ALLEN PROBES DRUG CASES

School Taking Steps To Prevent Further Incidents

Police investigators and Child Protection Services officers still are
working to piece together the circumstances surrounding two separate
incidences of Allen Elementary School students caught with drugs in
the classroom Tuesday and Thursday.

Det. Tim Felver, the city's Drug Abuse Resistance Education officer,
said CPS is trying to determine how the children obtained the
marijuana they had on school property.

"Juvenile probation and (Grant County Deputy Prosecutor) Dana
Kenworthy are kind of standing by to see what comes out of the CPS
investigation," Felver said.

Two times in a three-day period, Marion police officers were called
to Allen Elementary School, 1115 E. Bradford St., for students who
had drugs on school property. Tuesday, officers were called when a
teacher discovered a un-smoked partial marijuana joint in a
10-year-old boy's desk in his third-grade classroom, reports said.

Tuesday's incident was followed Thursday when a 7-year-old boy in the
second grade approached another boy and said he had some marijuana,
then asked the classmate if he wanted to smoke it, police said.
Officials found a small baggie of marijuana in the 7-year-old's desk.

Kelly Zimmerman, Allen principal, said she has not been able to find
any link between the two situations and believes they were coincidental.

"I've had lots of conversations with the staff about being proactive
with students and being more aware, and having their eyes out for
that type of thing," she said.

Zimmerman said no changes have been made for security yet, and that
teachers are stationed in the hallways and parking lot of the school
each evening and morning. She also said Felver will speak next week
during an already planned assembly for the third through fifth
grades. The school's social worker, Lori Brane, also will do
activities with kindergarten through second-grade students.

"We are trying to raise awareness and prevention from that
standpoint," Zimmerman said.

Zimmerman also said she had received three or four phone calls from
parents who asking how they should go about talking to their children
about drugs.

"I think they are taking it for what it is, and that it is a
community issue that we as a community as a whole need to work on," she said.

April Monroe, a parent of two Allen elementary children, said she
doesn't blame the school for the drugs being in the classrooms.

"It's not Allen's fault that the drugs got into the school, they
can't prevent that the drugs got into the school, but what they can
control is how they respond to it," Monroe said.

Monroe said children should be educated at an earlier age about drug
use, and that there needs to be a stronger relationship between the
school and the parents.

"The school cannot do it by themselves; they have to have the
parents' help in this," she said. "They're our children, let's work
together. That is the only way we can make this school, or any school
a better place."

Grant County Sheriff Oatess Archey said he agrees parents play a
large role in their children's lives.

"A child is a reflection of their parents; a child does not know
about drug laws or anything like that," Archey said "Parents must
realize that our children are looking at us, at what we do and what
we say. Children imitate what they hear and see."