Ocean View District to Ban Smoking at All Its Facilities

The Ocean View School District Board of Trustees voted 3 to 2 Tuesday night to make the district the first in Orange County to ban smoking at all its schools and other facilities.

The trustees’ smoke-free policy, which becomes effective Feb. 1, prohibits anyone from smoking during school hours or during district-sponsored events anywhere at Ocean View’s 17 schools, district administrative offices, maintenance yard and transportation facility.

The prohibition eliminates smoking areas now designated at some of the district’s schools and other facilities for teachers, administrators, custodians and other employees.

Trustees Carolyn Hunt and Janet Garrick backed away from their previous support of the ban, saying they believe employees should still be able to smoke at designated outdoor areas.

In conjunction with the smoking prohibition, the board agreed to schedule American Cancer Society clinics to help employee and parent smokers who want to kick the habit.

Ocean View’s decision marks the latest example of a growing anti-smoking movement among the nation’s school districts the past two years.

According to a 1989 survey by the National School Boards Assn., 17% of school districts nationwide adopted policies last year banning tobacco use. Among those was the Riverside Unified School District, whose smoking prohibition served as a model for Ocean View’s policy.

The Los Angeles Unified School District is scheduled Nov. 15 to enact a similar smoke-free policy, which its board adopted last month.

In Orange County, the Fountain Valley School District currently has the most stringent anti-smoking policy. It forbids anyone from smoking inside district-owned buildings, but allows employees to smoke at designated outdoor areas as long as they are out of the sight of children.

Among the county’s higher-education districts, only the Coast Community College District prohibits smoking on all its properties.

Ocean View’s smoking ban is largely a symbolic statement to show students the district opposes tobacco use, trustees said.

Among the district’s 800 employees, only about 60 are smokers, according to an informal poll conducted in the past month by John Thomas, the district’s administrator of pupil personnel. And, aside from 15 teachers who smoke, the other employee smokers rarely, if ever, are in the presence of children, Thomas said.

“What we’re talking about here is a public health issue,” said Trustee Sheila Marcus, who proposed the smoking ban. “It is a statement that says if smoking is unhealthy for children, it’s unhealthy for adults,”

Like most other school districts that have prohibited smoking, Ocean View faced only a diminutive pocket of resistence to its policy. A small group of maintenance workers who smoke argued the smoke-free rule should not be extended to the maintenance yard and other district sites where no children are present.

In the coming weeks, district officials will continue finalizing details of the smoke-free policy.

Administrators will continue negotiating with representatives from the district’s two labor unions to decide how to enforce the ban and how violators will be reprimanded, Thomas said.

Additionally, Ocean View is awaiting a legal ruling from the County Department of Education to determine whether to extend the ban to former school sites the district now leases. Many of those properties are used as day-care centers, and one has been developed as an apartment complex.