PERRYSBURG – A panel of 10 county officials, school administrators and members of law enforcement
gathered Thursday night to tackle a number of safety concerns regarding children – and to let parents
know what they can do about them.
The Student Safety Summit, sponsored by Perrysburg Schools and Wood County Prosecutor Paul Dobson, was
held in the auditorium of the Commodore Building, addressing topics from bullying to sexting to drug and
alcohol use.
Responding to an early question, Brent Swartzmiller, principal of Frank Elementary, spoke about the
newly-instituted Olweus anti-bullying program at elementaries in the district.
"Bottom line, bullying is not going to go away," he said. However, the program assists them in
becoming better at dealing with the issue.
Swartzmiller said that if parents suspect there is bullying going on, they should report it.
"Please, we want to know. The quicker we know the quicker we can respond."
"Sometimes we hear ‘girls will be girls’ or ‘boys will be boys.’ Wrong answer again."
Juvenile detective Pat Jones of the Perrysburg Police Division noted that more than half of the cases he
investigates involve technology, including cyberbullying.
"It happens here in Perrysburg, too," he said, recounting a case last year in which two
Perrysburg High School freshmen created a false e-mail and Facebook account in another freshman’s name
and used it to make inappropriate statements in that student’s name.
Jones said he also spends a great deal of time investigating cases involving online possession and
distribution of child pornography.
"It’s all around us, and it’s close to us too," he said, noting a case involving a senior at
Penta Career Center who had been trading such images online.
"My first advice to parents is to be a parent," he said, "communicate with your
children." They should also be sure they have access to their kids’ social networking sites and
keep an eye on their cell phones.
Dobson offered that parents should keep computers with Internet access in a central area and out of their
kids’ rooms.
Speaking on "sexting," he defined the act as the youths putting pictures of themselves in
states of nudity – or worse, he said – on their cell phones and sending the images out. There is also
sexting in which kids send explicit word-based texts to one another. The first is clearly against the
law, he said. It is against Ohio law to possess or transfer pictures of minors in a state of nudity. The
second is not as easy to define.
He said that the cases are dealt with on an individual basis, because there are a variety of
circumstances where kids can end up with such photos.
Judge David Woessner of the probate and juvenile divisions of the Wood County Common Pleas Court, said
that as the law stands right now, in sexting offenses kids could be classified as juvenile sexual
offender registrants – possibly for life.
Speaking on the subject of drugs and alcohol, Rachel Bernhard, a Perrysburg Township police officer
assigned as Penta’s School Resource Officer, said that she has had cases of students trading
prescription medication, and parents should keep an eye on the number of prescription pills in the
bottle. Also, she said that juveniles are binge drinking more, rather than drinking socially, with the
aim of getting drunk.
Melissa Notestein, onsite prevention coordinator for Perrysburg Schools, said that while there is no
single type of student with drug or alcohol problems, the top three reasons they will experiment with
those substances is curiosity, boredom, and peer influence. She said there is often a perception that
"everybody’s doing it."
"Everybody’s not," she said. "The vast majority are not using."
Later, responding to a question from the audience, Dobson discussed synthetic marijuana, created when one
of several chemicals is sprayed on an inert herb and used for smoking; it creates a marijuana-like high,
but is often packaged as incense. It is unregulated, he said, and there are no long-term studies as to
its long-term effects. Selling it or possessing it in Wood County is now a felony.
"In my book, what this stuff is, it’s worse than marijuana," he said.
Regarding a question from the audience about whether there is a policy about teachers and students
"friending" on Facebook, Superintendent Tom Hosler said that the district has started to
investigate the issue, but he advises staff not to do it.
Hosler also noted at the close of the program that a podcast of the summit would be made available on the
school district’s website.