SARASOTA \u2014 Following local changes to student discipline and added detection technology, Sarasota County Schools seems to be on a roll with curbing vaping in schools.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s now headed to the Florida Legislature to ask for help to accomplish more.<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, the Sarasota County School Board spent time choosing the policies they deem most important to lobby for at the state level this year during the 2027 legislative session.<\/p>\n
It starts in just five months but committees meet before March, leaving districts to advocate their needs now.<\/p>\n
At Tuesday\u2019s meeting, the School Board voted to approve its \u201cpriority\u201d list of topics, including tasking staff with tightening state regulations around vaping in schools.<\/p>\n
District officials argue the current state law about minors\u2019 access to vaping is making teachers\u2019 jobs harder.<\/p>\n
During the Oct. 6 workshop, Chris Parenteau, the district\u2019s lead on government affairs, told the School Board that there are multiple \u201cloopholes\u201d in Florida\u2019s tobacco, vaping and hemp law.<\/p>\n
Right now, the law focuses primarily on the sale and use of the products, but it doesn\u2019t specify anything about possession of vaping devices on school campuses.<\/p>\n
Because of how it\u2019s written, Parenteau said, a teacher or administrator would have to visibly see a student vaping for the discipline related vaping on campus to be enacted.<\/p>\n
The law has another loophole.<\/p>\n
While it\u2019s against the law to sell a vaping device to somebody under the age of 21, there is nothing that prohibits the possession of a vaping device by somebody under the age of 21.<\/p>\n
Parenteau had suggested to the Board that they lobby for the same civil citation provisions for vaping that exist for being caught with marijuana.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think anybody wants somebody to have a criminal record for possession of a vaping device at 14 years old,\u201d he said. \u201cBut allowing some of this earlier intervention is something that we think will be a good redirection tool.\u201d<\/p>\n
There is already a bill that has been drafted and has had discussions with legislators, Parenteau said, who believes the bill could successfully pass through both chambers.<\/p>\n
The outgoing board majority voted through the six-item priority list, members Liz Barker and Tom Edwards voting no.<\/p>\n
Both dissenting officials stated they would rather wait for the new incoming board members, who are scheduled to be sworn in on Nov. 17, before approving the list.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s unfair to the board, it\u2019s disrespectful to the new board,\u201d Edwards said.<\/p>\n
The outgoing board members are Karen Rose, Bridget Ziegler and Robyn Marinelli.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m very excited about a lot of these priorities, and I appreciate that the outgoing board had the opportunity to weigh in,\u201d Barker said. \u201cI\u2019m simply asking that the incoming board be provided that same opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SARASOTA \u2014 Following local changes to student discipline and added detection technology, Sarasota County Schools seems to be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":434038,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[170133,170131,170132,162077,232,234,233,19992],"class_list":["post-434037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tallahassee","tag-2027-legislative-session","tag-anti-vaping","tag-north-port-high-school","tag-sarasota-county-schools","tag-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee-headlines","tag-tallahassee-news","tag-vaping"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=434037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434037\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/434038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=434037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=434037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=434037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}