MONTGOMERY CO., Va. – All across Montgomery County, vape detectors will be installed in all of the bathrooms to curb kids from vaping throughout the school day.
“Vaping is a 100 percent problem in all schools in America,” said David Hurd, Auburn High School principal. “We were not immune to it.”
Montgomery County is cracking down on high schoolers vaping at schools.
One hot-spot area for the schools are the bathrooms where students would gather during and in-between classes
“We had reports students would say there are people vaping in the bathroom, I don’t feel like I can go in there because there is always somebody vaping in there and I don’t want to do that,” Hurd said.
I talked to the school principal about the issues they were having and he then showed me the vape detectors.
He said since being installed, they have seen the numbers drop.
“We had 28 vape detections the first day,” said Hurd. “By the middle of the second day of school, all the students knew. Everybody had been informed, it went down by half. After that, we get anywhere between zero and two or three a day.”
He said it’s simple, if a student uses a vape while in the bathroom, he gets an alert to his phone.
“Here you go, it just says girl’s auditorium vape alert,” said Hurd. “It shows me which restroom and then I also have a dashboard that shows me the data over time.”
If a student is caught vaping, he said they then have two days of in-school suspension with learning modules on nicotine.
Hurd said while this does not get kids to completely stop vaping, this is one step to get them on the right track.