PENDLETON — New bathroom queue patterns were the giveaway at Pendleton’s Sunridge Middle School and Pendleton High School.

Students were avoiding the restrooms, Pendleton School District Superintendent Kevin Headings said, because that’s where other students would go to vape.

“Fights were breaking out and ultimately students were avoiding the bathrooms and long lines were forming outside the single-person bathrooms,” he said.

Complaints from students likewise corroborated the new restroom traffic. It was the classic case of getting caught smoking in the school restroom reborn, except, as school staff quickly discovered, it was difficult to catch the vapers in the act. Often, by the time staff would arrive on the scene, the perpetrator had headed off to class and all that was left was a tinge of fragrance in the air.

Headings said extra personnel weren’t available to monitor restroom activities, making apprehension increasingly difficult.

Technology provided the solution — vape detectors.

The Wildhorse Foundation in 2022 provided a $50,000 grant to the Pendleton School District to pay for 20 detectors. The district allocated 10 devices each to Sunridge Middle School and the high school. The district paid for the installation and wiring, which Headings said cost another roughly $50,000.

“We ordered them, we got them, then it took a year to get them wired and online,” he said.

Restrooms were the obvious place to install the devices.

“Ninety-nine percent of vaping was taking place in the restrooms,” Headings said.

The detectors were online at the start of the 2023-24 school year and are more sensitive to smoke vapor than a standard smoke detector. As Headings explained, if someone’s vaping in the bathroom, they’re going to get caught. When a detector senses smoke, it sends a notification to school administrators who then can immediately respond.

“The first couple of weeks of school, admin were getting their steps in running around,” Headings said. “There were a lot of kids who got one-day suspensions.”

“After about the first month, it settled down quite a bit,” he said. “There have been only two cases that I know of in the month of October.”

La Grande Middle School detects drop in vaping

La Grande School District has used vape detectors in its middle and high schools for the past two years. The schools installed Halo Smart Sensors, which provide vape detection, smoke detection, THC detection and even capture sound abnormalities, such as gunshots and shouting, according to the product website, halodetect.com.

Principal Chris Wagner said the installation was in two phases in the school’s eight restrooms — half two years ago and the remaining half last year at a cost of $1,800 each.

“With the vape detectors, it’s been beneficial because the kids know we have detectors in all the bathrooms, so those occurrences have lessened,” he said.

Wagner said students are now better monitored in a location that, prior to the installation, officials had no way of monitoring unless there was an adult physically supervising each of the restrooms.

“I can’t tell you it prevents students from vaping in general, but it prevents vaping from happening in the school,” he said. “I just think anything we can do to make the school a safer place for our students and staff is a benefit.”

In 2021-22, the first year vape detectors were in place at La Grande Middle School, officials caught 44 students vaping, Wagner said. Last year, he said, there were 29 middle school students caught. This school year, Wagner said only one student has been caught so far.

La Grande High School has installed one vape detector each in four bathrooms, leaving the other six free of the devices, Assistant Principal Eric Freeman said.

“This is the second year we’ve had them,” Freeman said. “It was an attempt for us to put a halt to the vaping pandemic that’s hit the United States and all school districts. It’s not just isolated to this school district and the state of Oregon. This is a major issue for our youth across the country.”

Freeman said he believes the high school is going to install detectors in the other restrooms and thinks they do help, but they are possibly having a bigger impact on the middle school, which is not an open campus like the high school is. Last year, Freeman said the school noted 30 vaping incidents.

Mark Witty, Grant County School District superintendent, took up the post this school year and said he will be exploring the matter of student vaping with officials who have been with the district longer. Grant Union Junior/Senior High School has students from middle and high school level attending the same campus, and vape detectors have not been installed there, he said.

“One of the challenges that I have in doing this is, I’ve been here since August, and so at this point, we don’t have vape detectors in the schools,” he said. “It’s definitely something that I’m going to be asking about in trying to determine if we do have a problem.”

Witty later said he had met with other school administrators who informed him there was a vaping issue. He said he would be exploring the issue further.

“I am asking questions and will determine with the staff if they feel it would be important or necessary (to install vape detectors), and if I get the feedback, we’ll definitely be exploring what it would cost to put them in there.”

Baker School District will be installing vape detectors in restrooms at three schools: Baker High School, Baker Middle School and South Baker Intermediate, which houses students from grades four, five and six.

The detectors are slated to be installed in the middle school during winter break, said Lindsey McDowell, the district’s public information and communications coordinator. The detectors at South Baker will be installed when an electrical switch, which has been ordered, arrives. Installation at the high school likely will happen next summer, McDowell said.

Wallowa Middle/High School also lacks vape detectors. Principal Sara Hayes said vaping has been an ongoing issue, but she’s seen a very dramatic decrease this year thanks to an increase in mental health services for students and separating the middle and high schools that began last year.

“We try to get ahead of it but we definitely put more prevention in place,” she said. “The biggest thing we face is how do we prevent the access and then where are they getting it. The information out there seems very limited and what we can do about it is also. I’ve seen a different student body this year. I think it’s due to all these prevention pieces we put in and parents are on board.”

Hayes said the increase in mental health services can serve to help prevent vaping.

“The prevention pieces are mental health in the schools,” she said. “We’ve increased mental health services, so students can process (matters) in a healthy way. We’ve been clear with kids about what vaping does to (their) health and what are the consequences. I think that’s a big one.”

Education over tech

Hermiston School District is the largest in Eastern Oregon, with more than 5,600 students, but it does not have a single vape detector.

“The Hermiston School District has decided at this point to not install vape detectors in the schools,” said Dan Greenough, director of student services. “After doing some research on the detectors, we found that the cost of the detectors was, in our estimation, not worth the investment for a few reasons.”

First, a quick Google search revealed students could use a number of means to get around the detectors while continuing with the habit, he said. Second, to ascertain which students were responsible for setting off the detector, the schools would need additional cameras to monitor who comes and goes from the bathroom, Greenough said.

Such a web search produced as its first result a 2019 Wired article that explains how students at schools around the country circumvent and thwart vape detectors.

Detectors were found ripped from the walls and one school administrator said students were simply exhaling smoke into their sleeves, backpacks or even the toilet, then flushing to keep smoke from reaching the detectors.

The Wired article cited the findings of Stanford developmental psychologist Bonnie Halpern-Felsher that policing can successfully catch and punish students, but the other critical component of reducing the issue of vaping in schools is the side-by-side use of education.

This is the tactic Hermiston School District has adopted.

“HSD has instead put in place measures to try to educate students about the harmful effects that vaping can have,” Greenough said.

The district is using the curriculum Vape Educate with students who are found to have brought or used a vape at school.

“Our responsibility is to provide students information so they can make an educated decision,” Greenough said. “Side effects and potential repercussions for that type of behavior are also included. Regarding the Vape Educate program, we have been using this program for two years. The program has been effective in providing information to students and families about vaping. To my knowledge, I have encountered only one instance of repeated use in schools while this program was implemented.”

Greenough said Hermiston School District’s health classes also include a substance abuse/use component with specific information regarding the addictive nature of tobacco and vaping.

“Secondly is the inclusion of the topic of ‘Substance Use and Vaping’ in the parent series that we are working with The Cook Center for Human Connection. This topic will be presented on March 24th,” he added.

Hermiston Police Chief Jason Edmiston said vaping is a concern for local police insofar that it may be a gateway to other controlled substance abuse.

“We issue around 20 citations for minor in possession of marijuana each year,” he said, and an average of about seven vaping citations per year for the last five years.

Edmiston said youths are clever at finding ways to get what they want. If they don’t get the products from a traditional brick-and-mortar store, he said, “the amount of things on the internet for sale is concerning.”

He also recommended education from parents and school administrators or teachers to help tackle youth vaping.

‘Safe environment again’Headings, the Pendleton superintendent, said he was happy to report student complaints about vaping in the restrooms were no longer streaming into school staff and the long queues at the single-person restrooms had redispersed to the other facilities throughout the schools.

Though it’s only his second year as superintendent at Pendleton, Headings said vaping really started to become a more prevalent issue in the middle school and especially the high school following the coronavirus pandemic.

“It’s just picked up steam in the last several years and it’s pretty easy access for kids, especially if you have stores in town that sell it,” he explained. “A couple stores don’t even check for ID, or a lot of our kids steal vapes from parents.”

The downside of having open lunch at the high school is students can go off campus to vape or acquire vape products.

In addition to school staff addressing the issue of vaping, Headings said school resource officers at both schools are involved when a vaping infraction comes up.

“We work strategically with the Pendleton Police Department and hold regular safe school meetings where we talk about vaping and other trends and how to handle them in the school district. It’s not just (tobacco) vaping anymore. Pendleton police have informed us that people are now vaping fentanyl as well,” Headings said.

He said Pendleton’s vape detectors are also equipped to detect odorless fentanyl, but so far, none has been detected.

“Without the detectors — that 100% supervision the detectors give — our students didn’t feel safe,” he said, “but now they have that safe environment again.”

Getting caught vaping at Pendleton High

If school staff or officials identify a student as having been seen vaping, a no-touch search is conducted of the student and their personal effects in which they are asked to turn their pockets inside out, open their jacket and so forth and show they aren’t in possession of a vape or other smoking apparatus. A parent/guardian also can be called to conduct the search.

If a student refuses to be searched, it’s an automatic 10-day suspension. If during the search a device is found, it’s a one-day suspension. If it happens again, it’s a five-day suspension. A third offense opens up the possibility of expulsion.

“We haven’t, to my knowledge, had any second-time offenders,” Pendleton School District Superintendent Kevin Headings said, adding the district works to provide education to students and parents about the dangers and health consequences of vaping.

Pendleton school staff also make sure students are aware of the disciplinary consequences of vaping on campus.

“We have consequences in place,” Headings said, “and we make sure students know the consequences.”