University/Schools Alliance Executive Minutes

January 23, 2008

3:30 PM at UD Cooperative Extension Office

 

 

Attending:  Cindy Genau, Nancy Chase, Yvonne Nass, Lynda Hastings, George Meldrum, Fred MacCormack, Keith Strouss, Jaime Wolhar, Kathy Ward, Karen Busby, Kristen Blanchard, Linda Brasel

 

Staff Attending:  Roberta Gealt, Mary Perno

 

Discussions:  USA History:  USA began in 1997 as a subcommittee of the Building Responsibility Coalition, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation funded collaboration of the University of Delaware and the City of Newark to reduce binge drinking.  We secured our own funding, outlived the original coalition, and are now in our 7th year.  We’ve been able to get Federal funding through the Drug Free Communities Program, and have outlived about 10 Federal Project Managers so far.  Our current Project Manager, Lt. Dexter Pritchett, will be doing a site visit (our 1st) sometime in June.  While our communications continue to reach out to our full contact list of 240 educators, administrators, parents and others, attendance at coalition meetings has dwindled in recent years.  The Executive Committee, which has been the steering committee for the Coalition, is being expanded to cover the twelve sectors of the community required by the Drug Free Communities Act to enable it to act more decisively for the Coalition and to bring together more voices of the community.  While most of us have worked together in the past, if we act and speak together as a Coalition, we can hopefully make a bigger difference in the culture around substance use in New Castle County and in Delaware. 

 

Rabbi David Kaplan and Rosemary Brooks will be joining us on February 27th  to see if they would also like to join.  The Coalition still needs more representation from the religious sector, law enforcement, and the public schools.  We definitely need a way to reach the public school parents, which has been a challenge to USA in the past.  We are also in need of Youth joining our group.  George suggested that we talk to someone from the Urban League because they want to develop a youth council.  They are located in the Community Services Building in Wilmington.  Smart Drive also has some schools with a strong base, which includes quite a few public schools.  Liz does tobacco prevention through the American Lung Association, i.e.:  Kick Butts Day.  Lynda said that it makes sense to go to a group that already exists, rather than try to invent one.  This matter will be discussed again at the February meeting.

Mary will print some USA brochures to give to Fred to get into the wellness centers.

 

Town Hall Meetings:  There will be 4 schools participating in this year’s Town Hall Meeting.  They are in direct contact with the Federal Agency Sponsoring the events.  All of the participating schools—Newark (Building Bridges Coalition), Dickenson, Sanford and Sallesianum--will be holding their meetings on April 2nd.  The Office of Prevention and Early Intervention will be co-sponsoring a similar event on Saturday, April 4th. USA can provide school specific data for most schools at the meetings.  Yvonne Bunch of OPEI suggested  USA provide handouts on statistics and parenting tips.  Kathy said that the YMCA already has one.  We will make this available to every school.  Karen Busby said that Smart Drive can put it on their web site.  George said that Just for Youth already has a card with phone numbers on it.  It was also suggested that information be provided to WILM radio about the Town Hall Meetings.  Harry said that Tower Hill School uses a “Push Page” to get messages out to parents of their students. Yvonne said that if a cheat-sheet were available for coalition members then any one of us could do a media plug.  USA will develop one.

 

Newsletters-Are up and running once again.  We already have 2 issues for January.  The first one is a general one and the 2nd one addresses a specific topic—abuse of over-the-counter drugs, which is higher in Delaware than the average for the United States.  Board members were asked for suggestions for additional topics.  Suggestions included:

1.  Driving Under the Influence

2.      Sexual Behaviors & Substance Abuse

3.      Loss of talent & celebrities due to addiction, put a face to the addiction

4.      Going to rehab isn’t as easy as it looks in Hollywood, most people have to go 3-10 times and in reality, they are in rehab the rest of their lives.

5.      Statistics from the Delaware Medical Examiners office.

6.      Heroin Hurts and overdose newsletters

7.      Also put some positive info in each newsletter, so it’s not all doom and gloom.

8.      How to talk to your kids about tough subjects, sex, drugs & alcohol.

 

George said that the Kids Health web site gets over 250,000 hits a day.  It might be good if we could eventually have a link on this Nemours page to the USA page and the Newsletters.

 

Comments from the Board- The meeting ended by going around the board with each member present making one brief statement about what was important to them:

Delaware National Guard-wants to be more active and partner more with USA to address under-age drinking and drug use.  While most of the Counter Drug Task Force has been deployed, they are still able to provide support.  They believe they could be more involved with the PTA’s also.

 

YMCA Resource Center-wants more collaborative efforts.  They are already working on collaborations The town Hall Meetings should have YELL present. 

 

Smart Drive-is now in their 3rd year and has collaborated with USA since the beginning.  The concept has grown beyond their expectations.

 

Tower Hill School-a lot of problems come from the parents.  Kids have a lot of money to do things and are good at hiding it.  Kids should know where the resources are to get help.

 

SODAT- SODAT started in 1971.  In addition to providing treatment, they work with students by giving them information, discussing decision options and the consequences for those decisions in an age appropriate manner.  They also provide information for parents.

 

Linda Brasel-her coalition, Building Bridges, which is focused on Newark High School, has had trouble with getting publicity and getting parents involved.

 

Cindy Genau-contracted through the Office of Highway Safety for under-age drinking.  Kids need to have consequences for their decisions.  The environment in Newark needs to be changed.

 

Liz Dubravcic-works with tobacco prevention.  How do you get other parents to not accept it?  Maybe some education and have them take responsibility.

 

Nancy Chase-Wellspring does student health screenings.  She is frustrated with the Delaware laws that we cannot get passed.  Delaware has no social host laws or dram shop laws.

 

Lynda Hastings-is retired and definitely not looking for another job, but is interested to contribute a little here and there. She thinks that more interactive education and culture-based changes can make a difference in youth substance use rates.  We need to mobilize communities to keep them talking about agenda items.  More enforcement and cultural changes are needed.

 

George Meldrum-believes that we need a change in state laws.  He has seen 3 major changes-seat belts, drinking & driving and the smoking ban indoors.  We can win people over one by one and change the culture.  Addiction is a disease and the kid shouldn’t be kicked out of school because of it. 

 

Fred MacCormack-the wellness centers are changing.  Kids need more than what the wellness centers were intended for.  They want to talk and ask questions.  Services have to change; 80% of the kids seen in the wellness centers are there for mental health issues, but the centers were not really intended for that.

 

 

 

 

 

The next USA Executive Meeting will be on FEBRUARY 27TH AT 3:30 PM

                                                          Newark Free Library