Board Votes to Uphold District Drug Policy

Despite parental pleas and the specter of another legal showdown, the board of Newport-Mesa Unified School District voted Tuesday night to uphold its policy calling for “zero tolerance” of drugs and alcohol.

“It has been proven over the years to be a good deterrent,” said Jim de Boom, board president. “Kids used to show up at graduation drunk, and that doesn’t happen anymore. I also don’t hear about stoned kids in the classrooms anymore.”

Under the policy, upheld by a vote of 4 to 3, students who are caught under the influence of drugs or alcohol at school or school events are transferred to another district school for 90 days.

Parents have not argued against the need for a strict drug and alcohol policy. What they and some board members have questioned is the punishment.

The mandatory, 90-day transfer, they said, is too harsh because it takes students away from their friends and from extracurricular activities, including sports.

“I don’t think it’s fair,” said parent Dan Deming, “because a kid who is active in school is more impacted by a 90-day ban than kids who aren’t.”

The policy, instituted in 1990, was challenged when Jennifer McCartin, the daughter of Municipal Judge Michael McCartin, was sent to Newport Harbor High School in September because she admitted to drinking beer before attending a dance at Estancia High. The family filed a lawsuit to have Jennifer reinstated as a student at Estancia, but the request was denied in Orange County Superior Court.

Also in September, eight soccer players at Estancia were transferred after they were found drinking in a hotel room after a soccer tournament in Santa Barbara over the summer. The parents of one the players are now considering a lawsuit of their own.

Board members de Boom, Judy A. Franco, Serene Stokes and Wendy Leece, who voted to keep the policy, said they have seen positive changes at the schools since the policy was adopted.

Football stadiums are no longer littered with beer bottles after games, and it is no longer common to find students vomiting in bathrooms at school dances, they said.

“I don’t question the results” of the policy, Franco said. The previous policy, a five-day suspension led to the infractions because students considered it a vacation, she said.

But trustees James M. Ferryman, Martha Fluor and Edward H. Decker voted against maintaining the mandatory transfers.

Ferryman, whose son is spending the semester at a different school after being caught drinking at a dance, said he did not think the transfer was constructive punishment.

Instead, he would prefer to send students to drug counseling, assign them to community service and ban them from sports for a couple of weeks rather than send them to another school.

“Kids are going to screw up,” he said. “But I don’t think you have to throw the book at them. You can make the point more constructively.”