School board vote against drug committee shows misguided priorities

Once again, our school board members are losing sight.

The trustees who vetoed the drug abuse advisory committee have lost sight of the focus, our children.

Instead the focus is keeping to the budget. If the issue and drug use in school is an urgent matter, then it is worth our money.

From reading the article, it appears that there are enough participants to form the committee. Though it is not apparent to the readers whether these are volunteers or if the participants are professional such that the exploring committee costs burden our budget to render our district inoperable, we should still be open to the proposal for tackling such a big problem of our teens.

When the committee comes back with a review and a proposal to resolve the drug issue, then the board can debate whether it is within our budget.

Simply closing the door to "look and see" is not acceptable. Is it because those trustees really believe that there is not a drug issue on our campuses? Or do they believe that by suggesting that we "don't have the money" the issue will go away? Or do they believe that it is simply not our priority?

Continuing "further investigating" of current programs sounds reasonable. But let's face it.

The current programs are not progressing and not accountable to the district. Why not have the exploring committee to discover if our current programs are functional or not?

Dealing with the drug abuse issue is one of the top priorities. I am not suggesting that we should spend every dime to rehabilitate every drug-using student.

But I think we are all cognizant that drug abuse brings other community problems as well as its potential to infect other nondrug-using students.

It will be up to the exploring committee to make recommendations to the board and if need be for the board to take certain steps including to propose a resolution to be voted on by our citizens.

Making efforts to tackle these tough social and personal issues separate our community from others who just accept these problems as a way of life. I urge the trustees to reconsider their veto and put it back on the next meeting agenda. Keith Sinn Simi Valley