Student vaping, tardiness to be addressed

SCOTT TRUXELL/independent editor

Addressing the vaping epidemic and tardiness and absences – those are two areas Van Wert High School Principal Chuck Rollins wants to focus on as he enters his second year at the helm.

During Wednesday’s meeting of the Van Wert City Schools Board of Education, Rollins, who spent 28 years in the classroom, shared the challenges and rewards during his first year as principal. He then outlined his future plans, including changing technology policies, working on school culture, and the issues of tardiness and vaping.

“I don’t think very many kids smoke anymore but lots and lots of kids are vaping and I’m concerned as a (former) science teacher what the long term health effects are going to be from that – I’m afraid it’s going to be worse that actually smoking,” he told the board. “We deal with it on a regular basis at school, so that’s a battle I’m going to continue to fight.”

“Education has to be a piece of this too and we’re planning doing some education pieces about vaping and maybe we can get an assembly next year to target this issue so kids can understand why it’s such a long term problem,” he added. “It’s hard to get teenagers to think past the weekend that’s coming up, they don’t think about in 30 years they’re not going to be able to breathe, so it’s hard to get them to buy into that.”

He added assistant prosecutor Dillon Staas has met with school officials and has some different ideas on ways he can support the school. Earlier this week, Van Wert City Council heard the first reading of legislation establishing criminal penalties for those 21 and under using tobacco or vape products.

Rollins also spoke to the board about the issue of student tardiness and absences, something he didn’t fully realize until he became principal.

“Our kids don’t come to school, lots of them don’t or they come when they want to and unfortunately some of our parents allow that to happen,” he stated. “You hear kids talking about taking half-days like that’s a thing. We’re working on some plans that we will be bringing to the board, some things we’re going to try to address. We can’t teach kids if they’re not in school and the way some of the laws are written in Ohio make it very difficult to take any legal action when kids aren’t coming to school.”

He said Saturday school is a possibility and he added another possible idea is if a student reaches a certain plateau with absences, they may not be able to attend homecoming or prom or partake in other extracurricular offerings besides sports.

“We had a girl that missed 21 days in a row right before prom, then was at prom having a good old time, but she was too sick to come to school,” Rollins said.

He also said he doesn’t have all of the details worked out yet and admitted he’s not sure if it will be a big deterrent.

On a different note, Rollins said he plans to add no earbuds to the school’s cell phone policy, which went into full effect with the start of the 2023-2024 school year.