Zero tolerance at Santa Rosa schools
Even 'good kids' get caught in the system
BY PAM BRANNON Gulf Breeze News news@gulfbreezenews.com

Rogers

A Gulf Breeze High student's mother made a desperate appeal to the Santa Rosa County School Board last week not to expel her daughter from her home school for the next year. The daughter had brought prescription drugs to school from her mother's medicine cabinet and given the pills to another student. But in the end the board stood by its policy of expulsion, and then sending the student to the school district's alternative education school - The Learning Academy.

The mother showed the Board a large portfolio her daughter had put together which included a student program for education on use of prescription drugs. The mother said she had made the girl do extensive research on the computer after the incident happened at school, and the girl had put together a program to explain to other students what can happen if you misuse prescription drugs.

"I have visited the Learning Academy. It seems like a good school. But my daughter is not like the students there. She made this one mistake, yes. But it was peer pressure. She has more than a 3.0 average, is very shy, and never in any trouble. She did not take any of the pills herself. She only brought it to school after another girl asked and asked her to - and she finally gave in. Now she has to go through weekly urine drug screening, which she has passed just fine. And she has to go through the courts. I just don't want her to have to leave her home school and all her friends and support system right now," the student's Mom said.

Gray

The mother said the girl would be willing to undergo any drug education programs or summer school programs the board would require if she could just return to Gulf Breeze High in August.

Superintendent of Schools John Rogers said, "It does my heart good to see you standing up for your kid. But there are other students at the Learning Academy for the same reasons as your child. How would we explain to them, if we made an exception here, why they have to go there and your daughter does not? You will never find a school board more concerned for these students. We are not kicking these students to the street. We didn't used to have any alternative for expelled students, but now we have an alternative. To be fair to all concerned, we have to go with the precedents we have set before. But there are options for her to return to her school, if everything goes well as we expect it will, long before the one year date set today."

Winkles

School Board Chair Hugh Winkles said, "When it comes to weapons and drugs, we cannot do anything less than zero tolerance. We have drawn this line in the sand, and we cannot change it now."

School Board members Ed Gray III of Gulf Breeze and Diane Coleman of Navarre both asked to see the program the student had put together, saying in the Fall they want to incorporate something into all the schools to educate students about misuse of prescription drugs.

Supt. Rogers said, "In these cases we have to worry about the safety of others. If a students gets ahold of the wrong pill, it could cause severe illness, or even death. we cannot take that chance."

Students expelled and sent to the Learning Academy by the board included:

* 10 Gulf Breeze High students - one for distribution of prescription drugs; one for possession of a weapon (pistol) and possession of marijuana; one for negotiating sale of marijuana on school property; one for possession

Coleman

of marijuana, under influence of marijuana, and negotiating sale of the drug; one for use and under influence of marijuana; two students for 'under influence of drugs"; one for possession of marijuana; one for possession of weapons and possession of marijuana; one for distribution of drugs and possession; and one student or Sexual Offense.

* Two Gulf Breeze Middle School students - both for possession of marijuana

* One Milton High School student - possession of marijuana

* One Holley-Navarre Middle School student - sexual offense

* One Navarre High - possession of marijuana

* One Avalon Middle School - possession of marijuana

* Hobbs Middle School - possession of marijuana

* Two at Pace High school - one for possession of prescription drugs; and one for possession of weapons (knives) and possession of drug paraphernalia.