Marietta City Schools Chasing Vape Ghosts
For Dr. Grant Rivera, superintendent of Marietta City Schools (MCS) in Marietta, Georgia, the difficulty of addressing student vaping was brought to his attention by the principal of the district’s high school.
“Vaping was the single biggest challenge he was facing,” shares Rivera. “They were chasing ghosts at the high school. Students were vaping in bathroom stalls. By the time staff arrived, it was too late to catch them. It was frustrating because the kids all knew it – both those that were vaping and those that were not.”
Following a pilot program in the spring, MCS installed Halo vape detectors in all district high school and middle school bathrooms. The devices sense airborne particulates unique to vape smoke and trigger an immediate notification to staff cellphones.
“The staff on duty in the immediate area are able to go into the bathrooms and check the situation,” says Rivera. “If need be, we can also check the video from the cameras positioned outside the bathroom to identify involved students.”
While it is early, Rivera says anecdotal feedback so far has been strong. “I ran into two of our high school seniors who told me that last year it was not uncommon to find three students locked in a bathroom stall vaping together. This year, they have not seen that anywhere.”
Lancaster County School District’s Vape Prevention Partnership
Lancaster County School District (LCSD) in Lancaster, South Carolina, was facing similar challenges to MCS, with an ongoing vaping problem in areas of the school where security cameras could not be placed, including the bathrooms. Beyond the personal health consequences to the vaping student, there is a risk that those sharing e-cigarettes may expose students to illegal substances and cause a medical emergency.
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“One of our concerns was having students bring drugs into school, with vape cartridges that contain THC or other substances,” says Lonnie Plyler, safety and transportation director at LCSD. “They can pass that along to someone who unknowingly smokes it, and the next thing you know, we’re calling in EMS because somebody has an allergic reaction to it.”
Vaping in bathrooms also led to some students avoiding those spaces altogether, fearing they’d be associated with illegal vaping.
“We were hearing from students who wouldn’t go into the bathrooms anymore,” shares Jennifer Adams, director of IT. “They didn’t want to be guilty by association. This was becoming a real problem.”
LCSD partnered with a local organization, Counseling Services of Lancaster, which provides prevention, treatment and recovery services for substance abuse. This partnership helped fund 146 Triton vape detectors for the district across its high schools and middle schools.
“We worked with our local ISP to get a network drop put into every bathroom for the vape detectors,” explains Adams. “We are continuing to install the detectors in all of the bathrooms and some of the locker rooms across our four high schools and five middle schools.”
Eaton High School Addresses Students’ Vape Concerns
At Eaton High School (EHS) in Eaton, Colorado, the vaping problem was apparent because staff were finding discarded vape pens in the bathrooms and because students were telling administrators it was a problem.
Similar to MCS, Eaton School District installed Halo vape detectors in both its high school and middle school bathrooms and locker rooms. One early challenge was fine-tuning the sensitivity of the vape sensors.
“Our biggest struggle was getting them adjusted to the right levels because some of the bathroom ceilings are high,” says Andy Polland, assistant principal at EHS. “At first, they weren’t being triggered. It took us about two months, but we eventually got them dialed in where they work great now.”
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An unexpected challenge for EHS arose when the detectors were triggered after hours by parents and adults using the facilities for events.
“We host volleyball games and other sporting events,” shares Grable. “Home and visitor adult guests are using the publicly accessible bathrooms and are sometimes vaping. How do we address this? That was something we didn’t think about, the far-reaching consequences of installing this technology.”
The district has sense created new guidelines for managing after-school vape detection alerts and retrained the staff on monitoring protocols.
“We provide anonymous ways for students to communicate with us,” says Jessica Grable, principal at EHS. “If they see a problem, they can scan a QR code and tip us off.”
