Smithtown, NY - Momstown Gather - Share - Support

October 30, 2009 By JOYE BROWN joye.brown@newsday.com
Joye Brown

The Smithtown school district's mandated heroin education-for-prom swap is an idea worth replicating across Long Island.

The premise of the program - which appears to be the first of its kind on Long Island - is deceptively simple.

Parents of seniors must attend a meeting where they hear about everything from what heroin does to adolescent brains to what's being done in the community to combat the drug problem.

And, after some 90 minutes and a take-away informational handout, parents leave better informed about heroin, which is complicating the already difficult job of parenting across the region.

In return for parents' attention, Smithtown seniors are cleared to go to the prom and other senior-class activities, including the senior banquet in January.

"The goal is to get as much information out there as soon as we can," said Edward Ehmann, the district's superintendent.

"We want parents to know as much as possible to help them make the tough decisions on issues," he said, "like where their seniors are going on prom night, or whether they should be going to a friend's house for a party that may be unsupervised."

This is the same district that conducted the first (nonmandatory) school-sponsored heroin forum. It was last March, and attracted more than 1,000 parents.

But, district officials said, many who attended were parents of younger children or parents whose children already are having issues with addiction.

"Having 1,000 parents at the forum was great but it wasn't enough," Ehmann said. "We have 3,300 students in our schools. So it would have been nice to have 2,500 parents."

Besides, district officials said, they wanted to reach out to parents of older students, where drug abuse appears to be more of an issue.

To be fair, most students in Smithtown don't use heroin or other drugs. But that hardly ensures that they will have no contact with students who do. That's why educating parents - even those who may balk at the mandate - is essential.

"The job of a school district is not just to educate kids," said Robert Rossi, president of the school board. "It's to educate parents."

Rossi is one of the parents who has been pushing the district to do more. Part of the reason is that he has one child left (and an older child who has graduated) in the district; another is that he knows a family whose child began using heroin.

"It's hard," he said, "but it's like I looked up one day and realized that the old drug and alcohol training programs that we used to have weren't here anymore."

Wednesday night's mandatory meeting is a big step for Smithtown. The district taped the proceedings and will give DVDs to parents who missed the meeting. They will have to sign that they watched the program before their seniors are cleared to go to the prom and other activities.

The district will not stop there, however. Ehmann and Rossi said the district would educate students in all grades about how heroin and drug use ruins lives.

Smithtown garnered a lot of attention following Newsday's recent front-page story on heroin's impact on one community.

The community merits attention again - because of its aggressive, innovative way of arming parents to help protect Smithtown's children. Other school districts on Long Island would do well to learn from its example.