Parents Receive Failing Grade from Greenhill Headmaster

HIS SCHOOL WAS BUried in negative publicity last spring after a parent was arrested for serving alcohol at her daughter’s prom party, but Greenhill’s headmaster Peter Briggs firmly put the blame where it belongs. In the school’s newsletter, he wrote: “We do not have a student or a school problem. Rather, we have a parenting problem and it is a problem of mass denial.”

Come fall, actions followed words. In mid-September the Greenhill School Parent’s Association sent each teenage student’s family an anti-teen drinking letter and statement of support encouraging parents and teens to hash out the issue. By signing it, parents agreed to chaperone parties, to confiscate any booze or drugs from kids, to boot them home before the city’s curfew-and not to serve kids alcohol.

Within three days the school had received 125 responses. Now schools such as Hockaday. St. Mark’s and The Episcopal School of Dallas have also sent wake-up calls to parents.

But Arlington has moved on to harsher measures. After one 16-year-old student said she was sexually assaulted at a September post-football game party, the Arlington school district adopted one of the area’s strictest policies against underage drinking: Any student who possesses or delivers alcohol or drugs at any time during the calendar year-at a school event or at a non-school event-will be banned from extracurricular activities for the rest of the school year or season.