Teenagers are not the only ones grumbling about going to class.

Parents in several suburban districts are complaining when they learn they are required to attend drug and alcohol information sessions before their children can go to school dances.

These parents haven’t met Janice Struebel.

Her son, Mathew, died July 8, 2005, after falling off a balcony at a party. He was 17—too young to buy alcohol, and too young to die.

Struebel could not let another family endure the pain hers was going through. She joined a citizens group, which was already looking at the issue, and she went to the Lake Shore School Board.

“We need to do something,” she told board members.

The district created a requirement that any child going to a dance at Lake Shore High School had to have a parent attend a drug and alcohol awareness session.

Since Lake Shore held the first mandated meeting three years ago, 10 other districts have signed on, and more are thinking about it or have similar meetings that are not mandatory. When the proposal is unveiled to parents, it always raises questions, and it remains controversial.

That point was reinforced last month, when a Sweet Home School Board member questioned the practice in his district. Dirk Rabenold said he believes the district should move carefully when it mandates anything, and the decision should be fully discussed at the board level. He wonders if the district has the legal right to require parent participation.

“We all agree it’s good information,” he said, but added, “You’re going to punish a child for the behavior of a parent?”

Mandating parent attendance at a drug and alcohol meeting before allowing students to attend a prom or other school dance was radical three years ago. But it seems to be the only way to reach a large number of parents.

“Everybody struggles with [the question] ‘How do we get the information in the parents hands?’ Unfortunately, we had to make it a mandate, but with that we can reach all parents,” Lake Shore Superintendent Jeffrey Rabey said.

Similar sessions are mandated at Cleveland Hill, Cheektowaga-Sloan, Depew, Eden, Immaculata Academy, Iroquois, Lancaster, Orchard Park and Williamsville.

Rabey credits grass-roots support for proposing and supporting the program at Lake Shore. Janice Struebel said she’s in it for the duration and hopes she can save one child by empowering parents.

Mother’s intuition

On that July night in 2005, Mathew Struebel, the youngest of her five children, told his mother he was going to a movie with a friend. Instead, he found someone over 21 to buy him alcohol and he went to a friend’s house, where at some point, he fell off a balcony. His friends did not get him help for an hour, then they scooped him up and drove him to the hospital.

“They were afraid. They were kids, they were all under age,” Struebel said.

Her mother’s intuition kicked in at around 11 that night, when Mathew hadn’t come home, and she started pacing. Then she got a call about 12:45 a. m. and learned that he had injured his head and was in the hospital.

She was thinking stitches, but when she pulled the curtain back on the cubicle in the emergency department, doctors and nurses were desperately trying to save Mathew after his heart stopped.

“He was my baby,” she said.

Struebel’s story is told at the parent meetings organized by Western New York United Against Drug & Alcohol Abuse and the Erie County Council for the Prevention of Alcohol and Substance Abuse. It’s a powerful moment in the presentation.

But if parents aren’t there, they won’t hear it.

“I ask parents, if you did not have to be here, would you? Nine times out of 10, parents would not,” said Sally Yageric, parent program coordinator for the council.

But she can’t count the number who come up after the program to thank her and the other presenters.

That also has been the experience at Salpointe Catholic High School in Tucson, Ariz., which provided the model for the Western New York programs.

“At first we didn’t make it mandatory,” said Michael Urbanski, associate head of school for student services. “Then, like any parent meeting, it became like preaching to the choir.”

Because the meetings are mandatory, 90 percent of parents attend.

He said the parent meetings, which started about seven years ago, gave the district a foundation when it started randomly testing all of its 1,160 students for drugs three years ago. Urbanski said Salpointe does not have a larger problem with drugs than any other high school, but its location 60 miles from the Mexican border puts it in the middle of a major drug pipeline.

Sessions are taped

At Sweet Home, the parents of incoming freshmen were required to attend one of four sessions last June and August. The sessions include presentations by the director of the Family Support Center, a school resource officer, a town justice and Yageric.

“Our main purpose is to really help parents understand the current trends in alcohol and drug use by teens,” said Principal Joleen Reinholz.

Yageric displays drug paraphernalia, and talks about what teenagers are using. Alcohol remains a problem, but prescription drugs are getting a lot of use.

“It’s a little bit different world than when you were in school,” she said. “We’re seeing where alcohol is the big drug. Heroin is big. That really is the tail end of prescription drug abuse. When kids can’t get pills, they get heroin.”

Parents sign in, and when their children want to buy dance tickets, the school checks to see if a parent has attended a session.

Sweet Home and other schools offer several programs to accommodate parents’ schedules, and most record a session to show to parents or significant adults in the teenager’s life who cannot make the formal presentation.

At Iroquois Central, of 225 freshmen, only five had parents who did not attend.

“There were parents that were like ‘I don’t need it, I don’t agree with it, but I’m here,’ ” said Debbie Wilson, a member of the school’s Safe Schools Committee, which worked to get the program.

“Our stance was the dances are a privilege, they’re not a right. We wanted parents to partner with the school district in helping to prevent issues with their children,” Rabey said. “What other options did we have?”