School Committee Start Alcohol and Drug Awareness Iniative in Mansfield

The Mansfield School Committee discussed on Tuesday a new initiative to reform their participation in the Tri-Town Drug and Alcohol Awareness Partnership high school program.

"I've been to several of these meetings over the past two years," committee chair Michael Trowbridge said. "I think we could accomplish more with these monthly meetings with just a Mansfield group. We have enough on our plate trying to find stuff for [our students] to do, never mind the 3,000 kids from Norton and Foxborough."

The program meets every month, and for the most part is run by students from Foxborough, Norton and Mansfield. The partnership's stated goal is "To reduce the incidence of underage drinking and substance abuse in the communities of Foxborough, Mansfield, and Norton, through increased awareness and education, and collaboration among key stakeholders in all three communities."

Students come to the monthly meetings and design awareness activities. The program has been going on for a few years. The school committee has proposed (and will discuss more on the issue in a later meeting) to commit to create a group to meet and focus on Mansfield alone.

"One of the things I saw that [other towns] are doing that we may not be doing is having a town wide focus," committee member Kiera O'Neil said. "We're doing a lot of our focus, it seems, at the Tri-Town meetings but not taking on a task force or our own initiative in our town."

The biggest issue brought up by the committee during the discussion is that one town's attendance for their students is mandatory, and the meeting gets "hijacked" leaving little for the Mansfield students to do.

"I felt like the last meeting was pretty much taken over by just one town," committee member Jean Miller said. "Mansfield kids had suggested something in a previous meeting and the other towns had a significant number of students there and the Mansfield kids' ideas were overruled. I felt fairly uncomfortable with that."

Trowbridge said that the group does a great job, and that he was not suggesting that Mansfield's participation in the Tri-Town Partnership would stop. The committee did agree, however, that putting together a Mansfield group of this type would be extremely beneficial and more efficient.

"I feel like there are too many people trying to get one thing done," Trowbridge said. "You just don't get anywhere that way."