'There's a problem'
Butler School District enacted a new drug testing policy this summer after its first year of collecting data on drug use in its schools — data that in several cases show the district's students use illegal substances at similar or slightly greater levels than county or state averages.
Numbers aside, officials and parents involved see a problem and hope that the new policy might be enough to save a life.
The Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency conducts an annual survey called the Pennsylvania Youth Survey, or PAYS. It's a simple idea: If the public wants to know which and how many drugs students are using, why not just ask the students?
Individual school districts opt into the survey. The 2017-18 academic year was the Butler School District's first year participating. It joined Freeport, Moniteau, Slippery Rock and Karns City school districts to form Butler County's report.
When discussing its new drug testing policy in July, Butler School Board members explained that drug use is a recurring problem in the district. Board members are involved in disciplinary hearings, matters which are generally kept from the public.
The district has handed down discipline for substance abuse at an increasing rate over the last three years. In the 2015-16 school year, the district had eight disciplinary issues related to violations of its substance abuse policy, according to figures provided by Kara Droney, district communications director.
In the 2016-17 year, there were 12 such issues. The most recent school year brought 21 violations of the district's policy.
While the details of those hearings aren't public information, data from the PAYS survey is available. Administrative staff at the Butler School District first declined a request for access to district-specific results, but the Butler Eagle obtained a copy through a Right to Know request.
Superintendent Brian White said in an email that parents in the district had received survey results in an email, and said the results are best evaluated as a whole rather than individually.
“The results display a myriad of data,” White said. “The data reinforces what is being seen in the disciplinary issues. It would marginalize the breadth of data to pull a few points and claim they represent the entire picture.”
White said a team is being assembled to study the results and develop plans to address concerns. The district received results in April, according to the PCCD.
Survey results
The following figures are averages of survey results from eighth, 10th and 12th graders who were surveyed.
About 52 percent of students in the district schools say they have drunk alcohol at least once, compared to 50.1 percent for the county at-large. The state average is 43.3 percent.
The other drug most-often used by students in the district is marijuana, with 20.2 percent of Butler students saying they have tried the drug, compared to 18.1 percent countywide and 17.7 percent statewide.
The next most-common substance is cigarettes, with 19.7 percent of Butler students saying they have smoked. That's just under the county average of 20.3 percent, but above the state average of 17.7 percent.
Most of the harder drugs on the list received comparatively little responses. Fewer than 2 percent of students say they've tried cocaine, and fewer than 1 percent say they've tried crack, meth, heroin or synthetic drugs. Those figures hold true to county, state and national averages.
Students were only asked whether they've vaped in the last 30 days, not whether they had ever tried vaping. When asked, 30.9 percent of Butler students said they had vaped in the last 30 days.That vaping figure is roughly double the state average of 16.3 percent. Countywide, 26.4 percent of students said they vaped in the last month.In the district, 5.9 percent of students said they illegally used prescription narcotics at least once. Countywide, 5.4 percent said the same, and 5.1 percent did statewide.'Addiction problem'Bill Halle, a school board member and one of the drug testing policy's firmest backers, said the PAYS data did not push the board toward the policy. Rather, it merely “supported what we already knew.”“The survey is going to provide some very important data when trying to make changes moving forward,” Halle said.Most notable to him, he said, were figures on drug sales on school properties. About 8.9 percent of district students said they'd been offered drugs at school. Halle said he was surprised that many admitted to it, and that he thinks drug dealing on school grounds is underreported.Low use of drugs like heroin didn't surprise him.“The whole idea that we have a heroin problem is wrong,” Halle said. “We have an addiction problem.”Vaping in the district and nationwide alarms Halle, he said, because vaporizers can be used to consume illegal drugs discretely. Butler schools may have more vaping because of local availability, Halle said. He mentioned the 2017 sale of Oakland Township Elementary School to a vaporizer company.Ben Oesterling, vice president of Kingdom Vapor, the company that bought the building, said “It's definitely not more available here than any other town.“There are only three vape shops here,” Oesterling said. “Butler doesn't have higher than average vape accessibility.”Oesterling said the location is only a wholesale seller which provides vape products to stores. The company doesn't sell directly to consumers at the former elementary school building, he said, and doesn't feel responsible for local students vaping.“There are laws in place to check retailers and prevent them from selling to people underage,” Oesterling said. “The laws are in place to prevent it from happening. After that, it becomes the parents' responsibility.”Halle said the board was looking into both a drug testing policy and participating in the PAYS survey before White joined the district in the fall of 2017. The district set aside $10,000 this summer to pay for drug testing during the coming school year.A student overdoseIt was not the numbers and figures in the PAYS survey that inspired the board to act, he said, but rather the face behind one particular overdose death.He said the death of a student who had been using a drug helped spur their response. Halle described the student as athletic and popular, defying stereotypes of drug use.Coroner records for 2017 show one opioid related death among people of high school age. In January of 2017, Butler High School student Alex Pacoe died and tested positive for a mixture of heroin and fentanyl, records show.Dorrie Pacoe, Alex's mother, said she met with the school board in the weeks after Alex's death. She was overjoyed to see a drug testing policy finally implemented.“I wish it would've been in place years ago,” Dorrie Pacoe said. “There's a ton of students using. Even at Alex's funeral, students were coming up and saying you would not believe the amount of people using drugs.”Dorrie Pacoe said the next steps should be increased drug education for students and teachers. Students, she said, “don't have an eye-opener except for other kids dying.”Low levels of heroin use on the PAYS survey aren't a sign that there isn't a problem, she said.“I really don't think it's a weed epidemic or a heroin epidemic or pills,” she said. “It's everything.”David Pacoe, Alex's grandfather, agreed that Alex didn't fit the type.His grandson appeared to be an active hockey player, not an addict.“I was not aware of the drug use with Alex,” David Pacoe said. “I knew the signs, but I didn't see them.”They knew Alex had used drugs, but weren't aware of opioid use.“We thought it was marijuana usage only, until he got in trouble at school for selling pills,” David Pacoe said.Whatever their reasons for acting, David Pacoe supports the school board.“I wish we had the kid back,” he said. “I think the school board is doing the right thing.”As does Dorrie Pacoe.“There's a problem,” she said. “A lot of people don't think there's a problem, but there is.”
