By Paul Menke
The start of the 2019 school year marked a heightened agenda for Mashpee Middle High School: Eliminating vaping from its grounds. Two powerful anti-vaping messages were delivered by Dr. Jeffrey Spillane and Johnathon Thompson on Sports Night, signifying the start Mashpee Public School’s full-fledged commitment to eradicate student vaping.
The school’s new initiative is in line with efforts by Governor Charlie Baker, who recently signed into law a temporary ban for the sale of all vaping products.
But what steps need to be taken to fulfill the school’s promise? You may have noticed the desks and teachers stationed outside of hall bathrooms during class time recently, but it turns out that they are not recent at all.
The start of the 2019 school year marked a heightened agenda for Mashpee Middle High School: Eliminating vaping from its grounds. Two powerful anti-vaping messages were delivered by Dr. Jeffrey Spillane and Johnathon Thompson on Sports Night, signifying the start Mashpee Public School’s full-fledged commitment to eradicate student vaping.
The school’s new initiative is in line with efforts by Governor Charlie Baker, who recently signed into law a temporary ban for the sale of all vaping products.
But what steps need to be taken to fulfill the school’s promise? You may have noticed the desks and teachers stationed outside of hall bathrooms during class time recently, but it turns out that they are not recent at all.
Mr. Eduardo MacDonald, the grades 10-12 dean of students, remarked, “This is my second year here as the Dean of Students, and to the best of my knowledge, since I got here, we always have had scheduled duties for teachers to roam the halls during certain blocks when they’re available.”
The Falconer then reached out to Principal Mark Balestracci for a comment of supporting information to Mr. MacDonald’s statement. According to Principal Balestracci, “We have always had hallway monitoring throughout the day. However, this year we have established stations to support the supervision and safety of students and staff.”
Mr. MacDonald has been happy to enforce the new strategy, and thinks it is an enhancement for school safety and student health. “Here’s the thing that I like about [the strategy]: We always try to give students the benefit of the doubt; making good choices, but, having been a teenager at one time, we don’t always, as teenagers, make the best choices. So our feeling was that if I have teachers that are in the hallways, roaming around, and I have teachers that are sitting outside the restrooms as a presence, that it would help motivate our students to make good choices.”
“Again,” he continued, “we’re all human, we all make mistakes. Any time we can help a student, whether having a conversation or just being present, to get them to make a better choice, we are being what I call ‘proactive’ before I have to deal with a student making a poor choice.”
The new plan seems to be popular with administration since it was implemented with the priorities of less-intrusion but with increased school safety, and it is reliably available. But there are no great policies without great results, so has the school truly noticed a decrease of student vaping or smoking in the bathrooms?
“That is a great question,” replied Mr. MacDonald. “I would have to say since I got here about a year-and-a-half ago, there seems to be less of a presence of vaping or smoking this year than last year. Part of it, I think, is faculty, staff, teachers, and students working together so the students understand that school is not the place to do that, and the other part of that is teacher supervision. If I’m a student walking into the bathroom, and I know there is a teacher out there, hopefully I’m making a better choice.”
Hopefully, indeed, but not all students make the choice to abstain from vaping and smoking. What happens to the students who are in the bathroom when the bathroom monitor detects the scent of vaping pods and marijuana, and what are the new monitors instructed to do if such a case were to arise?
“If I am a teacher, and I am walking into the restroom and I see somebody that is vaping or smoking, I’m bringing them right to an administrator. Teachers are not given consequences for anything that happens outside of their classroom. They are there as a supervisor and to administer that protocol.”
In addition to the bathroom monitors, there are a few other anti-vaping and smoking measurements in place that have been active for much longer, like drug-sniffing dogs. Why were they not as effective?
“Number one, you don’t get the dogs all the time. The dogs are a very effective method of detecting contraband that they’ve been trained to detect, so anything can be found whether it be in lockers or in the parking lot, but we are based upon their schedule, so sometimes they’re available, and sometimes they’re not. Even though we don’t notify anybody, including the faculty and staff, when the dogs are coming, they only come in two or three times a year.”
What happens when there are multiple students who are in the bathroom and who are not vaping? How would the administration prove whether or not they were vaping?
“[The teachers] would bring them all together. Let’s say that I walk into the bathroom, and I see five students and I smell marijuana or I smell something. I don’t know who, I don’t know what (unless I see a student with a cigarette or contraband in their hand or in their possession,) if I don’t know, all of you are coming down to see Mr. Balestracci, Ms. Melby, or myself. So we bring them all down, we do an investigation, we ask questions, we go through our protocol, and if we determine who it was that had the contraband, we’ll deal with that student."