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Students are the principal concern

Joye Brown

February 28, 2006

What happened in Vermont didn't stay in Vermont.

But that's only because James J. LoFrese, principal at Half Hollow Hills West high school, took a bold step.

He sent an extraordinary letter, telling parents as much as he knew about what happened during a ski trip that was not sanctioned by the school.

What he found wasn't pretty. His students had been drunk. They had been using drugs. One had been arrested. Another had been hospitalized for alcohol poisoning.

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He told parents everything he knew. And he challenged them too: "I am asking full cooperation in dealing with this very real and serious problem in our community," he wrote.

What's astonishing is that LoFrese didn't have to do it. He could have ignored it. He could have chosen to protect the reputation of the school rather than worry about the well-being of its students.

Instead, he rang the alarm; he aired the laundry. And, thank goodness, he didn't stop there.

He talked to parents and pulled parents and students in together for conferences.

"I told the parents they should be stern, but loving," LoFrese said yesterday. "This is a good community and a good school. These are good students who made some wrong choices."

Some parents were in denial until they saw some of the 100 photographs he downloaded from the Internet.

One parent told LoFrese of the anguish she felt on learning that her daughter was in the hospital with alcohol poisoning. A snowstorm kept that mother from her child.

"The only thing that got her through," LoFrese said, "was a male nurse who called her every 15 minutes to tell her how her daughter was doing."

Where were the parents? Why did they sign permission slips? Why did they allow their children to go?

It's no secret that teens do what teens are programmed to do: Get away with whatever they can. (I did; and admit it, you did, too.)

Isn't that where parents are supposed to come in? And not just for this ski trip, but for the kids-gone-wild atmosphere that led two Catholic schools to cancel proms and a Garden City school to require that parents give partying teens more supervision?

Here's an irony.

LoFrese had been concerned about a bus carrying his students. That bus was taking the school's Blue Notes choral group on a school-sanctioned trip to a competition in Boston.

LoFrese asked a teacher to call if there were any problems. The teacher called, all right - but only after students and chaperones on the Blue Notes bus pulled into the same McDonalds and were stunned to see ski trip students stumbling around under the influence.

LoFrese called two parents. And he asked one, who had a cell phone number for one of the ski-trip bus drivers, to call and have the buses turn around and come home. He said the driver refused. (LoFrese would later learn that the bus chaperones were elderly, sat in front and never talked to students who were drinking and smoking marijuana in the seats behind them.)

By Monday, LoFrese was angry. He began the first of three drafts of his letter. He called the two bus operators; he called Action Ski Tours, which booked the trip. He still hasn't heard back from them.

LoFrese has now heard the same parental lament over and over: Why did I put my child on that bus?

Parents should be thanking LoFrese for his wake-up call. We're supposed to be the ones in charge.

E-mail Joye Brown at Joye.Brown@Newsday.com