"Albemarle County students who participate in athletics and after-school activities are role models, and they should be held to a pledge that penalizes underage drinking and drug use off school property, Superintendent Pamela Moran told the School Board on Thursday.

The majority of School Board members agreed, voting 4-2 to pass a revised training rule that offers more counseling for violators and dials down the policy’s punitive aspects that had some parents labeling it as overbearing.

Board member Jon Stokes, who voted against the change, continued to question whether the school division was trying to assume the role of a police officer in extending its authority beyond school grounds to what students do on the weekend.

“I’ve always been of the position that our role as a School Board and a school division is as educators,” Stokes said. “That’s where our strength lies. That’s where we should focus our efforts.”

The rule is flawed, board member Pamela Moynihan said, because it doesn’t cover all students.

“I question how much we will be able to enforce this policy,” said Moynihan, who voted against it.

The principal at each high school will be given the power to read reports and decide whether the school division needs to investigate further and penalize student-athletes and after-school participants, said Steele Howen, the schools’ executive director of administrative services.

Moran said the athletics training rule and the idea that principals can intervene to enforce it was established long ago.

“Our principals for years have had underage drinking issues brought to their attention,” she said. “We will not change that procedure. What we simply have done is to do a revision that adds an intervention component and expands it at our board’s interest in doing so.”

When Stokes asked if this is the only time in which principals are involved in something that does not directly relate to school and its property, Moran cited vandalism as another such instance.

With the revised training rule, students who violate the pledge the first time would be suspended from their activity for two weeks if they take part in a counseling program.

Second-time offenders would get a four-week suspension if they accept counseling, and those violating the pledge three times or more would be suspended from the activity for 365 calendar days.

Students who go to their principals the next school day after an offense and voluntarily seek counseling may receive a reduced suspension, and several board members have said that this revision would take away some of the policy’s harshness and foster greater communication.

Board member Stephen Koleszar suggested that the board re-evaluate how the new policy is working next year, and several board members agreed to do so." (Matt Deegan, The Daily Progress, May 25, 2007)