WORKING WITH SCHOOLS
PAIR APPROACH
PLAN
Do your homework to ensure you fully understand the issue of fentapills and your school district’s current drug education curriculum.
find ALLIES
Connecting with the right people in the community can be the difference between a yes and a no. Find people within the school district who can support you, and find out who the key decision makers are.
IDENTIFY what you want
Do you want them to host a community conversation? As you asking them to change the curriculum? Are you hoping for an awareness campaign? Be specific with your request, but also remain flexible if they have thoughts on what might work best within their limitations.
REQUEST action
Writing an email to the key decision maker in the school district, and be ready to follow up. If you are successful and your school district decides to take action, be prepared to answer questions, and support your district if they do decide to take action.
Each of these steps requires thought and time. Plan to spend a couple of weeks to do this. The more work you do on the front end, the more likely you will get the results you are looking for. It takes time, but this is a very important, life-saving issue worth your effort!
Click here for more detailed tips and resources on the PAIR approach, including links to articles and a sample letter to a school district.
So you want to bring greater awareness of fentapills to your community by asking your school district to host a Fake & Fatal community conversation, initiate a public awareness campaign, and/or to add fake pill education to their drug curriculum? Fantastic! This is such an important topic to bring to our schools. If you are able to convince your school district to embrace this education, your effort will save lives!
First it is important to understand why it is so hard to get school districts to embrace fake pill education. School districts get countless requests from people asking them to implement different programs, and they aren’t willing or able to implement all of the suggestions they get. Most people, including school administrators, don’t have a good understanding of how the combination of fentapills and social media is leading to a dramatic increase of drug deaths in teenagers today. Even if schools have lost students to this crisis, most administrators will assume their district’s current drug education is sufficient. Further, curriculum cycles are typically multi-year efforts involving textbooks and school board approvals and are not designed for real-time changes. Lastly, school district budgets are set annually and are generally very tight. Schools typically don’t have big budgets for last minute programs that take a lot of resources. When you combine these obstacles, you can see why your school district’s default response may not be what you’re looking for.
To view a recorded webinar about Convincing Schools to Raise Awareness about Fake Pills, click here.
If you have questions about this process, or suggestions on how to improve it, contact jennifer@songforcharlie.org. Please also email us if you have success in getting this material into your local schools—we want to know how you are doing!
Help us keep track of what schools and districts you're reaching out to by adding to our School District Contact Tracker.
Good luck & thank you for helping to spread awareness!
We wholeheartedly agree that educating school-aged kids about fake pills and social media needs to be a priority, so we have created some resources for you. If you want to convince your school district to sponsor a Fake & Fatal community conversation, initiate a public awareness campaign, or to implement new drug curriculum, it likely will require more than just sending an email or two. We are here to help.
