I um was in here chitchatting um with Brian and then I realized and so I ran to my office so I fig there's a technology presentation going on in the auditorium >> and at least a couple members who had seen it before said that they really
wanted to attend because they thought But I think it'll be a great overview for you. >> Okay, great. >> Yeah. So, um it's kind of long, but it's mostly parent focused >> and then from there, this is going to be our internal agenda. We're probably actually going to do the introductions.
>> Um we'll do like a brief introduction during the recording. Fair. >> Yeah. Happy to share as much or as little as See, so like the goals that we set out, these are required by the funy. So like
DFC requires that we set these. >> The baseline is what we had from our previous data. >> Anywhere really. Okay. >> Yeah. part that we're doing publicly. I was going to do more involved introductions
like for for now. >> Did that basketball game get rough the other night or What did you >> I was you know that it was two weeks before the big store I've heard of a number of those this
>> when I was in getting my splints just >> middle-aged people getting splints for the variety. >> You know what I bought were those slip-on cleats you put under your >> Yeah. Can I just keep them on? Uh I just
>> The sidewalks were clean, but then I didn't know it was supposed to start snowing, so I just But then the >> the big storm came. going to hit me with the truck and I would have been fine until this afternoon starts. kind of getting used
to. >> Okay. Progress. >> Yeah, that's good. >> Oh my goodness. Hey Brian, can you hear us? >> Not not yet. Not yet. No, it's okay. But one Thank you.
just like um all right everybody. Thank you for joining us uh for our steering committee for the close community coalition. This is the public part of our meeting. We have some slides that we're going to go over but as always we're going to start with some brief introductions. So my name is Anand Linux. I'm the director of the close community coalition. Uh, my
name is Ree Damos. I'm a Bayath intern. >> I'm Lisa Taylor Kelly. I'm a pediatric hospitalist at Bay and a mom. >> I'm Chris Rich and I am a life coach and a mom and a parent of a high school
student. >> Hi, I'm Ryan Paxton. I'm the director of public health from the town of Long Meadow. >> I'm Kristen Espinosa and I'm a child therapist and the parent of the first grader. I'm Doug Pixby, the pastor of First uh
Church of Christ in Long Meadow. >> I'm Ben Craft. I'm the vice president of community engagement for the Center for Human Development and the parent of an eighth grader at Williams. All >> right. Thanks everybody. And we have a few members who couldn't make it, but it's all for really good reasons. Like somebody is teaching a yoga class.
There's a tech um talk being given down the hall. So, a couple parents are at that. And um I'm not sure where Candace is, but she told me she couldn't make it. and um Mike Dowski from the police department had to send his regrets too. So um so there's normally more of us, but this is a good showing. All right.
So I just always like to start out for the community at large just going over what the mission of the closed community is all about because I feel like getting our name out there is important. So the mission of the closed community is to collaboratively initiate, coordinate, and sustain prevention and intervention efforts that reduce youth substance use
and abuse within the town of Long Meadow. Close community members work together to strengthen our community capacity to support positive youth development and reduce youth uh reduce risky behaviors in a variety of ways, including increasing access and reducing barriers to protective factors,
evaluating and monitoring risky behaviors among youth and sharing the data with the community, establishing and strengthening collaboration among local stakeholders, understanding the diversity of the community, and striving to include all. facilitating collaborative fundraising, grant writing, and programming among coalition
members, and researching evidence-based practices, and sharing data, information, and resources. So, for now, I'm going to do like a quick reel of some of our highlights and some of the events that are coming up for families, and also doing some data sharing from our latest um uh school
climate survey that we've been presenting to faculty. So, first I just wanted to mention that Nilda Erizzari, who does community outreach for the district, worked with um close community coalition to do a screening of screeners. If you're not familiar with screenagers, it's a documentary that
came out a few years ago now. Um but it was a a mother and doctor who wanted to just like look into like what are screens doing with our kids and how are they impacting them? So we had this I think it was just last month and on the stage you'll see me we have um the
Williams health educator Alex Baker and then a parent Kimal and then two students from the stand group um Lyanna and um Joelle and there was about 65 people in attendance. The corn the picture in the corner is Nilda. So she was our MC for the night and the one who coordinated this big event. Um the
superintendent showed up for a little bit too. And I think the big takeaways we had from this is that um Mr. Baker did offer some extra credit for students to attend and they showed up and supported him. It was really great to see. There was some excellent questions about AI. Um there was a really
interesting conversation about social media trends and one of the points I remember making is like it affects all of us. So I was giving the example of like sourdough. Has anybody made sourdough because of how many things you see online? And how you can quickly go down a rabbit hole of like, I'm gonna do this because it's fun on a Sunday and
all of a sudden you have a baton and a dough scraper. And so we were talking about how that happens with kids, too. It's just that without their prefrontal cortex as well formed as ours. That's when you get soap dispensers getting trashed in school bathrooms and stuff like that. So there was an interesting conversation between the kids in the
audience and the students that were the panelist just talking about like how you kind of have to use your judgment in every situation and try your best to not get caught up in things especially if you wouldn't do them in front of your parents or you know if you got caught. So it was really um quite a nice um
event I I got to say. Um another thing I just wanted to share out is that the stand group is still doing a lot of good work. Um, there's a tradition that they do annually where they bake cookies for my sister's house, which is a recovery place for women in Springfield. We usually combine it with a toiletry
drive, but we weren't able to get that off the ground this year. There was a lot of stiff competition with a lot of student clubs doing toiletry drives, and so we kind of got lost in the shuffle, but we still baked the cookies. And the student that's shown to the right is one of the um kids that goes to um what is
this? Is it the academy? That's No, I'm confusing Westside. Um anyhow, she goes to um the school within this school that offers smaller class sizes and she was part of our baking troop and then she decided to join stand after getting to do some baking. So it
was a really nice experience. Um and then I just wanted to share out some of the community work that we've been doing. Rachel Craze is the person pictured to the right. Um she is going to be joining us at about 7:30. Um and she has been one of the businesses that has said yes to getting a Nox box
installed inside our business. And this is just part of close communities push to try to get Narcan out into the community to destigmatize the fact that opioid reversal medications are super safe and can be really helpful if you ever see somebody experiencing an overdose. The picture to the left is the
Long Meadow Adult Center and they put two in place. They put one in their community room and the other one they put in their gymnasium because just made sense for them. They have a a big elder population and there's been a growing risk of elders. If they double dose with their medications, they metabolize opioids so much more slowly. So, they
just wanted to be prepared. And with the gym, they have a lot of people coming from the community, so there's just a lot of foot traffic. So, they were um they were definitely on board. If Mike had shown up tonight, um he had made an ask of the mobile station, and they said no for now. Um but we're still going to just keep plugging along and asking
local businesses who would like to have this in their stores. And um I think that the community is getting more ready for it. I' I've definitely heard more support of it than before. So, that was really nice to see. Um, and then here, if I can get it to play, we have the high school stand club. We also have one
at Glenbrook. So, this is the since I came on board, this is us trying to pilot a junior version at the eighth grade. We weren't able to get one in at Williams this year, mostly because I run out of days of the week that I can stay after school, but um, once the middle schools are merged, I'm hoping to have a big group. But, I just wanted to show
you an example of what they've been working on if it plays. Why do you have so much food? You big back. I wonder who's back. I'm going to use the bathroom quick. >> Oh my god, I do love that. Oh,
so they've definitely been focused on anything that has to do discrimination, body image, gender differences, that sort of stuff. So, um once all the students are done making their videos, we're going to um have like host a party. I'm hoping to do it at the library with the high school stand
students so that we can have a viewing party and have like the older students watch it. And then um we're hoping to share it however the middle school is willing to distribute it. So, we have this there's another one that they're doing on um athletics and just gym classes and that age-old problem of like
why do the boys only pass to the boys and um and stuff like that. So, um it's a very woke group of students. Like they were giving me a lesson on microaggressions the other day and all the examples I came up with were wrong. So, I was like, "All right, that's really cool." Um and then on this I just
wanted to let you know that um you know, we collected our last school climate survey that we do annually was in 2025. We're gearing up to do the 2026 one this March. Um so right now Shelley Warren and I are revising the surveys and asking for feedback from faculty and staff as to what they might want to see
included. Um but we I recently I how we divy divvy up the data is I do the middle school data, she does the high school. So I just presented at Glenbrook and then um we both um presented to school committee and then I prevented uh presented at Williams. And um what we
then did or what I did is like from all the middle school data, we then I created like a little visual packet that the principles could send out to the parents so that the faculty aren't only getting this data, but anything that has to do with like parenting, they were able to send off to their parents. And we plan on doing the same when the high
school data gets presented. Um so I just wanted to give you a few slides that give you an example of what we share. And there's kind of a messy note to the right. That is just a reminder that all of this data for all the years that we've collected it is always available online for anybody to view. Um Shelley
Warren, if you go to like the counseling website part of the Long Meadow High School um website, she has her own page. You have to kind of scroll to the bottom, but all of that data from all the years is there. But what we're looking at here is um the recent Long Meadow data compared to the most recent
state data. So unfortunately um the mass YRBS doesn't always line up with our year. So the most recent we had was 2023. But you can see that Long Meadow is doing well in comparison for everything except for sleep. Um so 50% of Massachusetts kids report getting
about 8 hours of sleep versus Long Meadow Middle School is only reporting about 33% are getting 8 hours sleep. So, some of these slides I'm going to spend a bit of time talking about sleep, but they were doing good with grades and feeling connected to staff people and a sense of belonging at school, which is
good to see. Um, so on the other side, we mentioned feeling connected to at least one staff person in a building. And the reason that this is an important thing to measure, um, what we can show you right here is that the kids that report feeling connected are less likely to say that they never enjoy their
schoolwork or that they rarely do. they're more likely to report that they often or always worked hard and put in effort in their schoolwork and they're more often to report that they found their schoolwork valuable or useful. Um, and then at the bottom I just shared out um I don't know if I mentioned this when
I was talking about screeners and I meant to one of the things we've been hearing from students more is that they're actually really frustrated by the amount of time they're spending on Chromebooks within the schools. And one of the questions we do ask on the survey is what type of learning do you like most? Nobody ever says they like the
computer work, which sometimes surprises us because we're like, well, we know they like their phones, but it's very different. I think phones for students a lot of times are downtime, but when they're in a group, they prefer to learn together. So, group work, as you can see, 70% reported that was their favorite mode of learning while in school, followed by lab work, hands-on,
and then class discussion. Uh, and then of course, you know, we're a substance use prevention coalition. We definitely ask about substance use. So, what we're looking at here, um, one of the we ask a couple questions about substance use. We'll ask one question that is like lifetime use, like have you
ever, you know, did you ever have a super beer? And then when we ask about past 30-day use rates, what we're asking is like, have you used somewhat regularly? You know, are you somebody who used like this year? And so what we're seeing is that the rates for seventh graders is almost zero, but they
do begin to increase in eighth grade, which to me indicates that ongoing education and healthy role modeling is needed and might just be a great reminder for parents that there is a significant shift between seventh and eighth grade for some students. Um, so parents ask a lot of times like when is it too early or when should I start
talking about these things? And my answer is always like, well, in preschool, you know, talk about medication safety. Um but when you look at some of these gaps here, um it's these are still small numbers thankfully, but you can see it's significant for alcohol. Um
and then we I would like to ask this question for high school. We didn't last year, but we certainly asked it for middle school. Um energy drinks. And so again, this is something that I like to send home to parents because they think they have more control over this than schools do. But 20% of the Glenbrook and
I meant to say Glen Brook and Williams, but this is both schools combined. Just so you know, 7th Street students report drinking energy drinks once to twice a month, but then another cumulative 72 17% report drinking them three times to 39 times a month. Most energy drinks
contain between 80 milligrams of caffeine like Red Bull and up to 300 milligrams for brands like Bang and Celsius Heat. And the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no more than 85 milligrams per day to prevent health risks such as agitation, insomnia, headaches, increased blood pressure, and
stomach ache. And there's other effects that come from energy drinks. So when we cross tab some of the data and we look at the kids that for that 17% that reported three times um a month or more use of energy drinks, what we're seeing is that they're
getting much less sleep than everybody else. um they're not getting as good of grades. They're reporting more um more cyber bullying, which um if I had to hazard a guess would probably be because they're spending more time on their phones because they're not sleeping as much. Um they report higher rates of
feeling overwhelmed and higher rates of alcohol use and vaping. And again, these data points are not causation. It's all correlation, but this is what we're able to see when we look at the data. And then um the other thing I just want to make sure that caregivers and parents
and community members are aware of is um there's a lot of different products coming out right now. Like um there's a great little video that we're going to be showing sixth graders on just how like tobacco companies are always trying to repackage nicotine. Do you know what I mean? It used to be cigarettes and
then it was chewed tobacco and then it was vapes and now it's nicotine pouches. And each one is like we have a healthier new way to give you nicotine. Um, so the latest one that we're trying to um, educate students about are Zins. This is just one of the more popular brands. And what it is is basically it looks like a
container of like ice breakers and they're these little pouches of a synthetic nicotine that are usually minty flavored. And um, they're still relatively affordable. You do have to be 21 to buy them. Um, but it's uh been heavily marketed towards like um high
contact sports on college campuses and a lot of male-dominated sports. And um we're definitely seeing um all I would say when we looked at the data for the high school most nicotine delivery systems the use rates went down. The only increase we did see was with Zins
and that's just because it's probably the latest and you know there's a growing group that are getting introduced to it. >> Amanda question. Absolutely. >> With the Zins, is that is it like a piece of gum? Is it like chew into >> It's a pouch. So, it's like they So, the
term I was introduced to is like they call it upper decking. So, you take your little pouch and you shove it between your gum and your upper lip and you just leave it there for so however many minutes and then you slowly absorb the nicotine through your gum. And you know, in the presentation that we're working
on for our sixth graders, we've been trying to like really educate students on like nicotine has its own drawbacks, you know, cuz sometimes people will get the message gets confused. They're like, well, if you're not smoking it, then you're not getting the carcinogens, you're good. But it's like nicotine also increases blood pressure. When you're
absorbing it through your gums, it causes ulcers. It still causes anxiety. It still creates addiction, you know. So, you might be protecting your lungs, but there's still other things that are going wrong. Um, and plus it just shouldn't be in the hands of kids, you know. So, I want to make sure parents are aware that it's out there.
>> The the Zins are less socially stigmatized because unlike other forms of oral like pouch tobacco, you don't have to spit when you use the Zen. >> You just swallow the, you know, >> so there's no tobacco. >> There's no tobacco. It's synthetic nicotine.
>> So, it's not from a pouch. No follow. Most forms of like when I was in college they called a dip, you know, but you would need to actually spit as you used it. So it was very visible. The Zen you can just have in your mouth and you it's virtually imperceptible.
>> Yeah. >> But they also came out with pouches of tobacco. >> That's true. That was >> It was like a It was like dip but it Right. Y So it seems like a development off of that. >> It Yeah. It's like every year, like if I
were not as good of a person, I would just buy stock in it, right? Because all they're doing is they're getting feedback and going, "Hey, people complained about spitting. They didn't like that. Well, let's put it in a vape. People are now saying that it's aerosolized chemicals that that's turning people off. Let's put it like So, this is the latest iteration of how
they're getting nicotine into people's bodies." >> And does it just completely dissolve the little packets? You >> just spit out the paper when it's done. >> Yeah. Yeah. So, it just kind of flattens. Um, so very discreet, great
for hiding. Um, and then I just wanted to let parents know about marijuana derivatives that are out there. Um, I do want to let people know that the images I'm showing here are from products that have been um, sold illegally by six out ofstate companies. We're not seeing this in Long Meadow. Massachusetts has a re a
lot of really strong laws. But um one of the great things about having a Bay Half intern working with me right now is that we are actually going to do visits to um we set up a perimeter of places that they're going to talk about later, but we're going to be visiting a lot of shops to just to get a feel for like
what's out there right now so that when we start talking about these things to parents, we can actually say like we're not seeing these. If you are, they shouldn't be there. You know, like just to kind of help help everybody out. I would also mention that the um town receives services from
the Pioneer Valley Tobacco Coalition. So they conduct um an educational visit and inspection of every retail every year and they also try to conduct uh two youth buys where they take an underage uh buyer who tries to purchase tobacco products from our retailers um in order to you know maintain compliance with ID
checks and things like that. >> Do they look forratom too? >> Uh they do. We've uh I'm not in the program, but I was previously employed there. And uh a big part of our reporting is, you know, monitoring for new products of really any concern and kind of doing quarterly reports on that to our communities. >> Do they cover Springfield?
>> Um I don't believe they cover Springfield. >> Okay. Cuz we'll we'll hit Springfield. Yeah. What I was looking to do is like if anybody has a car, like I was just thinking like there's a lot of things that Long Meadow doesn't sell, but if you go into East Long Meadow or Enfield, all of a sudden, you know, it's there.
Does the tobacco coalition do Enfield? >> No, they don't have any involve state. Okay. Um so we can focus our efforts there. Um and then uh just a little blurb about emerging products. Um I spent a lot of time on this um company's website. I will say in their defense, I
didn't see anything that made me feel like they were marketing it towards youth. It definitely had more of an adult feel. And what this product is is basically um I didn't write down the name, but there's some proprietary form of a caffeine derivative that supposedly doesn't make you as jittery. So, this
has been kind of pushed towards adults as a way to increase focus and and have continued energy throughout your day. Um but of course, none of the claims, you know, it hasn't been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration and the price point is kind of high. So, I'm not sure if this is going to be a big risk
for our youth at this stage, but it's just something that I think we should keep an eye on because if you go into any gas station right now and even Walmart, I've been seeing like focus, energy, focus, energy. It's like there's this obsession and um with the energy drink consumption and things like that, you can see that this is something that
students gravitate towards. Um and then quickly, this is some of the data that's going to be shared with the Long Meadow High School families. What we have here is just past 30-day use rates um on a trend line from 2016 to 2025 and again with just a comparison to the most
recent Massachusetts data that we have which is from 2023. Um so you can see that we've seen nice declines overall. We haven't seen like as big of one for for vaping, but at least it's heading in the right direction. Um, but yeah, we've
seen a 41% decrease in the last 10 years with alcohol use, 44% decrease in binge drinking, 29% decrease in cannabis use, and a 14% decrease in vaping, which is nice to see. Uh, and then we have another trend line
here. This is just looking at 10th and 12th graders, um, past 30-day use trends. And again, it's another one from 20 to 25. And there's one point of data missing. Oh, here we go. Alcohol, cannabis, and
electronic nicotine delivery devices. So, 12th grade alcohol was the red line. So, it's gone down from about 50% in 2020 to 24% in 2025. Um, 10th grade alcohol is the blue line. It started at
about 22% is down to 9. Um, and the only one that seems to be ticking up at the moment is 12th grade cannabis use. So, that's something that we um need to keep an eye on. Um, again, another cross tabs on vaping. So, self-reported vaping is linked to
increased rates of self-reported alcohol use, cannabis use, and higher rates of anxiety, depression, and suicidality. So, the chart just shows um people who reported vaping in the past 30 days versus no vaping. And um they are more
likely to report using cannabis, more likely to report alcohol use, um higher rates, higher self-reported rates of depression, anxiety, um slight uh decrease in getting A's and B's, and um twice as likely to report feelings of
suicidality. Um, as somebody pointed out to me before, of course, there's always that, you know, this isn't causation, and we do know that kids that try one substance are more likely to try another substance. So, there's a bit of that going on there, but I think the one that concerns me the most is looking at
anxiety and depression and suicidality um, with all those numbers. Um, and drinking alcohol. This is not um, big news for anybody, but it's also linked to poor outcomes over a variety of measures. Um, so we're seeing they're more likely to use cannabis, more likely
to vape, um, higher rates of depression, higher rates of anxiety, not a huge effect on grades surprisingly. Um, and but an increased risk of self-reported feelings of suicidality. Um, and then these are alcohol trends. We ask students who have reported
drinking um, where they get it. Um, so it's interesting that it almost breaks down into quarters. So we see 24% reporting that they get it from someone they knew who is of age. Uh but another 22% report getting it from someone they know who is underage. 17 report 17%
report like getting it home without their parents permission. So on the down low but then 22% do report that they get their alcohol from home with their parents' permission. So, I think that's that's noteworthy and um might point to doing some more education around, you know, the the difference between adult
alcohol use and underage alcohol use and and um trying to promote, you know, no alcohol use for teens, if we could if we could make that possible. Um, and then the other thing that I I'm looking to work on this year, especially around campaigns, is um we're always
looking at um this is just seniors um just because we know we also ask this question of younger students and they als we also have data on them, but since almost all seniors are driving, it's a great question to ask them. So, um what I found interesting is that there's always higher um reports of students
reporting that they rode with an impaired driver. And I just think that that's a great um area to promote some maybe skill building because I think uh if I can remember what it felt like to be 16, if somebody had offered me a ride and they were somewhat impaired, it's
really difficult to say no thanks and even more difficult to say no thanks if it's like a relative, you know, like how do you handle a situation like that? So, um so these numbers aren't super high, but I'd say 10% saying that they've rode with an impaired driver is concerning. Um, I'd like to see that the rates for
reporting that they drove while impaired have gone down quite a bit. Um, so that's good. I think there's been tons of education for decades over how dangerous it is to drive while impaired by alcohol. Um, but I think some skill building around how to get out of a situation where the only ride you have
is by an impaired driver would probably be really helpful. Um and so now that we collect the data and analyze it and disseminate it, one of the things that we do um working with um our student groups and with the um intern I have this year is then we then
take that data and we try to turn it into positive social norms. Um and Reese actually do you want to just talk about the process that you went through for this like designing them? Um yeah, so I just generally found um like templates
or bases of which I thought matched the data that Ananda gave me. Um and I crafted a marketing piece that I felt like would uh encourage students to follow the advice that the data like described. >> Yeah. Um so we kind of pick stuff each
year that so like there's two things that we do with this data. So sometimes what we want to do is social norming where like for example we found that the middle school students only about 2% of them are vaping right now which is great but 33% of them think that most kids are vaping. So we're like oh that's kind of
a big discrepancy like we don't want a third of students thinking that everybody's vaping when only 2% are. Um so sometimes we'll do a poster that just draws awareness to the fact that only like 98% of like long middle middle school kids are not vaping. You know we might do something like that. Um, but with the high school students, sometimes
there's more push back and it can be harder to social norm, especially when we only get about half the seniors to take the survey. You know, like it's really easy with the middle school because almost all the students take the survey. And so we can say with more confidence that 98% of you are or are not doing something. But with high
school, especially since we know that use rates go up with seniors, if we're only getting half of them, it it makes me feel like I can see why there's more push back when we say, "Hey, 90% of you aren't doing this thing and then they're like, "Well, my friends do." Um, so part of what we focused on this year was like
things that are just more pro-social in general, like we all need know we need more sleep. And so doing some posters that are like, "And what are the benefits of it?" And did you know that getting even just one extra hour makes a huge difference? And just trying to get that messaging out there. Um, for the
middle school, um, I just really we had a lot of fun with these designs. We did some like GMO labels. Um, we did some on stress. We did some on the energy drinks. And what I've been doing since Reese designed these is then when I meet with my eighth grade stand students or when I meet with the high school stand
students, I have them workshop it with me. So, I've gotten some feedback. There was one I was really surprised that was on um teachers who believe in you. They didn't like it. They're like like they just didn't like the message at all. And I was like, don't you like I love that message, but I'm an adult. You know what
I mean? So, it's been it's been really fun to hear what draws their eye and um and what I think the feedback I get most of the time is they're like, "That's a lot of information." Um so, just trying to pair down the message so that it's something that can be hung on the wall
that they can take in and um and hopefully respond positively to or at least get them thinking about um what we're getting from their data. And this is just a couple more. Um these are for the high school. No, the one to the left is for the middle school. The
one to the right is for the high school. Um, so for example, the feedback I got so far on the poster to the right is that they like find your why, but they didn't like you do you. And I was like, okay, it's gone. You know what I mean? Because if the message or tagline isn't resonating, then why should we put it?
Um, and this is the first time I tried using language like the majority of LHS students versus giving a number because I found when I gave a number, then kids would get tied up on the number. They're like 92%. I think more I think people are lying. And so, but I think if you can say like, you know, we can say with
certainty that at least 54% of seniors are not drinking alcohol. And I'm I'm not saying that's our data statistic, but like if you if you phrase it more as just sort of like not everybody's doing it, and in fact, most of them aren't. They seem to take the information in better than arguing with a number. So,
we'll see how that goes. Um, the other thing that we did, um, and I'm a little running over time, so I'm going to try to speed this up. We do Esper, which is screening and brief intervention and referral to treatment. Um, this is something that Close Community doesn't do, um, on our own. This is something that Shelley Warren and the nurse do,
but then Close gets pulled in to help manage the students and do like the waiting room part of it. And it's a really nice time for what happens is every ninth grader in the school does this screening and it just asks a few questions about um, substance use. It asks questions about vaping and it asks
questions about have you ever been a passenger in a car where somebody's been impaired. And so this just creates a nice baseline and it helps um the school know a little bit more about the freshman population as it comes in and it helps inform the health ed teachers to see what kind of um knowledge they
might need to beef up in their curriculum. Um and then the peer-to-p peer education that the um stand students are going to be doing the sixth grade edition this year. As I said, we're focusing on nicotine. Um, part of that is doing a little bit of information about how
marketing works. And so, we have a couple slides at the end where we just kind of drive home for them how much money actually goes into trying to get kids to try the products. And it's 8.1 billion. Um, and so we have a few other slides that just go into like how much it actually costs to vape on a weekly
basis. And then we have some slides that go into like what could you buy instead? Like if you weren't spending $18 a week on vapes, like what would you like to get? Um, so we have some stuff on that. Um, and then, uh, stand is also doing a stop the swerve contest. This is something that the DA's office does. So,
we started doing a local one last year when it seemed like the DA wasn't doing one. And so, this year, what we're going to do is do an in-house one and then see if the people who sign up for the in-house one want to send their products over to the DA's office as well, just to have a second chance to win because the
DA's contest is much larger than ours. Um, but students can actually, this is to um reduce distracted driving. It can be about texting, drinking, anything that would impair your driving. And they can either make a 30 to 60sec PSA or they can make a poster. And then we're
going to have prizes to like some of the local eeries. Um, there's like a first place prize, I think, for like $30 and then 15 or 20 and then 10. Um, so that'll be fun. Um and then for parents, um we have a parent panel coming up on the 26th and
some of our coalition members who are in attendance right now are going to be our panelists. Um and the idea of this is there's already an eighth grade parent night that guidance and principal Landers runs. And the first part of it is in the auditorium. And so what they're going to have is Mr. Landers
will do his five minutes of um welcoming remarks. And then the head of guidance, Mr. Roseman is going to like do his little orientation, which he said is going to keep really quick. And it gives us about 15 to 20 minutes to have our parent panelist um speak on the transition period from 8th grade to 9th
grade. Um have the talk about substance use, when to step in, when to step back, and there was one other thing that that is escaping my mind right now, but it was um anyhow, we have at least four speaking points that we're going to go into. Um
and this has been advertised pretty heavily. were hoping to have good turnout and uh really excited that we had steering committee members who could do this for us. Um and then for parents that are watching from home, um we just wanted to remind everybody that we have a safe homes program. This is a postcard
that's probably going to be sent out um towards the end of the school year to eighth grade families. Um just letting them know about the safe homes. So safe homes um the little tagline we have is do you worry when your teen is just hanging out with friends? Parents in our network worry a little bit less. The Safe Homes Network of Long Meadow is a
private directory of families who have pledged to not host underage gatherings where alcohol or other substances are provided. It provides peace of mind and a support network as we navigate these teenage years and set our kids up for success. So, and there's a QR code that people can um sign up through. Um we also have
this available on all of our social media sites and there's actually a Safe Homes Network Facebook page. Um and this is run by Shelley Warren and um the families sign up anytime after I think it's sixth grade they're welcome to join. Um but usually I think we tend to capture more parents when they go from
8th grade to 9th grade because I think parents start realizing their their kids' friend network is going to expand and it's just nice to have a group where you can have um like-minded folks and if your kids go to their house, you know that they're not going to have alcohol that's available to anybody who's underage. Um the other thing that's
going to be coming up in the spring is our um lawn sign campaign. This is another thing to try to reduce distracted driving and impaired driving. If anybody wants a lawn sign, they can just scan the QR code. We have a Google form where you would just give us your name and address and we're going to be
working with the key club this year um to deliver all the signs to whoever wants them. So there's really I think this has the capac the possibility to be a really big impactful campaign. We did do this last year, but there's no effort required on anybody's part. Like the signs are made. They're easy to get. You
don't have to leave your house. Just tell us where you want to put on your lawn and we'll put it in. We put it in at the beginning of May and we take it out sometime around June. Um we just try to capture the prom graduation time period so that the message about um not allowing underage drinking or allowing
anybody to drive while impaired is a good time to have that message out. And that concludes the public portion of our meeting. Um I thank everybody who was able to tune in and I hope that Brian hears that we're now done. And I'm wondering if one of us should go check
and make sure I'll be right back. Um,