Schools Must Choose Between Smoking, Funds

Ventura County schools will have to decide by the end of the month whether to shut down faculty smoking rooms by 1996 or give up federal and state funding for drug, alcohol and tobacco prevention programs.

Representatives of the county’s school districts said Thursday that they will abide by the new requirement, but some teachers who smoke are fuming over what they call an encroachment on their freedom of choice.

Under a new requirement of the Drug, Alcohol and Tobacco Education (DATE) program, school districts must certify that elementary, middle and high schools will be free of tobacco by June, 1996. Ventura County schools received $1.6 million this year from the program, which is funded by federal and state sources.

The schools are also required to penalize violators of the no-smoking policy, to display no-smoking signs at all school entrances and to establish programs to help teachers and students quit smoking.

Districts must agree by the May 31 application deadline to establish the no-smoking policy or they will not receive DATE funds for the 1991-92 school year.

Officials of the districts expect DATE funding to be cut 30% to 50% this year because of program changes, but they say the remaining funds are necessary to their shoestring budgets.

Since schools already prohibit students from smoking on campus, the DATE requirement would extend the ban to teachers and administrators.

Last November, officials in the Los Angeles Unified School District approved a policy that will ban smoking at its campuses by next school year. The policy drew only token opposition from some teachers who smoke.

“People’s attitudes toward smoking are changing in society. When you fly on an airplane you can’t smoke, you go to a restaurant and there’s a nonsmoking section, and many offices and public buildings are adopting smoke-free policies,” said John Elfers, a consultant for the Healthy Kids Center, which runs the DATE program in Ventura County.

“Teachers and school administrators have to be able to model what they are teaching. They have to say ‘Yes, we are willing to implement a smoke-free educational environment.’ This is a very important component of our program,” Elfers said.

Officials at several school districts said they plan to sign the agreement because they cannot afford to do otherwise.

“The acceptance of the tobacco funds means we’re headed toward a tobacco-free campus,” said Deanna Collins, Santa Paula Union High School DATE coordinator.

Collins said she smoked for 30 years before quitting in December, several months after becoming her school’s DATE coordinator. “I stopped cold turkey, and I feel real good about it,” she said. “I talk to students every chance I get about my addiction and quitting, and tell them what I went through.”

School employees countywide said the number of smokers on district staffs has declined in recent years. Many said making campuses smoke-free in five years should be no problem.

“I think it’s a pretty attainable goal,” said Marvin Van Wagner, principal at Meiners Oaks Elementary School, where only one part-time teacher smokes.

Charles Smith, assistant superintendent at Moorpark Unified School District, said his district plans to phase in voluntary programs to help people quit by 1996.

John Uelmen of Newbury Park High School, one of six teachers in that school who smoke, said he thought that the ban was a good idea. “I wish I could quit,” he said. “I see students with cigarettes in their pockets and I lecture them: ‘Do as I say, not as I do.’ ”

News of the impending smoking ban, however, was not well received by teachers taking their afternoon break in the Ventura High School smoking room Thursday.

“There may be a teacher who is absolutely brilliant in the classroom, but he’s a smoker. On the other hand, there may be another teacher who is less inspiring, less creative, but doesn’t smoke,” said one teacher. “I think we’re walking a fine line in deciding what is essential to a good teacher.”

All of the teachers in the smoking room asked to remain anonymous because they didn’t want students to know they smoked.

“Most of us leave this lounge with mints in our mouths or breath spray to conceal from the students the fact that we smoke,” said another teacher, who was puffing on a Virginia Slims. “I think it is unfair to take away our right to smoke on our free time as long as we’re not offending anybody else or influencing the students.”

“Even if they close this room,” another teacher added, “we’ll have to smoke somewhere. Maybe some teachers will go across the street and smoke with the students.”