■ Presentation made on closing high school campus

By Keri Luiz
Assistant Editor

Benicia City Council/School Board Liaison Committee met Thursday for the first time since September and heard a presentation on a program to overhaul how students guilty of drug offenses serve their suspensions.

The panel also saw a presentation on the ongoing study into whether to close the Benicia High School campus at lunch time.

Benicia police Chief Andrew Bidou began the presentation on the School Suspension Drug Diversion Program, saying Superintendent Janice Adams hosted a meeting last month on the statewide Healthy Kids Survey, which includes questions about drug use in certain grades.

Bidou said at the meeting, Benicia High School Principal Damon Wright mentioned that unlike in Benicia, some other school district’s require students suspended from school for alcohol or drug use to serve their suspension on campus, where they can be monitored.

“The police department is uniquely suited to help in this because we have a diversion program. We have an officer, Ted Criado, that the school district is familiar with because we do so much work there on other issues,” Bidou said.

“We want to try to keep our students on campus as much as possible,” Wright said Thursday. “Oftentimes when a student is suspended for whatever reason, whether it is drugs, alcohol, or a fight, they’re going home for three to five days. Their parents are working, (and) they’re not being supervised.

“The education component is missing,” he said.

Wright said that while Benicia High has an in-school suspension program, “we want to make better use of it in the future, so our students are on campus and we can provide the resources and support for our students in a structured environment.”

Benicia police Lt. Mike Greene said while increased focus on in-school services is optimal, Benicia students haven’t fallen through the cracks.

“Interestingly enough, I think the students are getting a lot of these services on the back end. When we started talking about the suspensions, especially related to the criminal offenses, there’s really very few suspensions that the police department aren’t involved in anyway,” he said. “With the drug and alcohol offenses I would say 90 percent of the time they’re probably cited and go through our diversion programs.”

Added Bidou: “When there is criminal activity this process is happening anyway without the coordination of the school. Now that we have this coordination, it will be much better.”

Adams and Wright presented the committee with an update on the ongoing discussion about making the high school a closed campus during lunch period.

The superintendent, acknowledging that the issue has been long-disputed, said that after a community forum several years ago the district and police concluded it wasn’t feasible to close the Benicia High campus.

“We couldn’t feed the kids. We didn’t have the facilities available to get that many kids fed in a short time,” she said.

Since then, however, through funding generated by the Valero Good Neighbor Steering Committee agreement, the food center at the school had been remodeled, with a better seating capacity and ability to get the students fed, she said. Now the issue is getting a renewed look.

“We’re gathering information, we’re still in that phase,” Wright said. Another staff meeting is set for Monday, he said, and a meeting is scheduled for Tuesday with the district food services director about feeding all 1,600 of Benicia High’s students.

“Hopefully we will have a recommendation for our district office by winter break,” Wright said.

“It does impact the community. It also impacts traffic during lunch. It’s a complex decision, actually,” Adams said.

Also Thursday, Bidou gave the committee an update on efforts to prevent copper wire thefts on Benicia school campuses, saying that that since September there have been five arrests, and there were no reported metal thefts in November.

The Liaison Committee also discussed its meeting schedule, with its next meeting tentatively set for March 7.