Chilkat Valley News - Serving Haines and Klukwan, Alaska since 1966

An effort to combat vaping at Haines School features a $5,000 proposal to install vape detectors in the school’s middle and high school bathrooms.

The school board approved the purchase of four detectors Tuesday.

“We really want to give students a reason not to vape,” superintendent Roy Getchell said. “It’s bad for them. It’s against policy. It’s against the law, frankly.”

Nationwide about 14% of high school students report using e-cigarettes, according to a recent U.S. Food and Drug Administration survey. Getchell said “it would be foolish to assume” that Haines students don’t vape. Principal Lily Boron said there’s a “general understanding” that they do, and that adding detectors is geared to deter use, not to catch and punish students.

The school’s handbook holds that vaping (like possession of drugs or alcohol) results in a minimum one-day suspension, parent notification, confiscation and possible police notification.

When the monitors detect vaping, they don’t set off an alarm but notify school staff via text. They don’t have cameras and can “distinguish between tobacco and THC and can tell if another fragrance is being used to mask usage,” Getchell said in his superintendent’s report.

In other news, Getchell notified the school board of an addition to the school’s regulations regarding how teachers discuss “controversial issues” with students. The new regulation will require teachers to undergo yearly training about the district’s policy on teaching controversial issues.

“Generally speaking, an issue that tends to create polarized viewpoints may be considered controversial,” according to the policy, which was adopted in 2009. An administrative regulation holds that a controversial issue can be discussed in class if it “is related to the mission of the district and provides opportunities for critical thinking, for developing tolerance, for understanding conflicting points of view or to otherwise enhance the learning experience.”

Getchell said the move to train teachers on the policy was a result of a cultural climate in which more issues are becoming controversial. School boards and parents across the country are embroiled in arguments about whether and how to teach issues particularly around race and gender.

Jim Stickler, speaking as a member of the New Hope Fellowship church, asked the board to take a stance against teaching “critical race theory, gender ideology and whatever you want to call that stuff that goes against our principles.” He said he thinks Haines has a “wonderful” school system but worries that could change.

“We fully intend to make our presence here known until we can see that there is a proactive movement with our school system to head these things off, to make it so that it’s not possible to force our children to be listening to things that have no business being in the school,” Stickler said.

The Haines school board also signed off on a grant application for industrial arts teacher Darwin Feakes to host a professional development class on woodworking for teachers from across the region.