PORT ANGELES — The long-term strategy: “build an arsenal” in the battle against drug abuse by students.
The short-term tactics: reinforce the frontline forces.
To that end, the Port Angeles School District will hire two full-time drug and alcohol intervention specialists, one each at Stevens Middle School and Port Angeles High School.
“How can we regiment ourselves, build up an arsenal, so we know our families can get help?” asked Marc Jackson, school superintendent.
“We’ve got families that are upside-down,” he said Thursday.
“We need a jolt in the arm to help deal with these issues.”
He said he hoped the counselors would be doing their jobs by October.
Jackson said the primary problem isn’t students’ using drugs — although that occurs — but families in which parents are addicted.
Like the drug problem, the solution won’t be found only in the schools.
“It’s not just a school issue,” Jackson said. “It‘s a social issue.
“We’ll rely heavily on our outside contacts to resolve some of these outside issues.
“We’ve got to reach out to our community, and we’ve got to talk to our parents to find a way we become better at doing this.”
The School Board’s action — which Jackson characterized as “enough is enough” — will dovetail with goals set by the Port Angeles Citizen Action Network last month.
PA CAN member Angie Gooding, a teacher at Stevens, called the decision “unbelievably amazing news.”
The group has included an in-school drug-education program as one of its goals, which also consist of working with the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Olympic Peninsula to provide volunteer mentors and to expand after-school programs, and assisting Oxford House, a national network of homes for recovering addicts that has six facilities in Port Angeles.
The school system’s current counselors, teachers and staff are overwhelmed with cases in which young people go home to families torn by addiction, Jackson said.
“We’re going to do something drastically about this,” he said, “to relieve some of the stress that’s been built up systemically to deal with drug education.”
He called it “a fantastic opportunity to do something about a problem that seems to haunt our town.”
Jackson said the drug menace is a personal issue with him: His brother’s 22-year old son “was trying to get away from his addiction, but he didn’t make it.”
When his brother tried to wake the young man for work, he found the door locked. Breaking it down, he found his son dead.
“Just my glimpse of seeing the pain that he went through — that we went through as a family — my own sense of that is horrifying,” Jackson said.
“I deeply appreciate the understanding of what many of these families have had to go through.”
First, the school district must draft job descriptions for the new counselors, then conduct a hiring search. Even then, the task is daunting.
“It takes people years to put their lives backs together,” Jackson said.
“If you have young students in a household and they see their family members go through that craziness, that has an effect on them.
“I guess my sense is, enough is enough. The waiting game is over. Let’s roll up our sleeves and start dealing with this.
“It’s our town; they’re our kids. Let’s do the right thing.”
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Reporter James Casey can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or at jcasey@peninsuladailynews.com.