Alcohol, Drug Abuse Seen as Biggest Threat

Student drug and alcohol abuse is the most serious problem facing local schools, Orange County residents said in a poll for the Times Orange County Edition.

Of 600 residents surveyed Aug. 6-8, 42% said drug and alcohol abuse by students is a big problem in public schools in their area. Asked about other issues that pose big problems for schools, 30% cited lack of funding, 29% overcrowded classes, 24% violence and gangs, and 10% rundown facilities.

When asked to further specify what they regarded as the “single biggest problem with public schools in your area,” 25% of those surveyed pointed to the students, saying they abuse drugs and alcohol, lack discipline and manners, become involved with gangs and are often truant.

“The accessibility of drugs at school is very high,” said Roger Johnson of Santa Ana, a poll respondent who said his son is a high school student in the Orange Unified School District. “I think going onto any campus is very easy for anybody who is not a student, and I feel . . . that should be taken care of--because outsiders can go on campus, and they can sell their drugs on campus.”

Educators, however, say it would be a mistake to interpret the poll findings as a sign that Orange County schools in particular have a significant drug- and alcohol-abuse problem. Instead, they say, the poll is an indication that respondents are aware that there is a societal problem of substance abuse and that schools must address the issue.

“I think that’s pretty accurate in terms of the emphasis we put on alcohol and substance abuse education,” said Dennis Smith, superintendent of the Laguna Beach Unified School District. “With the emphasis being placed on it, people aren’t afraid to say, sure, there are drugs, there are instances of drug abuse in our school. . . . It’s become a societal issue, and we have a responsibility to teach and guide students on its restricted use.”

Norman Prendergast of Costa Mesa, one of the parents questioned in the poll, conducted by Mark Baldassare & Associates of Irvine, said lack of student discipline and manners is a big problem for schools.

“The teachers are intimidated quite a lot, I think,” he said. “The intimidation should cease. The authority should be reinstated.”

Yet Prendergast, whose son is a senior at Estancia High School and whose daughter just graduated from there, gives Orange County’s public schools a high rating overall. In fact, he gave them an A.

Fourteen percent of those polled said the biggest problem with schools is that they do not receive enough funding; 13% said teachers are the biggest problem, being either underqualified or underpaid. And 9% cited crowded classrooms.

“I’m not really impressed with the schools here,” said Louise Bent of Dana Point, who has a son in junior high school. “There are teachers in my son’s schools that do not teach. They show movies every day.”

Jerry Jones of Fullerton said schools don’t work hard enough to communicate with parents: “There is a gap between parents and schools. Many times parents don’t find out anything about a student until the problem (reaches) an extreme.”

But Jones conceded that if schools are failing children, it is not all the fault of the schools. Societal changes take their toll on children, he said.

“There’s a lot of things going on in the schools today that weren’t there before, like gangs and different things like that,” he said. “There’s a lot of pressure on the child.”

Sharlene McHenry, who has three children in the Irvine Unified School District, was one of the parents surveyed who expressed concern about overcrowding. McHenry said she was shocked at class sizes when she moved here nine years ago from the small town of Osceola, Neb.

“My daughter just came home today and told me there were 37 kids in her global economics class in high school,” McHenry said.

“In the town where we lived, if a class had 30 students, they would split it into two with 15 students and hire another teacher who could give them more individualized attention,” she said.

Sandy Schramm of Villa Park in the Orange Unified School District said schools don’t challenge students enough.

“They tend to teach rote learning, and they don’t motivate them to go out and learn something on their own. . . . They don’t make them go out and think.”

She said her daughter goes to school at Cerro Villa Middle School in the Orange Unified School District, which she called a good school.

“This is a very affluent area, with higher-educated parents and a little more emphasis on learning than maybe some other areas of Orange Unified,” she said. Parents in those areas, she said, tend to demand more of schools, and that makes a difference in how schools perform.

Ron Aguirre, whose three children attend Garden Grove schools, agreed that parents make a difference in their child’s school and said lack of parent participation is the biggest problem facing public schools.

“My wife and I are both in the PTA, and there’s lots of times when there are no other parents at the meetings,” he said. “We volunteer to do as much as we can. . . . We volunteer for dances they have in the schools. We’re out there serving juice, refreshments.

“I work just as hard as the next person, but we go because it shows the child that we care.”