As Montgomery County Public Schools kicks off a new school year, plans are in place to crack down on students vaping by installing vape detectors in high school bathrooms.
The school system plans to use $2 million in funds from a settlement MCPS reached with e-cigarette maker Juul to install devices that detect vape smoke, then either set off an alarm or send a message to a school administrator so they can investigate the matter.
“We want to get ahead of it,” Montgomery County Board of Education President Karla Silvestre said. “We want to prevent it. We want to educate … but also have systems like this in place so that they’re not going to be able to do it so easily in school bathrooms.”
MCPS hasn’t finalized what kind of detectors it will get or when they will be rolled out at schools. The Montgomery County Council needs to give final approval before the $2 million, and it is unclear when it will vote.
Through a pilot program last school year, MCPS got a chance to test different detectors at six high schools: Kennedy, Northwood, Paint Branch, Quince Orchard, Richard Montgomery and Walt Whitman.
School officials discussed the new detectors at a school board meeting last week. Some board members raised concerns about certain hiccups they noticed with the pilot program.
“Hearing from my constituents, the students, typically they will say the vape detectors can be triggered by things like perfume, things like that, so I just want to make sure that’s acknowledged and being considered through the process,” student Board member Praneel Suvarna said.
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Another thing they learned from the pilot program was a need to increase staffing to make sure they’re getting the most out of the detectors.
“It’s great that these vape detectors are installed, but when they go off, somebody needs to respond and apply the appropriate consequences,” Silvestre said.
News4 requested data on the number of incidents MCPS had responded to involving vaping but hasn’t heard back. But in the past two years, MCPS had 424 incidents involving drugs or controlled substances, including vapes. Stafford County Public Schools in Virginia deployed vape detectors in bathrooms a year ago.
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