Susanville School District presents a Parent Information Night
The Susanville Elementary School District has important information it wants to share with the local community at large — parents, students and school staff.
The school district invites all parents, students and staff to attend a Parent Information Night at 6 p.m. Thursday, April 4 in the Diamond View School Multipurpose Room. All parents are encouraged to attend, and a free dinner will be served.
Presenters Jessica Solomon and James Hall, the program manager, Prevention and Expanded Student Learning, Lassen County Office of Education, will discuss a variety of topics including suicide, vaping and flavored tobacco.
“We’re just trying to get information out to the parents,” said Jamie Huber, of the Susanville School District. “Communitywide there’s a lack of information about vaping and its prevenance right now.”
Huber said based upon the annual Healthy Kids Survey taken by students, parents and staff countywide by the office of education, there’s a need to get information out to the public.
“It’s really prevalent right now from what we’re hearing,” Huber said of vaping among students.
The results from the survey suggest a lot of people don’t know what vaping is, and they also don’t understand the dangers associated with it.
“A lot of students don’t realize it’s as harmful — if not more harmful — than tobacco use or other things like that,” Huber said. “And a lot of students don’t know anything can be put into a vape, so that’s a message we’re trying to send out. There are a lot of things kids are vaping, but they don’t know what’s in there. So we’re trying to educate people.”
She said some people are putting prescription drugs into vapes, and a recent story in Chico even reported Fentanyl, an extremely dangerous opiate pain medication, was being used in a vape.
According to Huber, some of the vape devices look like toys.
‘They don’t look like they used to look when they first came out, so we’ll be about to show the parents things like that” Huber said.
She said some look like pens or even a credit card.
“They’re easy to hide,” Huber said. ”It’s a little easier to hide than when I was younger.”
Anyone can come to the dinner, Huber said, “but Meadow View, Diamond View and McKinley school parents are invited to come. We did a similar presentation at Richmond School about a month ago, and it was really positively received, so we want to educate everyone in the community. We’ve invited staff and parents, and we want the kids to come. We want to educate everyone, and that’s why we’ve invited the parents from all three schools.”
Huber said the presenters plan to show parents what different vaping devices look like and “talk to them about what kids are doing, what they’re using and give out some information.”
Huber said the presenters will also be providing information on a variety of mental health issues and suicide and informing parents about what resources are available to them.
For more information, call the Susanville Elementary School District at 257-8200.
