4 school districts target substance abuse and violence

Four Northeast and Central Florida counties announced a new program Thursday aimed at curbing youth substance abuse and violence.

The Flagler, Volusia, Putnam and St. Johns County school districts are working closely with the 7th Judicial District State Attorney’s Office on the new Safety First, Success Always initiative.

Superintendents from the four districts joined State Attorney R.J. Larizza and Florida Speaker of the House Paul Renner in Flagler County to announce the program. Safety First, Success Always will include school assemblies and monthly curriculum for students in grades 6-12 focused on substance abuse — especially vaping — and violence.

“We’re in a struggle. We’re in a fight to make sure we prepare our students — our children — for the future,” Larizza said.

The goal, he noted, is to get to the root causes that lead students to become involved with drugs and violence.

“As a prosecutor, your state attorney’s office, we’re good at prosecuting,” Larizza said. “But what about prevention? Wouldn’t it be nice if we could prevent crime before it happened through education, through awareness and through accountability?”

By working across the boundaries of the four school districts, the initiative’s partners intend to look holistically at each community to determine how best to support students, whether it’s through connecting families to community resources or through peer mentorship.

Renner said he believes a program like this could have made a difference in Parkland, where a former high school student killed 17 people in 2018. If that student had received better education on accountability and violence, Renner believes, things may have played out differently.

With the new school year starting, this program will begin by bolstering existing mental health curriculum with additional information about vaping, substance abuse and violence. If all goes well for the program, Larizza and Renner said they would like to see the program expanded outside of its four-county area and potentially statewide.

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