HIGH STAKES AT LEBANON HIGH

Expulsions, Depression, Underage Drinking And Drug Use: How Administrators
Plan To Turn The Tide

LEBANON - Seventeen students have been expelled so far this year from
Lebanon High School, which administrators say underscores the need for
change in the way the school is organized.

School officials said 15 of the 17 expulsions involved drug use, and the
other two involved bringing knives onto campus.

All of the drug offenses were committed during the school day, involving
either a student under the influence or drugs found in a student's
possession. All but one were committed by a freshman or a sophomore. Four
pending expulsion hearings also involved drugs.

Superintendent Jim Robinson brought the statistics up Monday at a School
Board work session on how the high school is being restructured.

The offenses are alarming, he said, particularly when other statistics are
taken into account. According to a 1998 Search Institute survey of Lebanon
students, substantiated by the 1999 Oregon Student Drug Survey, only one in
four students reported having a positive adult role model.

The survey also showed one in five students reported frequent bouts of
depression, one in four reported using alcohol three or more times in the
last month, and almost 30 percent reported having had a fight or carrying
or using a weapon at least three times in the past year.

Also, Lebanon's dropout rate has hovered between 6 and 10 percent for the
past four years.

Robinson said he believes students use drugs partly to escape from these
situations. It all adds up, he said, to support for the district's work to
rearrange the way it delivers a high school education.

Lebanon High currently has 1,285 students who go through each day, more or
less, as a whole. The plan is to reorganize into "smaller learning
communities," which should be largely complete by the start of the next
school year.

Part of the idea is that being in smaller groups will help students develop
closer relationships, both with each other and with their teachers. In
addition, each community will reflect a particular academic theme, to help
students pick a field of study and see how it connects, both with the rest
of their high school experience and with life after school.

School officials hope the result will be students who feel more in touch
with their school and see a clearer purpose in the material they're
learning there, no matter what their post-school plans are.

"These incidents are a product of the system, and the system must be
reinvented," said Steve Kelley, director of curriculum.

Right now, Robinson said, it's easy for individuals to "just get in the
large herd and move through it." Teachers, he said, don't have the time to
know students well or give them guidance.

"We dismiss for lunch, (students) go downtown and don't go back," he said.

Lebanon has a school resource officer through the police department who
helps deal with some of the immediate situations, Robinson said. However,
he said, the recent expulsions don't come from a crackdown.

"It just seems to be a more brazen attempt on the part of the students to
take risks where we haven't seen them doing so before," he said.

A Growing Problem

Drugs are an acknowledged problem throughout mid-valley schools, officials say.

At least half of the expulsion hearings at either of Albany's two high
schools each year are related to substance abuse, said Wayne Goates,
director of student services for the district.

The number of expulsions at West Albany High School has risen each year for
the past four years as the school has been working harder to get rid of
drugs, Goates said. Last year, 19 students were expelled, 10 of them for
drug or alcohol use.

At South, 13 students were expelled, six for substance use.

Drug and alcohol counseling is required before a student expelled for using
those substances can return.

This year so far, West hasn't had any expulsions, while South has had seven
- four for alcohol, one for drugs and two for assault.

Schools handle expulsions differently depending on their own board
policies. Neither Sweet Home nor Lebanon require students expelled for drug
use to get counseling, although it's strongly encouraged.

So far this year, Sweet Home has had two expulsions, with a third pending.
The two had to do with bringing knives on campus and the third was
alcohol-related.