When Paul Jennings and other members of the Stillwater Sunrise Rotary club agreed to help local schools prevent alcohol and drug use by teenagers, they had no idea how much their help would be needed.
The drug counselor position, which had been in place at Stillwater Area High School for at least the past two school years, lost funding and was cut.
So instead of helping expand the drug counselor services to the junior high schools this school year, the Rotary club increased its donation to the school district to help pay for the original chemical health professional job at the high school. If all goes according to plan, the district will be able to fill that job soon.
The Rotary club's donation is a small part of its larger effort to shine a spotlight on alcohol and drug use among teenagers and rally community leaders to help address the problem. Chemical health violations in Washington County schools nearly doubled in three years, from 159 in the 2004-05 school year to 306 last school year, according to the Washington County Chemical Health Action Collaborative. Local doctors add that they are seeing more incidents of prescription drug abuse among teenagers.
Last month, the Rotary club held a youth alcohol and drug symposium at Stillwater Junior High School, inviting medical professionals, law enforcement officials, politicians and school leaders. The club is hosting a public forum next week to solicit ideas from parents and others to deal with underage substance abuse.
Wanted: Community support
"This is an area that I've seen a need for in my community for a long time," said Paul Jennings, CEO of Jennings State Bank in Stillwater and chairman of the new Youth Alcohol & Drug Program steering committee. "We wanted to engage the leadership in Stillwater, especially the business community. We've been hearing from different support agencies in town that the business community has been missing in action."
Jennings, a recovering alcoholic, said he has seen a need to help teenagers, in particular, avoid the pitfalls of drinking. He would like to see a youth Alcoholics Anonymous chapter established in Stillwater to better address the needs of teenage addicts.
The Youth Alcohol & Drug Program is a subcommittee of the Washington County Chemical Health Action Collaborative, a countywide group that has been meeting for three years.
Last year, when the Stillwater Sunrise Rotary first got involved in this effort, it gave the Stillwater school district $5,000 to expand its drug counselor services to both junior high schools. But then federal funding was cut and the drug counselor resigned to take a job in another district.
The position was in jeopardy.
That's when the Rotary decided to increase its support, pledging $15,000 for the 2007-08 school year to help fill the position. The district also has been promised $20,000 from the Lakeview Medical Foundation for this school year to help replace the drug counselor, said Don Schuld, assistant superintendent for Stillwater Area Schools.
He said the district first wanted to add two more drug counselor positions at the junior high schools. Those counselors would primarily have focused on educating students about the dangers of alcohol and drug use to prevent them from using.
But with the funding gone, the district now hopes to maintain one chemical health professional position at the high school, he said. That person would spend three days a week working at the high school and two days a week the junior high schools.
Schools can't do it alone
"We feel that by the time we're ready to hire we'll have the funds to have a person for the balance of the school year," Schuld said.
So far, the Rotary has raised between $10,000 and $11,000 for the position.
Schuld said having more partners involved in addressing the drug and alcohol issue has been a welcome change. "It has heightened people's awareness that it's going to take a big commitment from the community to really address this issue," he said. "When you realize that students are only in school for 35 hours a week, 36 weeks out of the year, most of their waking time is spent outside of school. It's really gong to take parents and community to address this problem, because that's where most of the difficulties are occurring."
