Schools

School Campuses Eliminating Teacher Smoking Areas

Teachers and staff are permitted to smoke outside at most schools in Sarasota in a smoking designated area out of view of students.

Some Sarasota schools are technically not tobacco-free, though campuses are trying to take that step.

Many Sarasota schools and school district-owned properties give teachers and staff special treatment to smoke because of a union contract stipulation. They're called "smoking designated areas" that allow teachers and staff to light one up or take a dip of Skoal during a break.

Three schools have voted to make their campus tobacco-free so far, said School Board Member Shirley Brown during a Tuesday work session, and the at The Landings is going to consider the move.

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, Pine View School in Osprey and Toledo Blade Elementary in North Port decided to become tobacco-free campuses, Brown said. More schools — believed to be eight — aligned with Students Working Against Tobacco group are also tobacco free, Brown told Patch. 

Because of collective bargaining agreements, Sarasota County School Board members cannot implement a uniform tobacco policy, so it is up to each campus to have 10 percent of its employees petition a change to tobacco-free and then have all of its members to vote on it, White explained. 

Find out what's happening in Sarasotawith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The teachers union, Sarasota County Classified/Teachers Association, actually has a line in its contract for a right to smoke at schools or any school-owned work site (cost center as the contract calls it) as long as it meets certain requirements:

Each cost center head shall establish an area on the cost center’s campus to be the designated area for the use of tobacco products. This designated area may not be contained within any building owned by, or leased to, the School Board and may not be located in any area which is normally in view of students or the public.

The latest contract also provides an amendment allowing the secret vote for the tobacco-free designation, and only one vote at a work site can be held per school year, according to the contract.

What would change, Superintendent Lori White said, is that if a campus chooses to go tobacco-free, the designated smoking area would be removed. 

"We're being very inclusive at the Landings," White said. The School Board will count staff who are based out of the Landings but work offsite at a school as part of the building's population, and will also allow School Board members to vote on the matter. 

"Anyone who's office at any point is at the Landings, you are allowed to weigh in on the decision," White said. 

Though smoking and tobacco bans on school properties have strengthened over the last 30 years, the last remaining allowance of smoking are these smoking-designated areas that are defined differently in each school district or state across the country. 

At one time, students could smoke their Marlboro Lights beside their teachers in designated areas in some schools across the country, though as policies became more restrictive students became more inventive to create their own smoking area.

"When I was in high school, it was the bathroom," School Board Member Frank Kovach joked.

The move would not effect the general public and students 18 years old or older because they're barred from using tobacco products on campus, in cars, and within 1,000 feet of school campuses. 


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