The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Student vaping sanctions surging
While suspensions and expulsions in Connecticut schools are on the decline, the incidence of such disciplinary action in connection with vaping is increasing dramatically, according to a report released Wednesday by the state Department of Education.
Between the 2015-16 and 2017-18 school years, the number of sanctions associated with the use of electronic nicotine delivery systems went from 349 to 2,160.
“The one stand-out piece from this year’s report is the six-fold increase” in vaping sanctions, the state Department of Education’s chief performance officer, Ajit Gopalakrishnan, told the state Board of Education at a meeting Wednesday.
Chief Operating Officer Charlene Russell-Tucker said the state agency is taking an “all hands on deck” approach to assisting school districts with how to handle the issue and has reached out to work with the state Department of Health and the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services
“We are connecting them to our districts and they are actually going out and doing training,” Russell-Tucker said. “We recognize that this is a concern and the districts are concerned about it.”
Tarini Krishna, one of the non-voting student members of the board, said she had noticed that “schools seem a little lost in how to address the problem.”
“I would urge schools to involve students,” Krishna said. Often, she said teachers don’t know what a Juul — a type of e-cigarette — looks like and may think a student is using a flash drive on their computer when they are actually charging a Juul.
“They are charging them in class (and teachers) don’t even know,” Krishna said.
John Frassinelli, chief of the state education agency’s Bureau of Health, Nutrition, Family Services and Adult Education, said he’s been hearing from