EAST LONGMEADOW — In the next few months, East Longmeadow will be installing a vapor detection system in four bathrooms at the current high school property in order to reduce and deter student usage of electronic cigarettes.
The system will include four vapor sensors and two cameras, which will be utilized to detect and report usage of e-cigarettes in the building’s four main student bathrooms, Principal Frank Paige told Reminder Publishing. These areas are “high traffic spaces,” he said.
Paige’s request for purchasing this system was approved by the East Longmeadow School Committee during its Sept. 23 meeting. The total cost was $6,318, with the funds taken from the School Choice account.
An additional annual fee is also required as part of the system, which will be funded within the school operating budget, Assistant Superintendent for Business Pamela Blair stated.
While the high school has experienced issues with e-cigarette usage for several years, the product’s popularity recently grew, leading to increased use of e-cigarettes during the past seven to eight years, Paige stated. He noted that the school previously worked to address student usage of other “chemical health violation” products, such as cigarettes and alcohol.
In the past few years, the high school researched vapor detection systems to install at the school. However, reviews of systems at the time were “not great,” Paige said. As a result, the school decided to put the research on hold.
Consideration of a vapor detection system was revived in August when a pilot run of the vapor detection system that will be installed at the new high school building was offered for the current building. The pilot system consisted of one camera and one sensor and was installed at the end of the month in a male bathroom, Paige explained. This bathroom was chosen due to its higher number of e-cigarette incidents in the past.
After the system’s initial positive impact, the school administration decided to move forward with installing a full system at the current building, rather than waiting two years before the new system will be available in the new building, Paige stated.
When the system is installed, each of the four bathrooms will include a vapor sensor with one camera outside each set of male and female bathroom entrances. At the scent of e-cigarette vapor, the sensor will trigger an instant notification to administrators through email or app notification. The notification will note two timestamps which highlight the time two minutes before the sensor was triggered and two minutes after, Paige said.
The timestamps will assist administrators in narrowing down the potential student who was using the e-cigarette at the time the sensor was triggered through the help of the camera outside the bathroom entrance, Paige stated. Both the cameras’ live feed and sensors will be active at all times. Footage from the cameras will be saved for one week.
“The goal is to keep students healthy and safe,” Paige emphasized, noting that it was the responsibility of the school to “guide and help” students.
One notable issue that was highlighted in systems previously was the delay between administrators reaching the bathroom and when the system detected vapor, Superintendent Gordon Smith stated. However, this system is more successful because through its use of timestamps, administrators can review footage from the time of the detection.
“The administrators at the high school are ecstatic about it. It’s made their job much easier,” Smith said. He noted that the administration at Birchland Park Middle School has also shown interest in a vapor detection system. “Unfortunately, vapes are probably one of our bigger challenges in the student body,” Smith stated.
Currently, there are 40 cameras inside East Longmeadow High School, which are used for security and protection of students and staff, Paige said.
The vapor sensor equipment will be installed by the town’s information technology services when the products arrive, Paige added. He estimated that the system would be set up by “November the latest,” stating that the pilot sensor and camera were completely installed in one day.
