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The State Superintendent’s Student Advisory Council drafted model legislation to address a problem they’re seeing among classmates.
Some North Carolina students want to do something about rising drug use and mental health issues among young people.
On Thursday, a student group told the State Board of Education that schools should have wellness teams to help intervene when they see problems.
Sarah Beitar, a member of the State Superintendentโs Student Advisory Council, said she knows someone at her Harnett County high school who overdosed.
โWe have freshmen, so children as young as 14 and 15, having to deal with these topics of overdose and making sure that theyโre being safe,โ she said.
Beitar also volunteers as an emergency medical technician, where she estimates she sees two to three overdoses every week.
โA lot of people will just say, โOh, it’s just some low life,โ or something like that, but in reality, that is someone’s child,โ Beitar said, after Thursdayโs meeting. โThat is someone’s partner, that is someone’s sibling, it is somebody.โ
The student group says administrators should recognize the signs of drug use and suicidal behavior. They say every school should have the opioid-overdose drug naloxone.
The students even wrote draft legislation to provide training, overdose-reversal medication and additional suicide prevention resources in schools.
Public and private schools can currently apply for free doses of Narcan nasal spray from the drugโs maker, Emergent BioSolutions.
In North Carolina, reports of drug possession in schools have grown to more than 7,000 incidents in the 2023 school year.
Board members thanked the students for their presentation and expressed concern for issues brought up.
โThis is just one of many mental health issues that our students are facing and our state has not stepped up sufficientlyโฆ to meet those needs,โ Board Chairman Eric Davis said. Davis and other board members want more nurses and social workers in schools.
Superintendent Catherine Truitt asked the nine members of the student group if theyโd ever known someone who had overdosed from their school. Three of them raised their hands.
โI think some people just don’t understand exactly how bad it is, especially the ones that haven’t been directly affected by it,โ Beitar said. โAnd so they don’t understand that it’s right at their doorstep. It could be you, it could be someone else.โ