School Health Archive

Since the death of a 17-year-old Virginia high school student from a drug-resistant staph infection—and a federal report revealed such infections are more common and deadly than thought—the reaction of school officials has alternated between anxiety and downright alarm.

But, if public health officials are correct, the proper response is simply vigilance.

As school leaders will learn in the upcoming issue of School Board News, more and more students and teachers infected with Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) are being reported across the nation. And MRSA is deadly, killing nearly 19,000 Americans each year.

But let’s put it in perspective. Influenza—the common flu—kills 36,000 people annually. What’s more, MRSA is treatable, despite its resistance to penicillin and some other antibiotics. Finally, the risks of infection are greatly reduced if students are encouraged to practice good hygiene, such as washing their hands and keeping open wounds covered.

Indeed, public health officials note that, for all the legitimate concerns about this new “superbug,” school officials will learn to cope, just as they did when the first HIV-infected students showed up in schools. As far as MRSA is concerned, infected students can return to school once they’re under treatment, and in most instances, school officials aren't going to have to shut down to disinfect schools.

Amy Garcia, executive director of the National Association of School Nurses, puts it all in perspective: “There are other infections that are easily spread in the school setting, so schools should have policies and procedures in place for dealing with MRSA but also tuberculosis, influenza, and other serious illnesses.”

Del Stover, Senior Editor

Earlier this week, Swiss researchers released the findings of a survey they disseminated to more than 5,000 Switzerland youth. In essence, the study (conducted in 2002) determined among those 16- to 20-year-olds who smoked marijuana only, marijuana and cigarettes, or abstained from both, the group who solely smoked marijuana were “more socially driven … significantly more likely to practice sports and they have a better relationship with their peers,” than those who smoked neither.

The study, published in this month’s issue of the Archives of Pediatrics & Medicine, appears to contradict the widely-held belief that marijuana is a gateway drug and its use can lead to experimentation in other drugs … which leads me to my point and our current ASBJ cover story, “Politics and Research.”

Just about any topic can be spun, stretched, dissected, or altered in some way to achieve different results, as Senior Editor Del Stover discovered in reporting on the field of education research. That’s not to say there isn’t merit or value in many of these reports, even the bad ones.

Nor am I saying the Swiss researchers who conducted the marijuana-use survey were purposefully trying to skew the findings, or that what they found isn’t true. It just may only be true for that small group. In Switzerland, marijuana-use has risen among that age group, in contrast to the decline it has made among American teens.

Research can only tell us so much, and it’s up to you as savvy consumers of the literature to determine what to take from it and what to leave behind.

Naomi Dillon, Senior Editor

For more than a decade, educators and non-profits have successfully kept teen pregnancy rates down, but new figures compiled by the Centers for Disease Control show that not only has the decline halted, it has risen for the first time in 14 years.

Between 2005 and 2006, the birth rate for girls 15 to 19 climbed 3 percent from 40.5 births per 1,000 to 41.9 births per 1,000 in 2006. Prior to that, teen births had dropped 34 percent from a peak of 61.8 births per 1,000 in 1991.

It is a source of concern for many for obvious reasons. Not only is teen pregnancy the number one reason girls drop out of school, but also only 77 percent of the children born to teen parents will receive their diplomas, compared to 89 percent of children born to older parents.

Pat Paluzzi, president of the D.C. based-Healthy Teen Network (a non-profit that works to prevent teen pregnancy and provide parenting skills to those who have a child) said it’s not necessarily that teens are trying to get pregnant.

“But neither are they trying not to,” she says. “There’s a lot of ambivalence.” Part of it is an absence of goal setting and planning for the future, though looking ahead can be a difficult thing to ask kids who are in bad situations today, she says.

“If you don’t have a set of goals, and your neighborhoods are desolate, and your schools are horrible, if that’s your life, what goals are you going to have?” Paluzzi wonders.

Naomi Dillon, Senior Editor

Maternity leave for high school students? Now that’s a policy issue that I’m certain every school board member is eager to address.

One day you might get your chance. For now, though, it’s the Denver school board that’s being asked by pregnant students to provide them with at least four weeks of maternity leave “so they can heal, bond with their newborns, and not be penalized for unexcused absences.”

That’s how The Denver Post reports it. And, after an initial reaction that varied between “you’ve got to be kidding” and “what’s the world coming to,” I think I see their point.

The Denver Public Schools has no system-wide policy concerning teen moms, the Post reports, and at one high school, students apparently are left with a bad choice: show up at school as soon as they’re out of the hospital—or be docked for unexcused absences.

Now, I don’t think high school students deserve a free pass for having a baby. But, then again, it does no one any good if there’s no accommodation or assistance given to an overwhelmed teen. We don’t need to add to the nation’s appalling dropout rate.

Of course, many schools have a handle on this issue. Some place pregnant students or new moms in specialized programs or run schools designed to work with these students. Others create individualized education plans for new moms or work more informally, bringing counselors, parents, and teens together to work out a reasonable strategy to keep the student in school.

In Denver, a district spokesperson said the district is looking to make its attendance policy “friendlier” to new moms, and school board member Michelle Moss got to the core of the issue: “Clearly, as a district, we have to look at what is going on with our young women. We’ve got to look at the birth-control issue and teen pregnancy and how we best help them deal with it and still graduate.”

That sounds about right. But I hope any policy change avoids the term “maternity leave.” It’s an expression that sounds like an entitlement. And, frankly, anything that makes teen pregnancy and motherhood seem normal and acceptable—as opposed to the personal tragedy it is—just doesn’t sit well.

Del Stover, Senior Editor

I don’t look for these things, I promise. I just seem to stumble upon them … with great frequency. So here’s another one to add to the growing list of legislative absurdities.

This one comes from Tennessee and the mind of state Rep. Stacey Campfield, who apparently is a font of sound ideas. Last week, he filed a bill that, if passed, would prohibit public elementary and middle schools from providing “any instruction or materials discussing sexual orientation other than heterosexuality.”

Campfield said he threw the proposal into the hopper after learning the National Education Association had approved a resolution recommending sex-ed classes in schools include the diversity of gender identification and sexual orientation issues.

It was apparently too revolutionary for Campfield.

“I think the schools should stick to the basics: reading, writing, and arithmetic. And maybe some civics,” Campfield told the Memphis Flyer.

Gee, thanks for including civics into mix. Perhaps, the good lawmaker should brush up more on this subject, since his proposal would infringe on the powers of local school boards, a conflict that did not go unnoticed.

“Why does [Campfield] feel the need to take control of what’s taught in a school system away from local boards of education and away from local communities?” asked Earl Wiman, president of the Tennessee Education Association in the Memphis Flyer.

Of even bigger concern Wiman said, was the alienation the bill could fuel among gay students and their parents. “We have such a high adolescent suicide rate, and a large number of those killing themselves are struggling with sexual orientation.”

I’ll say this for Campfield: if anything he is consistent. A few years back, he proposed issuing death certificates for aborted fetuses and then in 2005 caused a ruckus by equating the state’s Black Caucus to the Ku Klux Klan because they wouldn’t allow him to join because he is white.

Naomi Dillon, Senior Editor

While some schools are using video games as a contemporary way to motivate children to exercise, schools in San Diego are adopting a classic approach.

Some San Diego students are taking part in before-school running clubs—spending the 15 to 20 minutes between the time they get dropped off in the morning and the time they begin classes to jog a few laps around the track.

The before-school clubs are organized by educators and members of the community concerned about childhood obesity.

In most cases, the clubs simply require someone to count laps—keeping costs to schools at a minimum, say the San Diego Union-Tribune. Without a doubt they’re far less expensive than a dozen Nintendo Wiis.

Before-school running clubs have added educational benefits too. According to experts, exercise can help students perform better academically.

“Exercise is like giving them a little bit of Ritalin, a little bit of Prozac,” John Ratey of the Harvard Medical School told the Union-Tribune. “They both work to help the learner stay in the chair.”

Mary Beason, principal of Loma Elementary School, is not only supportive of her school’s club, she’s a member. Beason runs with her students two mornings a week.

Talk about leading by example.

Stacey Hollenbeck, spring intern

I just finished reading Jodi Picoult’s book, Nineteen Minutes. If you have anything to do with education, or if you’re a parent, you need to read this book -- now.

Picoult’s 2007 bestseller chronicles a horrific school shooting incident and its aftermath. A meticulous researcher, Picoult imbues the shooter, a brutally bullied boy named Peter, with a sense of humanity that seems almost impossible, especially considering that he goes to school one day and guns down 10 classmates.

The hardest parts of the book to read were the passages about Peter’s relentless torment at the hands of his fellow classmates, starting in the first day of kindergarten when one of them throws his Superman lunchbox out of the school bus window. In fact, I wanted to skip those passages entirely.

In this impulse, I’m like most adults, probably. We don’t want to believe our children are capable of this cruelty, so we look away.

Of course, it is happening. Read the recent New York Times article, “A Boy the Bullies Love to Beat Up, Repeatedly,” about a young man in Fayetteville, Ark. Elements of his daily torture were sickeningly similar to the fictional Peter’s abuse.

In an interview with ASBJ in January, Picoult said: “As a mom, I saw all three of my kids face bullying—and it begged the question: In a post-Columbine world, why haven’t we figured this out yet?

School officials will point to their bullying policies, of course, and every district should have them. But these policies are a starting point, not the end. During the shooter’s trial at the end of Nineteen Minutes, the defense lawyer memorably demonstrates why. No matter how air-tight your policy is, it’s utterly meaningless when adults -- whether they secretly identify with the bullies, they not-so-secretly don’t like the bullied child, or because it reminds them too much of their own childhood torment -- turn the other way when a child desperately needs help.

Is bullying occurring in your schools? Are you willing to take a hard look – and not turn away if you see something that makes you uncomfortable, if you see something you know is wrong?

The bullied kids can’t look away. They live with this every day. If you don’t protect them, no one will.

Why haven’t we figured this out yet?

Kathleen Vail, Managing Editor

Careless errors can be costly ones.

“Ho-hum,” you might be saying. “Why is he stating the obvious?”

Unfortunately, because it’s true. And it’s a lesson I learned again recently after writing my April feature, “Time to Heal," which tells the tragic story of the London School explosion that killed more than 300 children.

The explosion should not have happened, but it did largely because school officials carelessly decided to cut corners. They saved a few pennies at a huge cost of life.

Growing up in Texas, I was vaguely aware of the 1937 explosion. What I didn’t realize until after the story was written was that my grandfather was one of the rescue workers at the scene. A.T. Vestal was working for the Premier Oil Company in Longview, which is about 25 miles northeast of New London. Like others, he drove to the school as soon as he heard about the blast and spent hours trying to pull children from the rubble

My grandfather, who was a Navy Seabee during World War II, was not the talkative type. But my mom said he would occasionally reference the disaster at New London.

“He said it was worse than being in Okinawa,” my mom told me.

Careless error #1: This was a detail I should have known, except that I was so busy writing and editing that I didn’t call my mom for a week.

Careless error #2: I’m proud of my accuracy. I double check quotes. I look and look again at statistics and numbers and names. This time, unfortunately, I didn’t check closely enough.

Ellie Goldberg, who wants the New London disaster to be designated as a national day to raise awareness about chemical hazards in schools, runs a great program called “Healthy Kids: The Key to Basics.” Her website is www.healthy-kids.info.

I talked to Ellie early in the story, and she provided some great tips and contacts in New London. Unfortunately, I incorrectly wrote down her organization’s name and forgot to insert the hyphen between “healthy” and “kids” on her website address. It was, quite simply, a mistake that I failed to check.

We have corrected the error online, and we’ll tell our print readers about it in the June edition. But I hope it does not detract from Ellie’s cause, because this careless error does not need to be a costly one.

Glenn Cook, Editor-in-Chief

I ran a roundtable session for National Affiliate members at NSBA's annual conference in Orlando at the end of March. One new board member who attended had a story that will sound familiar to many of you.

He was having a problem with another board member. Whenever this member wanted to stonewall an idea, she asked, "is it best practice?"

The gentleman at my session asked, half-jokingly, if a "best practices" manual existed somewhere.

We at ASBJ hope that our Magna Awards program can serve as a starting point toward finding those best practices. For 14 years, we have been recognizing excellence in board and district programs on nearly any topic you can come up with.

Want to know how a district is dealing with dropouts? Magna has it. Want to find out how to engage Spanish-speaking parents with the schools? Magna has it.

Each year, we ask an independent panel of judges to evaluate the 300 or so entries we receive each year and find the standout programs. The entries are in three enrollment categories: under 5,000, 5,000 to 20,000, and over 20,000. This way, districts are competing against other districts of the same size.

We honored the 2008 Magna Award winners at the School Leaders' Luncheon at NSBA's annual conference in Orlando. The three grand prize winners took home checks of $3,500 each; all of the winners are featured in a supplement to ASBJ that ran in April.

Look online at the 2008 winners; then browse through the past winners. You'll find the contact names and e-mails of the district contacts so you can get more details about their wining programs.

While you're on the site, consider applying for a 2009 Magna Award, so you can add your programs to our growing "best practices" list.

Kathleen Vail, Managing Editor

How do you honor a 15-year-old boy who was killed because of his sexual orientation?

GLSEN -- the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network -- says silence.

GLSEN is holding its 12th annual “day of silence” on Friday in remembrance of Lawrence King, who was shot by a 14-year-old classmate in a computer lab at his Oxnard, Calif., high school in February. King, who lived in a group home, was constantly harassed because he was openly gay and had begun wearing makeup to school, according to media reports. His killer reportedly came from a troubled home and is being charged as an adult for the crime.

They’ve asked students to take a vow of silence for all or part of the day to remember King and bring attention to the harassment of gay, lesbian, and transgendered students. GLSEN estimates that more than 500,000 students at schools and universities have taken part in such events.

Students participating in the event are asked to distribute cards to their teachers and classmates that read, in part: “Please understand my reasons for not speaking today. This year's DOS is held in memory of Lawrence King, a 15 year-old student who was killed in school because of his sexual orientation and gender expression. I believe that ending the silence is the first step toward building awareness. Think about the voices you are not hearing today.”

More information on the event is available at www.dayofsilence.org. GLSEN offers a wealth of information on preventing bullying and harassment of gay students, and May’s ASBJ features an interview with filmmaker Debra Chasnoff, who produced “It’s Elementary: Talking about Gay Issues in School.” The video is being re-released with a new, 140-page guide for schools.

Joetta Sack-Min, Associate Editor