Marion County School Board addresses medical marijuana

The School Board reached a consensus to move forward with a medical marijuana policy that limits the School District’s liability by requiring parents to administer the drug to their own child.

The district had developed a procedure to handle administering medical marijuana during the school day. The problem is that marijuana is still illegal under federal law and the district gets federal funding.

Florida voters approved medical marijuana, and Ocala’s first dispensary opened in December.

David Ellers, director of student services, said in a School Board work session on Thursday that the state is now requiring school districts to create a formal policy by the end of December.

“We had put together a procedure for the administration about medical marijuana based on a student need at one school,” Ellers said. “Just recently, the state released a memorandum that they are now requiring schools to adopt a medical marijuana policy.”

Earlier this year, Ellers had told the board that one student’s parents had requested that their child be able to take the medical marijuana while at school.

Ellers said he consulted with School Board attorney Paul Gibbs and looked at medical marijuana policies at other Florida school districts.

“The state has provided little to no guidance,” Ellers said. “This (memorandum) is the only guidance we have received.”

“The biggest concern with any medical marijuana policy is that it is in conflict with federal law,” Eller said. “Just like these distributors, if you have seen TV shows about Colorado and some of these places that have legalized marijuana, the money can’t be handled through the federal banking system. There are all sorts of constraints due to federal law.”

Ellers said the state sent three policies to school districts to look at but did not give any other guidance.

“However, after reviewing those policies, I felt like since we had modeled our procedure after the policy in Alachua County, that may be the one you were most comfortable with,” Ellers said.

Ellers said the best part of the Alachua County policy is it “really minimizes the impact to school staff and the liability to the school staff.”

“Some of the other policies require some paperwork done by the principal, with principal verifying certain things,” Ellers said. “I feel like it is important not to put our employees in that position.”

He also noted that registered nurses are not allowed to handle medical marijuana; if they did so, they would risk losing their licenses.

“Our board attorney can’t really defend any of this — in any way, shape or form — or risk losing his license, ” Ellers said. “I think the most minimalistic way to implement this is through a policy similar to Alachua’s.”

In that policy, parents must sign their child out of school, administered the medical marijuana, and then sign the child back in.

Ellers said another clause in the Alachua County policy that he likes protects the district and its federal funding.

“If we ever get noticed by the federal government that this policy puts our federal funding in jeopardy, then we can revoke this immediately,” Ellers said.

Board member Nancy Stacy said she likes the fact that the parents will be taking responsibility for administering the medical marijuana.

“That (administering) doesn’t need to be on the School District; it needs to be on the parents,” board member Eric Cummings said.

Joe Callahan can be reached at 867-4113 or atjoe.callahan@starbanner.com. Follow him on Twitter@JoeOcalaNews.