Nearly 15% of school-age children in the Meade School District — 504 students — are enrolled in alternative instruction instead of attending a state-accredited private or public school.

Because state funding is partially based on enrollment, those children would bring roughly $3.5 million in funding to the district if they attended a public school.

That’s money that could cover staff salaries and resources, maintenance and repair of school buildings or extracurriculars, said Heath Larson, executive director of Associated School Boards of South Dakota.

After returning to school following the COVID-19 pandemic, students across El Paso have been caught vaping THC — the psychoactive component in marijuana that causes a “high” —  in bathrooms, hallways and even in class.

“Some of these kids are just being blatant about using vapes,” Socorro Independent School District Police Chief George Johnson said.

This led to a dramatic rise in minors, some as young as 10, facing felony charges for possession of THC concentrates.

In the third of a four-part series on juvenile THC vaping, El Paso Matters explores how school districts are dealing with a growing number of disciplinary cases while figuring out how to stop students from vaping.

Many have installed special sensors that detect vaping and notify school staff; had drug-sniffing police dogs make searches; given presentations on the consequences of vaping THC, and implemented new measures on how to deal with those who have been caught.

Any student who possesses, uses, or is under the influence of marijuana on school property must be removed from class and placed in a disciplinary alternative education program or juvenile justice alternative education program, which often requires expulsion from their current school, according to the . The code also states administrators must consider certain factors, like disability and disciplinary history, before sending a student to alternative school.

In June, Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill meant to give schools more control over which students get sent to these schools, which is typically meant for students who commit violent crimes and pose a danger to their peers. House Bill 114 goes into effect in September.

With this vague guidance from the state, policies and disciplinary methods can sometimes vary from school to school within the same district.

Some have begun taking a restorative approach that aims to educate students on vaping THC while allowing the legal system to dole out punishment.

“If we remove students from the classroom for a suspension or expulsion, it has a negative impact on their education, a negative impact on likelihood young people will graduate or how likely they are to attend college,” said Jeffrey Willett, the national vice president of integrated strategies for the American Heart Association during a presentation on vaping with El Paso school administrators in June.

The presentation was hosted by the Paso Del Norte Foundation as part of its

The rise of THC vaping cases caused at least one local alternative school to become overwhelmed with students during the 2022-23 school year.

“I’ve worked at Cesar Chavez (Academy) and oh my god, there’s a lot of kids,” said El Paso Police Officer Andres Rodriguez during a presentation with the El Paso Advocates for Prevention Coalition in July.

“They’ll all be coming down to Cesar Chavez because they get caught with a vape,” Rodriguez said about the alternative school in the Ysleta Independent School District.

“Very few are coming in here for fighting or any of the other issues that they may be having. So the vast majority of our students here are for THC versus before where you had a decent mix of various reasons why they might be coming in,” Ivan Martinez, a social studies teacher at Keys Academy, added.

Keys Academy, an alternative school with SISD, has been struggling with an overflow of students, with classes reaching capacity multiple times during the school year, emails obtained by El Paso Matters show.

“We are currently at capacity with KEYS placements, and we are asking that middle schools keep their current placements at eight students so we can accommodate all pending schools’ recommendations,” stated an email sent to SISD administrators in February from KEYS Academy Assistant Principal Daniel Delgado.

Records show that both EPISD and SISD saw an increase in alternative education placements during this last school year. EPISD’s alternative school placements rose about 14% to about 1,700 during the 2022-23 school year over the previous year. SISD’s alternative school placements rose by 15% to 820 during that same time frame. These numbers include placement for all disciplinary offenses, not just those related to THC.

Martinez said he has also noticed that placing students at Keys Academy hasn’t been very successful in getting kids to stop vaping THC.

“The majority of the sentiment I hear from the students is that they want to be smarter about trying to hide it or just not bringing it to school, but probably still use at home,” Martinez said. “Now there are a few that do say it was a mistake and are just going to stay away from that and stay clean, but it’s not the majority.”

Though school districts are required to track disciplinary violations and report them to the Texas Education Agency, administrators say it is still difficult to get a full scope of just how many students are getting caught vaping THC.

School districts can report a disciplinary incident involving THC vaping devices as either a standard controlled substance violation, which can include regular marijuana, or as a felony controlled substance violation that can include other controlled substances like cocaine or meth.

Still, disciplinary reports show that the number of drug-related violations has been on the rise since students returned to school from the pandemic, and administrators say it is mostly related to THC.

During the 2022-23 school year, the El Paso Independent School District reported 655 combined drug violations, SISD reported 568 and YISD reported 584. During the previous school year, EPISD reported roughly 400 of these cases, SISD reported 340 and the Ysleta Independent School District reported 490.

Records obtained by El Paso Matters show that about 880 – or 60% – THC vaping-related arrests that were reported to the El Paso Juvenile Probation Department between April 2019 and April 2023 were conducted by school resource officers.

However, the number that took place in schools is likely higher since local law enforcement will assist school districts without their own police force. About 37% of these arrests were conducted by SISD police and over 21% were done by EPISD Police.

YISD, the third largest district in the county, does not have its own police force and works with the El Paso Police Department in cases when students are caught vaping THC. The department made roughly 26% of these arrests in the same period, including those that took place outside of YISD.

Still, this does not include arrests for students who were 17 or older and were charged as adults.

Johnson noted that one of the reasons so many charges come from SISD is because of its heightened police presence on its campuses.

“I believe the issue is nationwide, I don’t think it’s isolated just to us, but here in El Paso we have the largest school-based law enforcement agency locally,” Johnson said.

Though EPISD and SISD have a similar population, with 50,000 and 48,000 students respectively, Johnson said SISD had more officers on staff and fewer schools for them to patrol. According to EPISD’s website, the district has 42 police officers who are tasked with monitoring the district’s roughly 80 schools. Johnson said SISD has about 70 officers on staff with only 53 schools to patrol.

A restorative approach

While expulsion to alternative schools is one of the most common consequences for students caught vaping THC in Texas, research shows that it can have negative long-term consequences.

One found that students involved in a school disciplinary system were more likely to be held back a grade and drop out of school.

Another also found that suspending and expelling students have lower college enrollment rates, lower graduation rates and are more likely to get involved in the criminal justice system in the future.

A number of health organizations, including the American Heart Association, are now advocating for schools to take a restorative approach that provides alternatives to exclusionary discipline by keeping kids in class and attempting to address the root cause of students vaping.

Willett, of the AHA, said this may include treating mental health issues.

A in 2020 found that students who vape THC, nicotine or both reported significantly higher levels of anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts than their peers who don’t vape.

“We don’t know the relationship in terms of causality, but we do know that many young people are using vaping products, both nicotine and cannabis, because they likely falsely perceive that it provides relief for anxiety and depression,” Willett said.

Disciplinary measures that do not address some of those underlying issues may exacerbate them, Willett added.

In response to a growing number of students vaping, some schools began changing the way they deal with disciplinary cases.

During the 2022-23 school year, YISD implemented a new program for students who were caught vaping, either nicotine or THC, for the first time meant to keep them out of an alternative school setting.

“We started to see this uptick last year, so we went with the proactive approach and we established a vaping first offender program,” Department of Student Services Director Diana Yadira Mooy said. “The legal side still takes its course if it’s THC, but here in our district, our approach is more to emphasize the importance of educating the students on the potential health risk and consequences of THC.”

YISD is also the only of El Paso’s three largest school districts to see a decline in alternative school placements. During the 2021-22 school year, the district had 706 students sent to alternative school. That number dropped to 645 in the 2022-23 school year.

As part of the program, students are required to complete a curriculum where they learn about the health consequences of vaping and marijuana use. Mooy said they have students talk to a counselor who checks for underlying issues such as addiction, anxiety or depression, and help refer them to treatment.

The students’ parents are also required to attend a meeting where they learn about the health and legal consequences of vaping THC.

“Part of the parent meeting is not only to inform them of the heavy consequences, but also addressing the root cause and providing that support to hopefully reduce those incidents in the future,” Mooy said.

Mooy said that over 550 students who were caught vaping either THC or nicotine had taken part in the program during its first year.

One school in SISD, Pebble Hills High School, also implemented a vaping first-offender program with some questionable methods.

During the nine-week program, students caught vaping are allowed to attend their regular classes and required to wear a uniform – something their peers don’t have to do.

The goal of the program is to reduce the number of students attending alternative schools and continue with their regular instruction, said Andrea Cruz, assistant superintendent of administrative services at SISD.

“The program allows students to continue with their classes and minimizes the learning and credit loss,” Cruz said.

Cruz said the program is currently under review, and it is likely other schools in the district may implement something similar.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Frustrated with what they say is their public schools’ failure to provide quality education and nurturing environments for Black children and fearing the persistent , a group of mothers, many public school teachers, have created a network of their own schools.

Launched mid-pandemic just one year ago, the mothers’ goal is to grow the seven into 50.

“We could be advocating 24/7, and still not make the impact that we wanted to see. So, what do you do, do you go charter? Do you try to keep working in the public school system? Nope, nope, not us. We said, well, ,” said Debora Colbert, executive director of the Black Mothers Forum, a Phoenix-based parent advocacy group. 

In mixed-grade classes, students learn at their own pace and are guided by two teachers. Restorative discipline techniques, not punitive strategies, are the norm.

The Forum’s approach to learning has in a state where high school graduation rates hover about 8 percent below national averages and . 

With little to keep them there, students who do go onto higher education often leave the state and don’t look back, Colbert said.

In Phoenix-area churches, nonprofits and shared school buildings, 42 students comprise the first microschools launched last January with preliminary guidance from national microschool giant Prenda. The Forum’s sites have since made the transition to public charter schools within local network EdKey Sequoia Choice. (Arizona’s attorney general with a separate, online EdKey school. Prenda lawyers say the investigation has since closed. The Attorney General’s office did not respond to repeated requests for comment.)

Many of the Forum’s teachers, dubbed “learning guides” per the Prenda model, are religious leaders and parents from the community — many of whom left their placements in traditional schools for the opportunity. 

Founders of the schools hope to change perceptions of the community they’ve so often heard from young people: “There’s nothing to keep me in Arizona, or Phoenix, to realize my dreams and my goals,” said Colbert.

“That’s not okay. We’re on a mission to kind of track where our children are, where they’re going, whether they are successful, and how to keep them connected to their communities,” she said.

Gov. Ducey has committed nearly $4 million in the last year .

The forum has advocated for school reform since 2016, after nationwide violence against Black children and a series of high-profile police brutality cases involving Black Americans. Their mission became eliminating low for Black children and school discipline policies that often end with Black children funneled into prison. 

While the learning pod movement swept across the country’s white, affluent areas during the pandemic, outrage grew as the pandemic and academic gaps grew along racial lines.

The moment became an opportunity for the Black Mothers Forum to formally launch and recruit for their own schools in January 2021.

Forum teacher and mother Tiffany Dudley believes having teachers who “looked like” her children at the microschools have made all the difference for her sons, Xavier, 7, and Jeremiah, 10.

“I kind of underestimated how much of a difference my child, being in an environment where he had people with the same skin color… how much of an impact mentally that had on him,” said Dudley.

Dudley often got calls from Xavier’s previous schools’ teachers about the “little things,” like how he played with his shoe laces instead of participating in a group activity. Mornings used to bring protests because he hated going to school. 

After four months of microschooling, Xavier calls his out-of-state grandparents to recap school projects.  

“Just literally being there in that environment changed how he perceived learning, and changed how he saw himself,” Dudley said. 

Now a learning guide for a third through eighth grade cohort, Dudley said the student to teacher ratio, 10:2, is critical to help students transition from traditional schools. 

There’s no hiding behind a dozen other peers who may be more vocal in the classroom, for example. Instead students are asked to problem solve, with support from teachers like Dudley:  

“‘Okay, did you try this? How about we ask a friend?’ We’re just giving them strategies to teach them how to think critically to be able to solve problems because they are very used to being spoon fed answers,” she said.

The smaller classes allow their “connect, redirect” model, a complete departure from the many other charters adopted, to be the norm. When a student disrupts class or has trouble with an assignment, one guide talks with the child to uncover what might be affecting them. They then connect them to time, space, a venting session, food, counseling. 

“They’re not going to be punished — this is an opportunity to figure out what’s going on … giving them that sense of ownership in that redirection, they are part of this process, that takes time,” Black Mother’s Forum Founder Janelle Wood said. “That’s why we need two learning guides in the space. If one child is having a problem, all of them may not be having the same problem. They can continue on with what they’re doing, but this one child may need some extra attention.”

In crafting schools with Black families at its center, the Forum also reimagined their physical locations. Instead of operating out of a family living room or garage, schools and community organizations were more realistic because their families didn’t have the extra space to host classes.

Renting church and nonprofit space provides added benefits, too: kids stay connected to Phoenix, and community groups that lost revenue during the pandemic are supported financially.

And since last school year, they’ve added an hour of instruction to each school day. The extra time preserved their morning wellness circles — students start each day by talking through their emotions — and independent reading, with which many struggle.

In perhaps the starkest intentional departure from traditional schools, students learn via the mastery approach in blended classrooms of students of different ages and grades, separated into K-2 and 3-8.

Through online learning tools like Zearn and , some work grade levels ahead, others spend necessary time with foundational concepts like multiplication, as guides check in one-on-one. 

Wood recognized their efforts had “to start at the school level, because that’s where our children, Black and brown children, are being negatively impacted at the highest level.”

Raina Chamblee, now a third grader at one of the microschools, recalled how her former Wisconsin public school was a particularly negative experience. 

Diagnosed with ADHD, a new medication she was trying made her drowsy. She’d fall asleep in class, taunted and teased by classmates — behavior left unchecked by the teachers. 

Once, a teacher lashed out at her directly.

“I colored a pink polar bear and then one of my teachers crumbled it up and threw it in the garbage,” Raina said. 

Dudley said some of the difficulties Black children experience in school stems from the assumption that “‘this is a behavior problem’ […] instead of looking deeper to see, really see, the child.”

It’s why, she said, the miscoschools’ personal approach and connect-redirect models are necessary. 

Detailing the last few months in Phoenix, Raina said her new school has made a difference in her learning. New teachers “push” and “help,” she said. 

Her mother, Kylie Chamblee, noticed a difference in her ability to teach, too. She’s making deeper connections with her students. 

When a student needs extra time with reading comprehension and is ahead in geometry, she can work with them more freely.

“That’s what I really like about our model for kids,” said Chamblee. “Because it can be challenging but then it can also be rewarding, because they’re getting what they need.”

Lead Image: Black Mothers Forums