Because student overdoses are on the rise in the United States, the counseling department will host a parent night at the HCTC on Wednesday, Nov. 9, from 6-7 p.m. to discuss with parents and students the dangerous risks and how to take precautions to hopefully prevent any tragedies on campus.

“What’s happening is our kids are coming into contact with pills they think maybe are Percocets or Xanax, and they’re in the mood of experimenting with drugs when they may not realize that some of those drugs have small traces of fentanyl in them,” intervention counselor Tiffany Turner said. “We’re going to try to make parents aware of this, so they can talk to their kids, make sure that they monitor what drugs and medications are in their own cabinets at home.”

Created by the SOAR Coalition and the counseling department, the event’s subject will cover how to prevent fentanyl usage. The counseling department has invited two guest speakers to talk about how bad the situation is for the kids.

“We have someone coming from DEA, and we also have someone coming from MedStar to talk about overdoses they’ve encountered and really how bad this situation is in our community,” Turner said. “SOAR is a coalition about drug prevention in our community. Their director and then our counseling department leadership decided that this is an event we want to have for our parents.”

With the counseling department putting in a lot of thought and effort in order to raise awareness, they further express their caring attitude toward students.

“In a way, I do think they’re helpful,” junior Gretchen Cizek said. “They do that thing where they’ll pull you out of class, to talk to you and stuff,” junior Gretchen Cizek said. “If you go in for counseling, they’re going to have to listen to you and tell you what to fix.”

Along with the counseling department, teachers are tasked with looking out for students and their well-being. English II teacher Carleen Capaldo said she encourages students to reach out to counseling, so they have someone to guide them in the right direction.

“I think that counseling is good for the kids because it will help them,” Capaldo said. “For me when I was a kid, I didn’t have anybody to turn to talk about things. To be able to have access to somebody to talk to about things that we’re having problems with you know some kind of an expert, I think that’s so important for everybody, kids all the way to adults.”

Along with this campaign, Eagle Mountain-Saginaw ISD administrators produced a public service announcement that all classrooms were required to show that highlights the One Pill Can Kill campaign. The video features faces familiar to the CTHS campus.

For more information on the counseling department, click here.

To watch the PSA the EMSISD administrators created, click the link below.