COMMUNITY NEWS

School officials, community to fight drug abuse

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East Meadow School District administrators, Board of Education trustees, teachers, parents and community members gathered at the Leon J. Campo Salisbury Center last week with one goal in mind: fighting drug abuse.

Dozens of East Meadowites attended “Knowledge is Power,” a workshop hosted by the East Meadow PTA Council and the East Meadow Kiwanis Club on Nov. 12, to hear from Nassau County Police Department Detective Pamela Stark and Steven Dodge, a recovering addict and the founder of a nonprofit organization whose goal is to prevent drug and alcohol abuse. Leaders said that the workshop was the first step in developing an anti-drug campaign that will become a part of the fabric of the community.

The gathering was a Project ACCESS — A Community Committed to Educating Students for Success — workshop. ACCESS, a subcommittee of the PTA’s curriculum council, sponsors educational programs for parents throughout the year. Its main goal is to provide parents with strategies to help their children achieve the highest level of academic success. ACCESS is a cooperative effort of the district administration, teachers and parents.

Collaboration has been and will continue to be crucial to the anti-drug campaign, according to Donna LaScala, president of the PTA Council. When she met Schools Superintendent Leon Campo over the summer to discuss 2015-16 goals and projects, they both said they wanted to tackle the issue of drug use among young people in their community almost immediately.

“Without even knowing it, we really were on the same page,” LaScala said. “This is something that we needed to do … We’re all coming at it from different perspectives to say, ‘We’re not putting our heads in the sand.’ We know we have a problem that needs to be addressed.”

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