A troubled 14-year-old probably won't learn a lesson from this:
A 14-year-old Londonderry High School student was near death Friday when school officials discovered her drunk and unresponsive in the woods behind the gymnasium, Superintendent Nathan Greenberg confirmed last night.Assistant Principal Arthur Psaledas discovered Destiny Foose shortly before 9 a.m., approximately 200 yards behind the school, where she and four friends had apparently gone to drink liquor upon arriving at school that morning, Greenberg said.
“They told us to call family,” the girl’s mother, Lisa Foose, said last night. “We thought she was going to die"...
Lisa Foose said tests revealed her daughter had smoked marijuana, and her blood alcohol content was .387, more than 19 times the legal limit for a minor in the state of New Hampshire. A blood alcohol content of .4 is considered lethal for 50 percent of the adult population. When paramedics responded, the girl’s body temperature was 95 degrees Fahrenheit, which doctors said helped slow the absorption of alcohol, Lisa Foose said.
I agree the security at school should be better...but it hardly seems fair to blame the school for all of this:
Destiny has been suspended several times for alcohol-related incidents this year, her mother said. Foose said she and her husband are looking for an alcohol rehabilitation facility for the 14-year-old. “We don’t feel that even this taught her a lesson,” Foose said. Still, she said administrators should have kept a closer eye on the wooded areas behind the school, where she claims they knew drinking had gone on before.“If they’re going to this place, why are they not monitoring it, or having some type of security out there if they’re doing it every day,” she said. “And they are doing it every day.”
Greenberg defended administrators, crediting Psaledas with likely saving the girl’s life. Security cameras are located throughout and surrounding the school, but the area where the students were drinking is not visible from school grounds, he said.
"Not visible from school grounds" suggests not being on school grounds, so the school's jurisdiction wouldn't extend that far. If the parents couldn't keep this child from drinking, why would we expect the school to be able to?
Posted by kswygert at January 10, 2006 06:32 PM