Orange Unified Receives Grant to Identify, Aid Substance Abusers

The Orange Unified School District has received a federal grant totaling $177,457 aimed at curbing drug abuse while tending to high-risk students.

The grant enables the district to hire a coordinator, Vicki James, as a teacher on special assignment to oversee the Drug, Alcohol, Tobacco Education grant. The grant would focus on training teachers to deal with at-risk students, which according to James includes all high school students.

“All of our kids are at risk,” she said. “What do we mean by an at-risk kid? It’s someone at risk of substance abuse, dropping out. If you look at factors that make our kids at risk, you look at divorce, family crisis, including death in the family, dysfunctional parenting. It makes all of our kids eligible.”

With those negative factors in mind, the program will try to show students what makes some teen-agers resistant to temptation, James said.

“We try to give kids skills. Ultimately, we can never get inside a kid to make them feel good or bad about themselves, but we’re working with teachers on self-esteem and teaching them how to teach the children to resist the negative influences.”

“There’s a need for this kind of awareness training because we’ve got to get our kids’ attention if we want to teach them,” James said.