In Pasco County, the 2013 short list of hot-topic, school issues includes teacher evaluations, school grades, Common Core and–designated smoking areas. You read that right.
Unless the administration and school employees’ union can make some serious negotiations headway in the spring, Pasco will continue to perpetrate a policy–at odds with public health and common sense–that says all schools built before July 1996 (more than half) can continue to have grandfathered smoking areas for staff use.
The Pasco County School District’s health advisory committee is formally urging School Board members to find a way to make all schools tobacco-free. Or put another way: To get out of the time warp that treats schools–of all places–differently than colleges, restaurants and other Pasco places of business.