Texas Prevention Impact Index or TPII numbers for the past 4 years show decreases across the board here in Amarillo.
The Texas Prevention Impact Index is a report showing statistics in the usage of drugs, alcohol, tobacco, and violence among students in the Amarillo independent school district.
The TPII look at risk and protective factors that lead students to or away from the various substances. They look at perceptions in the community towards alcohol, drugs, and tobacco use. The numbers also reflect the usage of these substances by the students that fill out the survey.
25 hundred surveys are filled out by a cross section of students in the Amarillo school district, ranging from the 6th grade up to seniors in high school.
Here a few noteworthy statistics you may find interesting from the data collected by Research and Educational services, a private evaluation and research firm based out of Houston. The company has done the surveys and completed the data for A.I.S.D. since 2002.
47.9% of students say they would go to parents if they had a question about alcohol or drugs, versus 20.7% say they would ask a friend their age.
The number of students who say it’s ok to have alcohol to have a good time is 26% down from 30% just 4 years ago.
The number of students who think schools do NOT enforce rules on drinking have gone down form 30% to 19%, which means more students are getting the idea that it’s not acceptable to use alcohol from the school district.
In the category of usage in the past 30 days here are some numbers that show improvement.
In the past 30 days, seniors are using alcohol 7% less, using tobacco 6% less, and nearly 14% less of the students serveyed say they have participated in binge drinking in the past 30 days. All are positive stats.
87% of all students across the board have NOT used Marijuana in the past 30 days.
Frequency of usage numbers also show decreases. Tobacco is down 12%, alcohol is down 6%, marijuana is down 11%, this means that those kids that do use these substances are not using as frequently.
Some statistics that show perception changes are the following: 93% of the students surveyed say that they are harming themselves by smoking. 79% of students, up from 69% say that they are harming themselves by smoking marijuana.
Switching gears to violence and safety issues.
15% of students say they have been bullied during the past 30 days.
12% say they’ve been involved with a group fight.
In the past year the percentage of students who have been in a fight at school was 15%.
33.4% of the students say they have discussed safety issues with family in the past 30 days.
All in all, some of the numbers shown are alarming and some show great improvement in prevention and awareness programs here in Amarillo. The Amarillo community should be proud that the students have made progress and the school district is working decrease these all important problems.
“It shows, basically that the efforts that are being conducted here are working, to be honest with you when you look at the rest of the state or other areas in the state, I don’t think you see the same kind of trends or same kind of change in those areas, it’s been very successful here,” said Dr. Robert Landry, Director of Research and Educational Services.
“We’re seeing some decreases in some types of drug use which we’re glad to see, we also know that we need to continue the education K-12 for our students and be able to share current information with them,” said Teresa Kenedy, A.I.S.D. Prevention Specialist.
Source: www.connectamarillo.com 31st March 2009