Suburban Schools Struggle to Fund Drug-Case Alternatives

Chicago public high schools may be more effective than their suburban counterparts at providing students expelled for drugs with alternative education and counseling, an analysis by The Chicago Reporter shows.

Chicago schools recommended expulsion for 78 students for drug offenses in the 1997-98 school year, the most recent records available. Of those, 75 students were recommended for the system’s Alternative Safe Schools program.

In suburban Cook County, 62 public high school students were expelled for drugs in the 1998-99 school year. But 28 were offered no alternative education or treatment options.
Of those students, 24 attended school in the south suburban districts of Bloom, Bremen, Rich, Thornton or Thornton Fractional, where 29 percent to 89 percent of enrollment is African American, Illinois State Board of Education records show.
“We don’t have alternatives for two basic reasons,” said Doug Long, superintendent of Thornton Fractional Township District 215 in Calumet City. “Alternative schools are terribly expensive. We don’t have the money.”

And with only 2,500 students in the district, there is little demand for alternative education, he said. Three students were expelled for drugs in the past year.

“That’s the world we live in,” said Ray Mosby, a senior addiction counselor at the South Suburban Council on Alcoholism and Substance Abuse in East Hazel Crest. “I used to think it was a racial thing, but it’s a money thing—it’s about rich and poor.”

In Chicago, repeat drug offenders and first-time sellers are recommended for expulsion but may instead enroll in the Safe Schools program. The 11 alternative schools aim to return students to their regular education setting, said Renee Grant-Mitchell, deputy chief of the board’s specialized services office.

Of the 789 elementary and high school students enrolled in the 1998-99 school year, 83 percent were African American, 13 percent were Latino and 3 percent were white.

First-time drug offenders may still attend their home schools but meet Saturdays for nine weeks at the Saturday Morning Alternative Reach Out and Teach program, known by its acronym, SMART. Students receive drug counseling, and are required to perform 20 hours of community service.

Punishments for drug-related infractions vary widely among the 28 public high school districts in suburban Cook County.

At Reavis High School in southwest suburban Burbank, students in the 1970s and 1980s were expelled if caught “with even a seed” of marijuana, said Gene Hauser, the school’s administrative dean. Students 16 and under were sent to alternative schools, but older students were offered no options.

Parents complained the policy was too harsh, and in 1994 Reavis changed it. Rather than telling troubled kids to “kiss their education goodbye,” Hauser said, the school now suspends first-time drug offenders unless they enroll in a school-approved, outpatient drug treatment program.

“Being expelled is not a positive answer,” said Laura Crusing, who works with Reavis students as coordinator of the adolescent drug and alcohol program at the YMCA Network in southwest suburban Alsip. “These kids are bored, and that’s when they get into trouble.”