The survey was supposed to give the district guidance on how to assess its substance- prevention programs.
By Jon Carroll/Special to The Malibu Times
The Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District was unable to get enough students to participate in a substance abuse survey to make the results statistically meaningful. At its April 1 meeting, the Board of Education was presented with the results of the California Healthy Kids Survey, which is supposed to give the district guidance on how to assess its prevention programs by getting information from students in grades 5, 7, 9 and 11. But only nine percent of 11th graders and 20 percent of ninth graders participated in the survey. When the survey was last conducted in 2001, the number of respondents was too low to create real statistics.
According to the results, student usage of drugs, alcohol and tobacco of those who responded to the survey increased since 2001. Also, an increased percentage of fifth graders said they had consumed alcohol. A slight decrease was shown in marijuana use among 11th graders.
Despite the low participation in the survey, district staff member Kathy McTaggart, who presented the results to the board, said it was evident current district substance-prevention programs were not working. McTaggart said one problem is that Project ALERT, which she said is the most effective program, was not being used to its fullest potential at the middle school level. McTaggart added that the district does not receive as much money from the state as it used to get for programs that teach about substance abuse.
The city of Malibu currently compensates the sheriff’s department to teach substance abuse prevention to local fourth and fifth graders. The deputies will also be teaching the “Too Good for Drugs” prevention program to Malibu elementary school students in the near future.