District Hires Substitutes to Address High School Smoking Problem

To deter students from smoking in the bathrooms, the Lacey Township School District has been hiring substitutes to monitor the hallways at the .

“There are two parts to this,” Board of Education President Jack Martenak said. “The smoking problem is something we’re looking to address. Putting people in place shows students we’re taking it seriously, and it will make an impact.”

There has been a reported smoking problem within the high school that the district is attempting to crack down on, Martenak said. Prior to hiring substitutes as hall monitors, school staff was available for duty periods.

Each teacher is assigned to a duty period to monitor the halls, lunchroom or busses, he said. But now, teachers are teaching additional classes during their duty periods.

Those teachers that take on an additional class load assignment, which comes with more preparation and grading, are provided a stipend, he said. This is an “economical alternative” to hiring fulltime staff.

“As a side effect of being in a classroom teaching that period those staff members are not available to perform duties such as hall monitoring,” Martenak said. “Even if you factor in the cost of some additional substitute teachers at times it is still a money-saving approach for the district.”

Martenak could not confirm how many substitutes are being employed for monitoring, how exactly the substitutes are being utilized and the amount the district has paid thus far.

Substitute teachers are paid $75 with a degree and $65 without, Business Administrator James Savage said. If just one substitute without a degree has been hired to monitor the hallways at five days a week, it costs the school district $325 per week, or $11,700 per school year.

“At this moment I do not have the figure for how much we have paid,” Savage said in an email.

The funds to pay these additional substitutes will come out of the Teacher Substitute Account, Savage said.

“I believe I will have enough funds in the account, if I don't I will use funds from teacher salaries where staff may have retired or left the district (breakage),” he said.

Hiring substitutes as hall monitors isn’t exactly uncommon within school districts.

“It’s nothing out of the ordinary,” Manchester School District Superintendent David Trethaway said. “From time to time we may do that.”

The Manchester School District will utilize substitutes to monitor bathrooms periodically, when an issue arises or “flares up,” he said.

Central Regional uses both substitutes and teachers.

“We rotate teachers and we also do use some substitutes due to budget cuts,” Superintendent Triantafillos Parlapanides said. The school district primarily uses teachers with a substitute to cover one or two periods.

All bathrooms in Central Regional are locked, Parlapanides said. When a student needs to go to the bathroom, they sign in and the monitor unlocks the bathroom. After each student is done, the monitor checks the bathroom for any vandalism and other issues and locks the door.

At Central Regional, substitutes could be paid $72. Parlapinides confirmed that it could cost the district $12,160 a school year for one substitute.

“It costs a lot to go to the bathroom,” he said. But you have to factor in vandalism and other damages done to the bathroom that having a monitor saves the district from having to address.

The substitutes also have other duties such as in-school suspension, Parlapinides said.

Barnegat, on the other hand, has a security force that is staffed by the school district, Superintendent Karen Wood said. The security guards check the perimeter of the high school, patrol hallways and review video cameras.

“I certainly support all the initiatives that any schools use to help comply with the rules,” Wood, a current Lacey resident and Lacey Township High School graduate, said. I think every district has to do whatever is necessary to keep students in line and in class. I think that oversight is really important.”

A Lacey resident, who wishes to remain anonymous, was concerned over the cost to the school district and proposed installing smoke detectors.

A quote from Voice Products, a company that installs Stealth Smoking Enforcement System monitors in businesses and schools, states that eight CigaretteBuster Air Vents, a wireless receiver and two signal repeaters would cost the district $3,629.

Two school districts praised the CigaretteBuster in letters to the company claiming that the smoking problems ceased once installed.

“Everyone has stated that this system has done an outstanding job enforcing our district’s smoke-free policy and eliminating smoking in the building 100 percent,” Lower Cape May Regional School District Superintendent Jack Pfizenmayer said in the letter. “Our students have even commented on how wonderful it is to go into smoke-free school bathrooms.”

The Lacey Township School District is planning to look into alternatives, Martenak said.

“We’re going to reevaluate this,” he said. “It’s not a permanent solution. It’s just to make an impact and drive the message home that we’re serious.”

Superintendent Dr. Sandra Brower declined to comment and high school Principal William Zylinski did not return calls for comment.