A student reaches for the vape in their pocket, just to be sure it’s still there. They sneak off to the bathroom during passing periods, despite knowing that their discovery means a 45 day stint in DAEP. At least, it used to.
At the beginning of Texas High’s spring semester, students caught with vapes began going to ISS because of the DAEP overflow, despite House Bill 114 which made vaping punishable by mandatory assignment to DAEP.
“We were able to submit a plan to the state saying that we’ve created a different option for our discipline for kids,” associate principal Julius Anderson said. “The state accepted it because of our success of being a district of innovation.”
These changes are necessary in order to accommodate the large number of students disciplined at Texas High.
“The discipline levels were severely high,” Anderson said. “We have a limited amount of space at DAEP.”
There’s no space left in DAEP due to the sheer amount of students caught fighting and vaping. Administrators now walk around the halls more to make sure this doesn’t happen.
“We’ve had to change what we do as administrators with walking kids back to class,” Anderson said. “Specifically during enrichment, we’re out more often now, in the hallways trying to check where kids are going because we realize it’s a problem.”
Since there are more people patrolling the hallways, more students get caught. However, the punishment will vary based on whether the students get caught vaping or just with the vape.
“If we were to send every kid that’s just in possession of [a vape] at the same level that we do for using it, we’d never get kids out,” Anderson said. “We could send kids for other things [if space wasn’t filled].”
While the idea was proposed by administrators, some students think that ISS will be a better form of punishment as well.
“I think it’s a good [idea to have] ISS instead of DAEP,” sophomore Laila Dixon said. “It’s overloaded because [so many kids] get in trouble.”
Even though it’s overloaded right now, there remains a possibility that more room will open up and they’ll start sending the students back to DAEP.
“We are looking at adding additional staff to our DAEP program,” Anderson said. “Whenever those extra staff are added, we will relook at [if] we want to go back to sending the kids to DAEP since we have the space now.”
While the disciplinary measures may return to DAEP as a solution, this idea didn’t originate solely to punish. People wanted to send a message about vaping.
“It’s a rampant thing right now in society,” Anderson said. “Regardless of whether you’re a teenager or an adult, [we try] to get people to understand the harms of it.”
