Smoking Allowed at Steinbach Regional Secondary School

Smoking on public school grounds is back at Steinbach Regional Secondary School, where a shelter has been built for students and staff to smoke Bond on campus.Every school division in Manitoba weeded out designated smoking areas several years ago -- for staff and students at high schools, for adults at elementary and middle schools.

The Steinbach high schoool is believed to be the first public school to re-establish a designated smoking area.

Hanover School Division superintendent Ken Klassen said Friday the school has created the designated smoking area reluctantly, and only after extensive consultation.
He acknowledged that neighbours had complained about students establishing unofficial smoking areas in front of the homes that abut the school grounds.

"Yes, over time there have been complaints from the community regarding the number of students smoking, loitering and making a mess on public property in front of the school. An immediate result of the move has been to reduce these concerns to a minimum," Klassen said.

"The decision was made to make an exception for one school, to allow them to temporarily move the unofficial smoking area from the front sidewalk to a designated area near the side parking lot, away from the portable classrooms placed there in September," he said by email.

"This area does have tables and benches" moved from elsewhere on the school property, Klassen said. "There is a temporary two-sided timber-frame/Plexiglas open structure or fence which clearly demarcates the area -- students who smoke anywhere else on the grounds face disciplinary consequences, as in the past.
"This also separates smokers from other students and teachers who use the parking lot," he said.

Klassen vehemently denied reports from several people, who requested anonymity, that some staff have been disciplined for objecting to the designated smoking area.
"No staff has been disciplined -- on the contrary, we have tried to be responsive to their concerns.

"They are not assigned to supervise this area," Klassen said. "The Plexiglas fence was installed at least in part to keep any second-hand smoke from drifting to the sidewalk, and staff have been offered alternative parking to allow them to use a different entrance if they wish."

The news met with disapproval from Jo-Anne Douglas, director of tobacco-reduction initiatives for the Manitoba Lung Association.
Teachers are role models, said Douglas, and allowing them to smoke with students in a designated area is "basically condoning that smoking is OK, when we don't want that message to go out to kids."

Douglas said she's aware neighbours don't like students smoking on their property, but said that's something that should be discussed with schools.

At 1,346 students, Steinbach RSS is Manitoba's fourth-largest school and is growing rapidly while Hanover SD awaits construction of a second high school in Steinbach.

"All schools and schoolyards have been smoke-free in HSD for a number of years, although divisional policy still allows for a designated area at a high school," Klassen noted.

"The principal of the school consulted with student focus groups, staff groups and the parent advisory council before making this move," he said.
The division will review the smoking area in the spring as construction of a school expansion begins.

"HSD continues to have a strong public commitment to smoking cessation and to being a socially responsible neighbour," Klassen said.