacco industry and lobby, the “medical marijuana” pushers in cahoots with tax revenue hungry cities will jump up and down and deny that their business interests include marketing to underage users, but this will be the same sort of doublespeak.

    The entire “medical marijuana” industry is a sham. Perhaps 5% of the current users are legitimate patients who should have access to cannabis to relieve pain for their conditions from real (not pot) doctors.

  • laura menard

    One of the primary reasons Jim Slemp had to go was his resistance and denial of the AOD problems on his campus. His resistance was legendary and profoundly dysfunctional.

    BUSD has hired a new director of Student Services; board members tell me this office’s operation will be a priority next year. This is critical to the stated goals, and has been one of the primary weaknesses in BUSD for quite a while.

    However Bill Huyett comments are not encouraging and the lack of knowledge by both the city/schools officials about prevention continue to be an obstacle to progress. Prevention of AOD problems especially in youth means addressing availability and access. The city’s tobacco program is successful is because it is built on the prevention model, outreach, education, monitoring and enforcement.

    The city approved and then did not implement the BAPAC prevention based proposal for regulating alcohol sales; this model is equally applicable for oversight of marijuana dispensary operations.

    Santa Barbara did an excellent study assessing public health and safety impacts during the process of determining how many pot clubs to authorize. Just listen to Berkeley’s city council discussion and weep, council members relied on “psychic’ powers in considering how many clubs, and no one seemed interested in questioning how they would convert illegal operations to legal or the myth of collecting tax revenue.

    The city of Berkeley is expanding alcohol sales in downtown/Telegraph and marijuana sales throughout the city. There is little if any capacity for oversight and a while there was been talk about developing the multi-agency systems so common in cities that are interested in supporting quality of life, we have not seen any progress here. Kamlarz and Bates prefer the arbitrary and discretionary permitting and nuisance abatement approach which their former city attorney wrote into the municipal code. Supported by the politics of divide, marginalize, placate and conquer thus undermining any community groups and staff who want to see real progress in community benefits and services.

  • http://basiscraft.com Thomas Lord

    NPR and Youth Radio recently did a story titled:

    “Do Looser Laws Make Pot More Popular? Not So Far”

    There are a couple of gists to the report:

    1. Jurisdictions in which pot laws are liberalized and/or enforcement relaxed do not exhibit an increase in consumption among people 12 and older.

    2. Critics reason that making pot easier to obtain must obviously lead to higher consumption. The studies don’t back them up.

    3. Berkeley High is notorious for a high level of use.

    4. Students at Berkeley High describe a condition of very easy availability of pot.

    5. Students at Berkeley High, asked to guess what percentage of peers use, tend to vastly over-estimate.

    6. Use at Berkeley High measured with no change at pot laws became liberalized.

    7. People seeking treatment for pot abuse are increasing in number in cities where dispensaries have appeared, although use appears to be holding steady. It is unclear why (there is some speculation that it is the result of diversion of violators from prison to treatment).

    http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127746216

    In other news (sorry, don’t have the link handy), police departments in Denver CO, San Francisco, and LA went looking for statistics to back up the claim that dispensaries lead to increased crime. In all three cases, they reported back that there was no such evidence.

    Denver discovered that the crime risk of dispensaries was on par with the risk of conventional pharmacies. Dispensaries in Denver are less of a crime magnet than liquor stores and banks.

    None of this contradicts the thesis that pot use at BHS is way too high. None of this contradicts calls for better truancy enforcement and better security on and off campus.

    What is called into question by studies like these is the notion that pot liberalization leads to increased abuse.

    I also agree with Underwood to a degree that the medical marijuana movement and practice is rather disingenuous. If you have $100-$200 to spend on it you will have trouble not being able to get a card.

    Please consider, though, two consequences of that “sham”:

    First, suppose that a lot of the pot that kids get their hands on comes from that system. If it is true that overall use is not on the rise, then the main consequences are a safer supply from a less profitable black market of intermediaries.

    Second, while it is easy to raise a skeptical eyebrow at licensed physicians who run cannabis card factories, there is an argument to be made that these physicians do not increase the level of use and do increase the overall public health (by providing an alternative to completely unregulated markets). It may very well be, as those opposed to the “War on Drugs” have said for years, that the liberalization of pot laws has a dampening effect on levels of violent crime, property crime, and so forth.

  • http://house226.blogspot.com m

    Jesus, they needed to do a report on this? Why couldn’t they just walk across the street during lunch and take a whiff? Huyett saying they don’t do a good job of policing the park shows how completely out of touch they are on this issue. Stop talking about doing more and just do more.

  • deirdre

    Frances, thank you for taking the time to write such an important story. Providing information on this topic is a real public service.

    Thomas, can you clarify something? did you include the information about the Youth Radio report to say that the gradual proliferation of dispensaries is not shown to be related to pot use by students during the school day on or near BHS? maybe I’m just not clear on your overall conclusions about whether the radio-story findings support or contradict Frances’ article.

    And I should disclose here fyi that I am not in favor of pot dispensaries in Berkeley … just wanted to acknowledge my bias.

  • BHS Parent

    Surround the park with police at lunchtime and sweep it from one end to the other. Any person found in possession of an illegal substance (including minors with tobacco) gets sent to juvenile hall, where they will remain until their parents collect them. Repeat offenders get suspensions from school, and anyone in possession with enough drugs to be considered a seller is expelled. Any adult opposed to such a plan is in essence condoning the use of drugs, alcohol and tobacco by our children.

  • http://basiscraft.com Thomas Lord

    dierdre, you asked:

    Thomas, can you clarify something? did you include the information about the Youth Radio report to say that the gradual proliferation of dispensaries is not shown to be related to pot use by students during the school day on or near BHS? maybe I’m just not clear on your overall conclusions about whether the radio-story findings support or contradict Frances’ article.

    I was mainly responding to the earlier comments by JNG and s z underwood that tried to link the BHS problem to dispensary liberalization.

    You disclosed your bias so I’ll offer up some of mine:

    The best I understand the science of pot’s effects, responsible use in mid-20s and up is not so bad and has benefits (and yes, there are also medical uses with very clear benefits). At the same time, use – especially frequent and/or heavy use – up to about the early 20s is distinctly not so good for people’s brains. So I agree with Frances’ gist here that the high level of use at BHS is a problem, not a lifestyle choice.

    The best I understand the evidence concerning pot liberalization laws: they ain’t the problem and if they’re not neutral in effect they’re probably positive in terms of mediating many kinds of damage.

    Underwood’s take on the city acting almost like its own kind of cartel here — that doesn’t strike me as completely off the mark. Its wrong to conclude the city is pimping out kids here – what evidence I can find suggests the opposite. Its arguably but far from certainly wrong to say that that “cartel” approach is bad – to my mind it *might* be a rational response to the present context. What are the realistic alternatives?

    Me, I’m somewhat in favor of dispensaries and yet also somewhat opposed to the conduct and impact of at least one of the current dispensaries. It’s a tricky matter. Increasing competition also gives greater political freedom to more strictly control them — seems like a reasonable compromise to me. I’m just about certain (anecdotally, not evidentially – having seen the before and after shots of the scene) that the dispensaries take a decent amount of the profit out of the street trade and neutralize certain forms of very bad crime we’d otherwise see.

    I guess my main point is that, yeah, I believe it, BHS has some substance abuse issues to deal with and those are vital – but it is a mistake (as far as I can tell) to try to leverage that issue into a general assault on the liberalization laws. There are enough facts on the ground here to question that linkage.

  • http://basiscraft.com Thomas Lord

    Surround the park with police at lunchtime and sweep it from one end to the other. Any person found in possession of an illegal substance (including minors with tobacco) gets sent to juvenile hall, where they will remain until their parents collect them.

    So, what do you do on the second day when the kids engaged in this stuff scatter to the four winds (and continue to engage in this stuff)? Out of sight, out of mind?

  • SFMichele57

    When I started working last year in downtown Berkeley, I was shocked to see the high school population roaming the area every lunch hour during the week.
    Clearly, no one was thinking. An “open campus” bodes only ill – for everyone.
    The merchants were not happy; they had to do double-duty at the noon hour, both tending to business and baby-sitting would-be shoplifters. Adults with only an hour to eat lunch and run errands have plenty of competition from the students in shops and cafes. With expanded liquor sales and pot decriminalization on the horizon, it is way past time to close the campus all day. FYI, I’m not a parent of a student. My son is 10 years past high school age. But I once was a high school student. The whole issue of open campus consumed the student body when I was in school. We finally got the privilege (that’s what it is) and ironically found that the school was six blocks from the lone fast-food outlet! There was, fortunately for the students and our parents and the school district, simply no where to go, nothing to do. I would hope that *when* the campus is closed, the locavore booster crowd would work with the students to upgrade the school’s in-house food service. Because that will be the next area in which students will express their unhappiness and rail for change and “freedom, if it is not already.

  • deirdre

    I wanted to raise the ‘open campus’ question as well. Would someone please remind me why BHS has an open campus — ? too logistically difficult to control entry/exit? I guess we may have had an open campus when I was in high school, but since nothing interesting was available within a mile of campus, the only roaming students were the ones headed out to the orchard to smoke pot, so they were instant targets for suspicion by staff…

  • http://house226.blogspot.com m

    It’s my understanding that BHS (where my son did his freshman year) has an open campus because there is not enough space to the entire student population to eat lunch on campus.

  • laura menard

    Politics and lack of leadership.
    Slemp would not even discuss it during city/police/bhs meeting about student conduct downtown. He was known to be an obstructionist who practiced obfuscation in administrative oversight for attendance, truancy, violence, crime and AOD problems.

    The open campus goes way back, but the ’89 earthquake damaged the cafeteria so the open campus policy was official. When asked the BHS/BUSD like to use double talk, and described the campus as closed but open at lunch. Truant kids can be seen daily in the park after lunch.

    The best option is a split lunch schedule, then food service could meet the population needs, and the cafeteria budget just might sustain itself, rather than need to be subsidized from the general education fund.

    As I explained earlier, tax payers pay twice for ineffective supervision of students, 13 Safety officers and the BPD bike patrol.

    The main reason nothing changes here is adults in Berkeley will not agree that teens should be required to accept structure and boundaries.

    Read Huyett comments, he is still repeating this poor logic.

    Read students comments this past year on facebook,
    “you know your from BHS when……”

    it is all there for the uninitiated to be schooled on BHS climate and culture

    The solutions are known and not that difficult to implement, there is no political will, why should there be the “findings” provide justifications for maintaining ineffective programs with jobs for the well connected.

  • s z underwood

    An excellent recent memoir on the highly destructive effects of chronic pot smoking from the teenage years onwards is provided by Adam Nemoy’s “My Incredibly Wonderful, Miserable Life: an anti-Memoir.” (yes, the “son of Spock”). Born into privilege and with doors open to him at every turn, he reports that his marijuana dependency destroyed his marriage, several careers and nearly ended his life.

    The author has no political ax to grind and he’s not now on a fake, moralistic anti-drug crusade either to cash in on his notoriety. He’s merely reporting the background of his personal collapse:

    [From the book's description]

    Live long and prosper? Ha.

    Last week, Adam Nimoy woke up in his beautiful house with his wife and kids in West Los Angeles. Today, he’s waking up in a sleeping bag on an air mattress in a two-bedroom apartment with no furniture thinking, “How the hell did I get here?”

    A thirty-year battle with drug addiction, three career changes, one divorce, a major mid-life crisis, and countless AA meetings later, he tells his cautionary — and very funny — tale.

    In this frankly humble and hilarious anti-memoir, Adam Nimoy shares the incredibly wonderful, miserable truth about life as a newly divorced father, a forty-something on the L.A. dating scene, a recovering user, and a former lawyer turned director turned substitute teacher.

    http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/product-description/1439125465/ref=dp_proddesc_0?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books

  • Peggy

    There are parents who tried to address truancy via the Safety Committee (an appropriate venue) and for the last couple of years their efforts were hampered by Admin. at every turn. Let’s give the new Principal a chance to make that right. And let’s look at what Kamala Harris did in San Francisco – a powerfully effective anti-truancy program administered through the DA’s office. Was it fair? It worked.

    Ralph Cantor visited a few science classes this spring and taught kids what drugs and alcohol do to the teenaged brain. From all reports, these visits were wildly successful. He could be put to good use in the Social Living curriculum via science classes. Let’s give him the chance to make an even larger contribution in that area this year.

    I had the rather humorous experience of attending a meeting in the BUSD offices this past April 20. I asked the 2 school board members in attendance and the Superintendent if they knew what 4/20 was. One of them knew the answer. I informed them that right across the street, much of BHS was celebrating 4/20. It was all pretty ironic.

    There is one silver lining to this cloud. Many kids at BHS know at least one completely burnt out druggie kid, a lost soul, someone who has gone somewhere they do not wish to go – and that sacrificial lamb serves as a constant warning of what can happen if they don’t control their urges. No one helps those kids – or maybe someone tries and fails – but those kids do serve as a powerful warning.

    BHS should be connecting with Young AA sponsors who come and talk to kids in class. This was done in the ’90′s when 20-something’s with the HIV virus came to BHS social living classes to talk about safe sex.

    So much could be done in the areas of truancy, alcohol and pot (weed, the kids call it) with a pro-active approach. Let’s see what this year brings.

    Here’s a shout out to Frances – thanks for this article!

  • JNG

    So TL according to your logic from reading this report:

    “…Still, Berkeley school officials were shocked last year when they saw results from the statewide “California Healthy Kids” survey of student drug use. Sixty-three percent of the district’s 11th graders reported smoking pot in their lifetime — 20 points higher than the state average.”

    We shouldn’t be worried because consumption is already so high, what’s a few more percentage points? And your other point you draw from these reports is that these kids can now look forward to a “safer” supply of pot?

    I guess by your perspective you would have read the news in 1912 and reported that the Titanic was just a minor boating accident. You’re a master a reading material and extracting only what you want to read I guess.

    Oh, and BTW, the crime report dealt with dispensaries, not commercial production. The Berkeley code specifically limits dispensaries to not have their production readily visible from neighboring properties, because the temptation and ease of trespassing is so high. Now we’re suggesting removing all these safeguards by simply providing high capacity operations where it will be easier for criminals to identify and abscond with larger amounts.

    I feel safer already.

  • http://basiscraft.com Thomas Lord

    JNG,

    I would hope that I spoke clearly enough and that you are literate enough to know that I said no such thing as what you accuse me of saying. If you look carefully, you’ll see that regarding your question:

    We shouldn’t be worried because consumption is already so high, what’s a few more percentage points?

    I said that the high level of consumption is a problem but that there is evidence that the liberalization laws extant and contemplated are not contributing to that problem.

    And your other point you draw from these reports is that these kids can now look forward to a “safer” supply of pot?

    That part is rightly understood as anecdote-based speculation on my part. The independence of how liberal the laws are from the rate of consumption is based on various more objective studies. The safer supply bit is based on experience, anecdote, and common sense.

    Oh, and BTW, the crime report dealt with dispensaries, not commercial production.

    It was to keep that distinction clear that I explicitly mentioned that very fact.

    The Berkeley code specifically limits dispensaries to not have their production readily visible from neighboring properties, because the temptation and ease of trespassing is so high. Now we’re suggesting removing all these safeguards by simply providing high capacity operations where it will be easier for criminals to identify and abscond with larger amounts.

    Ok, well, here your theory is that people will respond to this possible change in the city code by creating attractive nuisances. I agree with you that that is a valid concern. Public awareness of that potential is worth building – so I’m not trying to shut you up (generally, I don’t try to shut anyone up but especially when they are making at least some plausible sense).

    All I’m saying is that Berkeley here is not exactly on the bleeding edge of these kinds of ordinances. Other jurisdictions have experience with them. People have gone looking for the dire consequences you envision – and they’ve come back saying “Nope… it’s not like that.”

    I can find some law enforcement orgs swearing up and down that that’s a real problem – a minority of them, but some. I’ve found none such that offer any evidence. I can find lots of newspaper reporters who exercise that trope. But in the allegedly fact-based, objective reporting – so far I see naught but refutations of the idea, even coming from police departments who went out looking for data to the contrary. Best evidence is that these liberalization laws are somewhere between neutral and beneficial.

    I don’t think the issue is easy. I’m not insisting with certainty that you are wrong. I’m just telling you what I see as I’ve looked into the matter, so far.

  • BHS Class of 1984

    Same as it ever was. Provo was always the place the pot smokers gathered — the campus was opened in the late 1970s and as far as I know has remained open to the present day. It certainly was an open campus in the early 1980s when I was a student. In those days you were allowed to smoke cigarettes (tobacco) on campus — just not marijuana cigarettes. That’s why people went across the street to Provo.
    I’m not saying this isn’t a problem, but all the outrage needs a bit of historical perspective — This has been a problem for a long, long, long, time at Berkeley High.

  • laura menard

    Class of “84

    and very doubtful anything will change……

    Especially because in Berkeley the school community empowers the principal to decide the community standards, without any accountability whatsoever.

  • s z underwood

    Based on the anecdotal evidence I have heard from longtime teachers and “old timers”, drug abuse probably peaked at BHS in the 1970s. Many students started out their day by getting high before school started. Then lunchtime offered another occasion to get stoned and finally after school was a huge “smoke in”. More hardcore users would light up even more often, either in the dilapidated bathrooms or somewhere with less supervision/oversight. Petty dealing on campus was also rampant.

    In those years, at least, there were very rarely any serious disciplinary consequences at BHS for use, possession or intent to sell. Many parents, some teachers (the more “popular” ones) and admininstrators also were also heavy users who enabled and facilitated the use of marijuana (and, in some cases, other drugs also).

    This problem stems from the adults in the community and the lax drug friendly culture. There is very little BHS admins. could do to stop this epidemic, short of creating a mini-police state which would be a cure worse than the disease.

  • SFMichele57

    Not enough room for students to eat lunch on campus? Eh?
    Who designed this building, anyway? Is there no commons/assembly hall (without seats bolted down)/lunch room? If there is no place to set up tables and benches/chairs and another place to heat up food or kitchen, why not?
    No, you don’t close down the entire school for a one-hour lunch. Way back when, our school had to cycle about 1600 students (400 per grade year) through lunch time, so 30-minute periods to eat (not recess, just eating) began at 11:30 and went on until 1:30 p.m. Not everyone ate “hot lunch,” or bought it at school, but there was room for anyone eating to sit down and eat food.
    Perfect? No. But did it work? Yes.

  • Elmwood Neighbor

    You can find the atchitectural details of the new construction at BHS here:

    http://tiny.cc/ewddm

    The school isn’t closed down during lunch. It’s that the BHS campus is very small and 3200 students in the open space is really cramped. If you’ve ever been on campus on the days when no one leaves (Spirit Week) you understand.

    There is a cafeteria plus outside space (the berm where students can sit and eat. My daughter and her friends brought their lunches pretty much all four years of high school. Usually they ate in a classroom (many teachers are in their rooms during lunch) and did homework. I think during senior year they would eat in the park. They didn’t do drugs or drink alcohol and felt perfectly safe.

    And while some say the merchants don’t like the open campus, I’m not so sure. BHS students spend a lot of money during downtown lunch.

  • Peggy

    “You can find the atchitectural details of the new construction at BHS here:

    http://tiny.cc/ewddm”
    This shows you what has already been done and is in use now. But there is more underway.

    Currently there is more construction taking place at the south end of the block, which is under construction for a new field house (currently there is no field house despite the fact that about a thousand BHS students take a sport.) The parking lot is closed and the teachers will all have to park in the neighborhood for the upcoming school year and they have not, despite numerous requests, been issued neighborhood permits. The horrible old building at Milvia and Durant that houses the warm pool and a bunch of unusable old classrooms has yet to be torn down. That is supposed to provide more classroom space since classes are already meeting in hallways and lobby spaces due to severe overcrowding. Someone else can speak to whether this last phase of the construction plan is funded (I don’t know.) But moving the warm pool off of the BHS campus was a first step toward BHS getting to actually use all its space for students, and since the building was so decrepit this was another good reason for that warm pool to move. I am told there is mold in the weight room and the roof is so bad there are floods in rainy season.

  • s z underwood

    Regardless of closing the campus or available space to eat or serve lunch, the roots of the drug epidemic at BHS are not “spatial” in nature. Some perceptive quotes from current Berkeley High students in the Daily Cal version of this story:

    http://www.dailycal.org/article/109811/high_school_s_drug_use_doubles_national_rate

    Though the report also includes a recommendation to close off popular lunch time drug use spots, students question its efficacy and doubt the administration can implement it.

    “The school doesn’t have enough resources or organizational skills to keep track of every student, and the cafeteria area can’t support that many kids in a 45-minute period,” Lydon said.

    Many Berkeley High students agree that imposing restrictions on their lunch time mobility would do little to reduce drug use.

    “People will get high if they want to, regardless (of obstacles),” Gillies said.

    [...]

    Many Berkeley High students said they feel that marijuana use is especially unlikely to be reduced by restrictions because it is ingrained into Berkeley culture, a fact acknowledged by the report, which said, “Berkeley has a reputation that is closely tied to active drug use and abuse.”

    Some, however, believe the community’s drug culture can be positive.

    “Berkeley kids don’t really use harder drugs that are problems elsewhere,” said Ben Lee, who graduated in 2010. “Some say we have a drug problem. I say we have the drug solution.”

  • laura menard

    I know Ms Gillies well, and I would not ask any BHS student since they are not informed about AOD prevention policy nor do they understand that environmental prevention impacts social norms. Again, the group of us who have been working on these issues for years are not impressed with vague recommendations in the city/schools report but gratified that this minor progress indicates that at some people working REALIZE change is needed.

    We do know what best practice is, we have local data defining the problem, not just CHKS by the way, we need political will, and reporters who talk with experts not kids so the public begins to learn about community solutions.

    The reason the 2008 CHKS report was finally presented to the school board is I filed 3 UCP for non compliance regarding grants and SB 187 both of which require CHKS reports publicly presented. The continued pressure brought the change in just the first step, acknowledging the problem is real.

    In 2000 I was personally responsible for cleaning up one of the longest running drug dens at BHS, teachers and administrators were not aware, however the safety staff knew what was going on and did not bother to do their job.

    Until you are on the ground engaged and know ed code, what SART and SARB is, when the DA is involved or not with truancy, much of what is said here is speculation. It is sad how little real information is provided this community in order to inform judgment.

  • http://basiscraft.com Thomas Lord

    Ms. Menard,

    As I said before, in spite of our apparently many and deep differences on various matters, in this area I think you have one of your stronger causes.

    With at least intended respect, even if imperfectly practiced respect, I’d like to ask that you “unpack” that comment a bit. Pretend every other reader here is as stupidly naive as you think I am and explain more thoroughly. Tell us, if you will, a bit more about how you see AOD abuse prevention programs functioning and cite some sources. Tell us, if you please, a bit more about the CHKS report and your efforts there. Say what you can, please, about “cleaning up one of the longest running drug dens”.

    You say that “Until you are on the ground engaged and know ed code ….” Well, ok, but perhaps one of the ways in which you can help the most at this juncture is to pitch in with some better orientation.