{"id":180838,"date":"2024-06-27T03:45:12","date_gmt":"2024-06-27T08:45:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/?p=180838"},"modified":"2024-06-28T03:44:05","modified_gmt":"2024-06-28T08:44:05","slug":"student-vaping-tardiness-and-absences-to-be-addressed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/2024\/06\/27\/student-vaping-tardiness-and-absences-to-be-addressed\/","title":{"rendered":"Student vaping, tardiness to be addressed"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

SCOTT TRUXELL\/<\/strong>independent editor<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Addressing the vaping epidemic and tardiness and absences \u2013 those are two areas Van Wert High School Principal Chuck Rollins wants to focus on as he enters his second year at the helm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During Wednesday\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Van Wert High School Principal Chuck Rollins talks about the vaping epidemic. Scott Truxell\/VW independent<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think very many kids smoke anymore but lots and lots of kids are vaping and I\u2019m concerned as a (former) science teacher what the long term health effects are going to be from that \u2013 I\u2019m afraid it\u2019s going to be worse that actually smoking,\u201d he told the board. \u201cWe deal with it on a regular basis at school, so that\u2019s a battle I\u2019m going to continue to fight.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEducation has to be a piece of this too and we\u2019re 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\u2019s such a long term problem,\u201d he added. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to get teenagers to think past the weekend that\u2019s coming up, they don\u2019t think about in 30 years they\u2019re not going to be able to breathe, so it\u2019s hard to get them to buy into that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rollins also spoke to the board about the issue of student tardiness and absences, something he didn\u2019t fully realize until he became principal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur kids don\u2019t come to school, lots of them don\u2019t or they come when they want to and unfortunately some of our parents allow that to happen,\u201d he stated. \u201cYou hear kids talking about taking half-days like that\u2019s a thing. We\u2019re working on some plans that we will be bringing to the board, some things we\u2019re going to try to address. We can\u2019t teach kids if they\u2019re 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\u2019t coming to school.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe 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,\u201d Rollins said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He also said he doesn\u2019t have all of the details worked out yet and admitted he\u2019s not sure if it will be a big deterrent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On a different note, Rollins said he plans to add no earbuds to the school\u2019s cell phone policy, which went into full effect with the start of the 2023-2024 school year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SCOTT TRUXELL\/independent editor Addressing the vaping epidemic and tardiness and absences \u2013 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\u2019s meeting of the Van Wert City Schools Board of Education, Rollins, who spent 28 years in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-180838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-29 13:26:26","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180838"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180838\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":180899,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180838\/revisions\/180899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}