SCHOOL DRUG POLICY TIGHTENED

Jell-O incident spurs quick-reporting rule

Nearly three months after a 9-year-old Terrytown girl was suspended for
bringing suspected alcoholic Jell-O snacks to school, the Jefferson Parish
School Board is tightening parts of its drug policy highlighted by the
controversial incident.

The board last week voted to require all principals to call police and turn
over drugs, alcohol or weapons on the day they are discovered. The revamped
policy also requires that a regional superintendent be contacted.

Under the former policy, only police, the students' parents and the
district's school safety office had to be informed, and no time frame for
doing so was suggested.

Board member Libby Moran, who proposed the changes, said her motion was
specifically directed at elementary school principals because they have the
least experience managing drug- and alcohol-related matters.

In a related issue, the board will consider redefining the system's
"look-alike" drug policy under which the student was punished.

A girl at Geraldine Boudreaux Elementary School was suspended Nov. 29 after
bringing to campus gelatin snacks resembling the alcohol-laced "Jell-O
shots" that are sold in bars.

According to the district, the fourth-grader told school officials she was
selling the treats to raise money for Christmas and that vodka and rum were
present when her mother, Adrienne Noble, made them at home.

Noble has denied her daughter ever told school officials that account and
that there was no alcohol present when the Jell-O was made.

The Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office eventually reported that the snacks
tested positive for alcohol, but it was unclear whether liquor or
fermentation of the gelatin produced the results, School Board member Gene
Katsanis said in December.

Because the gelatin was unrefrigerated between the time it was taken from
the child and when it was picked up by deputies Dec. 6, it was no longer in
a state where it could be tested conclusively for alcohol, Katsanis said at
the time.

Carol Mancuso, the district's director of school safety and discipline, said
Monday that she could not explain why it took a week for the snacks to be
given to authorities.

The incident, which grabbed national headlines, "made us realize we needed
to tighten the boundaries of our policy," she said. "It's a fine-tuning
process."

The girl was suspended under the district's "look-alike" drug policy, which
can punish students for having substances resembling actual drugs.

Board member Mark Morgan has proposed rewording that policy, which targets
"any substance designed to look like or represented as a drug."

Morgan called that language unclear and wants to change the policy to make
it easier to understand that a student must knowingly represent a substance
as a drug to violate the rule. The board will consider Morgan's changes in
March.

For example, a student who brings in a bag of powered sugar to put on his
food should not be punished because a school official thinks the package
resembles cocaine, Morgan said.

Mancuso defended the "look-alike" policy as necessary because items falling
under the measure can be indicative of a drug or alcohol problem and because
those items can encourage drug use in the future.

"We're just trying to put some safety nets in place," she said.