District 834 students are in several ways healthier than they were a decade ago, but alarmingly high numbers of them regularly use drugs and alcohol, and that remains the No. 1 threat to their overall well-being, a county health expert told school board members Thursday.

At the same meeting, several community members said their organizations remain committed to fighting student drug use, but are not willing to continue covering the salary of the school system's only chemical health prevention counselor indefinitely, telling board members the district will need to come up with a long-term funding strategy if it wants to keep the position.

Kids feel safer, but alcohol and drug use worry experts

To illustrate trends in student behavior, District 834 Director of Student Support Services Don Schuld and Washington County Senior Community Health Specialist Cathy Mackiewicz presented data from the 2007 Minnesota Student Survey, which asked 136,539 students more than 100 questions relating to everything from extracurricular activities to exercise habits to sexual activity and drug and alcohol use.

In District 834, 1,752 students participated in the survey, which is given to students in the sixth, ninth and 12th grades once every three years.

On the positive side, Schuld and Mackiewicz said Stillwater students reported feeling safer and having fewer physical confrontations than in prior years, seatbelt use is high, fewer students reported having suicidal thoughts, and student smoking rates are at their lowest point since the state began the survey in 1989.

On other hand, overall alcohol and drug use rates have remained steady, with increases in the number of students who reported binge drinking and recreationally using prescription drugs.

Of the 546 District 834 12th-graders who took the survey, 70.8 percent reported using alcohol at least once in the prior year and 40.8 percent said they had consumed five or more alcoholic drinks in a sitting at least once in the prior two weeks. (In 2004, the comparable figures were 71.0 percent and 33.1 percent, respectively.)

Among ninth-graders, 39.2 percent said they drank in the prior year and 12.4 percent said they binged within the prior two weeks, compared to 42.0 percent and 11.5 percent in 2004, respectively.

In 2007, 42.4 percent of Stillwater seniors and 19.1 percent of freshmen reported using marijuana, compared with 43.0 percent and 15.0 percent in 2004.

While binge drinking and drug use are dangerous enough by themselves, Mackiewicz said, they are even more troubling when one considers that they often lead to a variety of other high-risk behaviors, such as driving drunk or having unprotected sex.

In the most recent survey, 33.4 percent of Stillwater seniors said they had within the prior year driven a motor vehicle after using drugs or alcohol and 46.0 percent reported taking a ride from someone who had.

"What concerns us most about that is that with binge drinking is also drinking and driving, violence, sex - all the things that we don't want our students to become involved in," Mackiewicz said. "Drinking and driving ... is a really big concern. That's a lot of kids getting in cars and all that goes along with that."

Nearly half (49.3 percent) of Stillwater seniors said they were sexually active, and 66.3 percent said they used a condom the last time they had sex. In ninth grade, the comparable figures were 15.6 percent and 56.3 percent, respectively.

"Our concern here is that condom use is not just about birth control, it's about disease prevention," Mackiewicz said. "In Washington County, we've seen an 85-percent increase in Chlamydia cases from 2000 to 2006 - that's a huge percentage of girls. A recent study just came out that said one out of four girls ages 15 to 19 has a sexually transmitted disease. On top of that, the teenage birth rate rose for the first time in 16 years, so all of this combined makes this an area of concern for us."

Will the district pay for a chemical health counselor?

Earlier in the meeting, representatives from Stillwater Sunrise Rotary, the Lakeview Foundation, the Youth Alcohol and Drug Program (YADP) and the Washington County Chemical Health Action Collaborative addressed the school board, urging District 834 to find room in its budget for a full-time chemical health prevention professional.

The position was initially funded with federal grant money that was redistributed by Washington County, but when the federal grant expired last year, the Lakeview Foundation and Sunrise Rotary contributed a combined $35,000 to maintain the position, which is split between Stillwater Area High School, Oak-Land Junior High and Stillwater Junior High.

"The counselor position is one that is very vital to the learning and well-being of students at Stillwater. ... As such, we believe the school district needs to take a major role in funding it in this and following years," said Rotary member and YADP Chair Paul Jennings.

Speaking for the Lakeview Foundation, Paul Erickson said his organization would again be willing to partially support the position this year, but a different long-term funding source will have to be found.

"The two questions we have are, 'At the end of the day, who really cares if this position receives funding?' and 'Moving forward, how will this position be sustained?'" he said.

Becca Wilson, the mother of three District 834 students, described her family's ongoing experience with teen drug addiction and made a personal appeal to board members to fund the chemical health counselor position.

"I am here today not only for my own family, but for the many families that have struggled - and are struggling - with teens and drug addiction," she said. "There is a desperate need for a chemical health specialist - a person who understands where these kids are coming from; someone they can go to and trust; and a resource for parents, teachers and staff of junior and senior high school students."

Later in the meeting, District 834 Superintendent Keith Ryskoski thanked those working to fight student drug and alcohol use and said he would report back to the school board with recommendations on how the district can address the issue at its Sept. 25 board meeting.

"I hope that everybody who saw this presentation tonight or reads about it in the newspaper is a little uncomfortable with this. And I hope that you own a little bit of this, yourself, because collectively we need to own this," he said.

"There is not one picture of the student that is described in this data, however they are all part of our community, therefore we all have ownership in trying to make sure that we provide the best support that we can to help them be successful and help our community be successful."

Ryskoski continued: "It would have been much easier to not present this data tonight; there's no reason we have to do this. ... I thank the people presenting; I thank the people in the audience who care enough to be here; and I thank all those out in the community who are going to hear about this and want to get involved, because that's how we're going to make a difference for all these kids."

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Andrew Wallmeyer covers education and the cities of Lake Elmo and Oak Park Heights for the Gazette. He can be reached by phone at 651-796-1111.

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