P’ville School Board, Students Search for Answers to Underage Drinking
By Jon Craig
With underage consumption of alcohol feared at record levels, Pleasantville High School class officers made suggestions last week on how to curb drinking.
During the first joint meeting of the Pleasantville Board of Education and student government on Dec. 3, several students offered ideas on how to persuade youths to feel okay about saying no to alcohol and drug use.
Two preventative solutions that attracted unanimous support were creation of a village youth court overseen by trained student judges and inviting Pleasantville High School students to voluntarily counsel sixth- and seventh-graders about the problems associated with drug and alcohol use before high school.
At a joint meeting of the Pleasantville Village Board and school board in November, Police Chief Richard Love said teen alcohol use had risen to its highest level in his 28-year law enforcement career, although village officials were unable to provide statistics. Teens typically begin abusing alcohol during the spring of eighth grade, police said.
Pleasantville Mayor Peter Scherer also said the number and severity of alcohol-related incidents that have come to his attention are at the highest level he has seen in the past decade and in recent years.
“We have had a decided increase in the number of health-threatening, and in some cases, life-threatening incidents,’’ Scherer said.
The mayor said he is supportive of the concept of a youth court, but said it must be reserved for less serious offenses in the village.
Karina Roye, sophomore class president, said it’s important that parents instill values of being responsible rather than leave it up to the school to teach those life lessons.
“My parents have done a very good job,’’ said Roye.
Student Body President Maggie Sullivan wondered if there is hesitance among some students to share information with police because they fear they might get into trouble.
Michael Blum, co-president of the freshman class, said he has concerns his parents might judge his friends as “bad” even if they are “good kids who made a mistake. . . I find it hard to tell my parents.”
Trustee Emily Persons assured the students that most parents can be talked to about the subject.
“Parents are much more approachable than you imagine,” she said.
Louis Conte, a school board member who works as an administrator with the Westchester County Department of Probation, said White Plains has a youth court at the county courthouse. He said the village and school boards are talking about creating one in Pleasantville, where young people would preside as court officers, overseeing punishment for the less serious criminal offenses.
The student officers also offered suggestions on how to improve scheduling, elective offerings and foreign language studies. Several said they missed having frequent field trips once they reached high school.
On the positive side, others said they’d been tapped as teaching assistants in their favorite subjects, a task they benefitted from.
Adam has worked in the local news industry for the past two decades in Westchester County and the broader Hudson Valley. Read more from Adam’s author bio here.