DRUG USE IN SCHOOLS

Sometimes it seems as if when it comes to our schools, we forget that
we're dealing with children. We forget that the ultimate point is to
educate them as an integral part of equipping them to arrive at
adulthood poised to succeed.

So too often we focus on policies that punish them for making mistakes
instead of creating conditions that help them succeed.

That makes the report from PNJ education reporter Erin Kourkounis that
drug expulsions in Escambia County schools are down by half this year
such good news. She reported that school officials credit the
district's new drug policy.

Students were empowered to participate in the plan, which includes
both enforcement -- primarily the use of drug dogs to search schools
- -- and drug use prevention education by the students themselves.

No, in a best of all possible school worlds we wouldn't need drug dogs
in our schools. But the reality is that it helps get the message to
students that drug use can have serious consequences.

Preventing children from using illegal drugs is critical to ensuring
that they focus on getting an education in school, not other -- more
negative -- activities. It is also important to keep them from
hurting other students' efforts to learn.

But it is no solution to a real-world drug problem to simply kick
students out so that we don't have to deal with them. "Out of sight,
out of mind" is not a sound policy. Drug-using students are a problem,
but our schools are not doing their job by pretending the problem does
not exist.

Students who bring drugs to school all but shout at the top of their
lungs that they have a problem. A policy that uses their peers to
educate them about drug use, while also visibly raising the chance
that they will be caught for doing so, helps our schools, and helps
students.

That's a successful policy.