VMCC Action Plan Focuses On Community, Student Involvement

After months of meetings with the community and school administrators, the Vienna-Madison Community Coalition unveiled a four-part action plan Wednesday night that aims to support a drug-free school and community for students.

“It’s a working, living document that will be carried forward, and include more ideas from members of this community, ” VMCC President Sara Freund said.

The plan is a result of a series of VMCC meetings this fall, After several of those discussions, the VMCC broke into working groups to address four specific areas in which the community could improve or better support youth: parent awareness, youth involvement, communications-community outreach and enforcement and monitoring.

In the meantime, . He and Phyllis Pajardo, assistant superintendent of cluster II for Fairfax County Public Schools, met with the groups in the past two months to finalize goals.

Wednesday's meeting included Merrell, Pajardo, several Madison administrators, Vienna Police Officer Bill Murray, School Board member Patty Reed and State Sen. Chap Petersen.

VMCC members said their plan is not a movement to “catch” kids, or criticize administrators and teaching staff; an attempt to lessen school spirit; nor “an effort by parents with extra time on their hands to speculate based on rumors.”

It's something that will focus on helping students, said parent Suzanne LeFrancois, who worked on some of the goals.

“This is an issue that demands a community approach in order to solve the problem,” LeFrancois said.

Part of the plan calls for an anonymous student survey separate from the Fairfax County Youth Survey, which would ask questions more specific to Madison, such as “Have you seen kids come to class high? How did you know they were high?” and “Where are kids smoking or drinking? In their cars? In the parking lot? Before or after school?”

The survey would be the first of its kind in the county, VMCC members said, and would help better identify what – and where – the biggest issues are. It will be administered late this spring or early in the fall, and will be reviewed by Merrell and other school staff.

“It will help us develop a better baseline of what the environment is,” Freund said.

The plan also calls for developing incident reporting procedures at the school, which will outline for teachers, staff and parents how to report violations of school policies, who to contact and what to expect after they file a complaint.

Part of that initiative will be better training and empowering staff to identify student drug and alcohol issues, and making sure they understand how to report incidents and also the administrative process for handling them.

“We want that to be something that’s more understood and what staff can expect when they issue a report -- are they going to hear back?” Freund said.

Students will also begin to review the Students Responsibilities and Rights handbook quarterly, and be better educated about their consequences, Freund said. Currently, students review the SR+R twice a year.

All goals from each of the VMCC working groups can be found in the PDF above this article.

Merell also provided parents with a full list of updates that have been made since the beginning of the year. The most recent changes include four smoke detectors installed in selected bathrooms -- two male, two female – and a demonstration of Marshall high Schools’ camera system by Principal Jay Pearson for Madison’s security staff. A full list of changes at Madison can be found in the PDF above this article.

Resident John Sekas said he thinks the group should  focus on figuring out how to help the kids “who really need help.”

“We have 1,800 to 1,900 kids in this school and look how many parents are here,” he said, gesturing to the few dozen that sat in the room. “If you get in the mindset to delay inevitable,  you’ll get nowhere. They will ultimately exposed to drug and alcohol and the goal really is to deal with that and make the right decisions. Even the worst kid doesn’t want to make the wrong decision. Unless we help the children this is going to be a problem forever.”

LeFrancois said parent education and encouraging open conversations with teens were a big part of the group’s “Parents Awareness” initiatives. 

Reed asked the group to also do a survey on the mental health and stress level of students.

“We need to determine how kids are dealing with that, and if alcohol and drugs are a way of coping,” she said.

Sekas said one reason for substance abuse could be that students feel a lack of connection to the community.  

“When we were younger there were more things for us to do,” Sekas said. “if there’s not that much for them to do, they’re going to wander off and find something to do, like drink or do drugs.”

“He’s right,” a student in the audience told the group.

Madison students Morgan Cooper and Melissa Hobson said they were making a first attempt at that goal with a community barbecue scheduled for May. The barbecue, planned in conjunction with the school’s SADD group, would be open to staff, parents, and students of all ages to “show you can have fun and hang out with everybody and not have to use drugs or ether substances,” they said.

Bringing more programs to Madison for both students and parents was also discussed. One such program that could be tailored to the parent and student level is PROTECT, a group of Westfield High School parents and students who give presentations about the heroin ring that emerged in their community in 2008. Some students died; and some of those that survived speak to students through the PROTECT panel, parents said.

“For the kids to hear it from younger people [who have been through it] is much more effective than to hear an older person just saying ‘Don’t do drugs,’ they said.

The VMCC asked for volunteers as it moves forward with implementing the plan. Five of the board’s seven members – Freund,  Maria Alvarez-Lundie, Deborah Roney, Diane Eckert and Cynthia Kohrmann – will step down at the end of the month. Vienna parent and FCPS teacher Heather Barber will take over as president.

“My focus will be on the students,” Barber said. “That’s where I’m coming from.”