The Renton School District has seen an increase in marijuana among students this year since the drug became legal in this state for those 21 and up, according to school staff.
“At the beginning of the year it seemed as if we were inundated with marijuana at Renton High School,” said Officer Jeff Reynolds.
He’s a school resource officer assigned to Renton High School, but who reports to the Renton Police Department.
“These were all misdemeanor possession amounts, but still we had probably more than we ever have had in the 13 years I have been working in the schools,” he said.
Requests for comments from Hazen and Lindbergh high schools were made, but neither principals nor school security officers returned emails or phone call inquiries.
“In the past four or five months, the marijuana seized has slowed,” Reynolds said. “It is my belief that they are just not bringing it to school.”
In December 2014, the district hired Bill Blake as the new manager of safety and security for Renton schools. Blake reports that since he’s been on the job, there have been three cases “where we’ve had to deal with marijuana,” he said.
Those three cases involved seized amounts between two and three ounces of the drug. According to Blake, school staff periodically deal with small trace amounts of marijuana that is not subject to police intervention.
Students are typically given a long-term suspension usually 45 days, with the ability to return in a short time if they complete a drug and alcohol assessment and follow their guidelines, according to Reynolds.
This, to him, is a better solution than filing charges on a student, with the likelihood the prosecutor is not going to file on misdemeanor charges anyway, he said.
In a recent case on May 19, almost 2 grams was confiscated from the Secondary Learning Center and turned into police, according to police reports.
Reynolds was at a recent meeting involving school resource officers and school security officers from the South King County area and said, “We felt that marijuana possessions were up.”
“I have been told by students that it is so much easier for students to get marijuana now because it can be legally purchased by adults. Not all students smoke marijuana on a regular basis, but there are too many that do,” he said.
Since Blake came on board, the district has now established procedures for dealing with contraband such as marijuana. In the past, items were disposed of by school administrators and staff, flushing the marijuana and throwing the other items in the trash.
Now, the items are documented, Blake brings them to Reynolds and Reynolds places the items in Renton Police Department Evidence to be destroyed.
Earlier this year, the district’s results from the Healthy Youth Survey were reported. The self-reported survey is not considered very reliable by district staff, but reports of marijuana use among teens was lower in the district than the state, except at 10th grade.
That runs contrary to what Reynolds experiences at school, he said.
“I don’t think that the amount of marijuana used is any less,” Reynolds said. “In fact I believe it has increased.
“You can almost pick the students out that routinely use marijuana,” he continued. “Their attendance is poor, or they are late to class. Many do not have passing grades.”
The district safety and security manager maintains that drugs still aren’t a big problem in the district.
“We really don’t have a major problem with drugs in this district,” Blake said. “My time here and reports since I’ve been here, 700 reports, very few of them, like I told you, deal with drugs, marijuana. They’re mostly confiscated items: cigarette lighters…You would see the paraphernalia that someone could be involved, but we don’t actually get the drugs.”