WESTBROOK – Years ago, before he came to Westbrook, School Superintendent Marc Gousse said he had to bury four students in another school district after a tragic car accident cost them their lives.

“I made a promise back then that I wasn’t going to do that again,” he said.

That’s why he’s stepping up efforts here to educate Westbrook’s children on the dangers of drinking and drug abuse, brainstorming ideas on how to do so with Public Safety Director Michael Pardue and Bruce Dyer, the high school’s substance abuse counselor.

At a recent School Committee meeting, Gousse said he had instructed Dyer to put together a preliminary list of possible new programs or ways to improve existing programs, which Gousse, Dyer and Pardue will work on during the next few weeks.

“This has been on my radar,” Gousse said.

Gousse said he has been watching reports of incidents at the school, along with internal disciplinary reports pertaining to drugs or alcohol, and he has noticed a collective increase. He did not offer specific statistics, and said he noted no spike in incidents, but said, “I’m just concerned that we’re seeing a rise.”

The police logs for the past year do show a number of incidents regarding drugs or alcohol on school property. For example, in a single incident at the high school on Oct. 31 at 10:30 a.m., three students were summonsed on one count each of possession of alcohol by a minor. Police said all three had been drinking, but no further details were available.

Less than a week later, on Nov. 2, police issued a summons, again on high school property, to a 14-year-old on a possession of marijuana charge. Police said the girl had a small amount of marijuana hidden in a pack of cigarettes.

Gousse said no one incident or group of incidents was the catalyst for this new effort, but called his motivation “a conglomeration of things.”

“There’s no ‘smoking gun.’ Not for me,” he said.

Gousse said the district’s policy on substance use and abuse would probably not change much. Policies, he said, are great for setting boundaries, but the goal is to find a way to change mindsets, not punish people.

“You know what’s most important? That our kids do the right thing when we’re not looking,” he said.

Pardue, who described teen drinking and drug abuse as “a persistent public health problem,” agreed that changing rules won’t work, nor will simply setting up a classroom educational program.

“That’s part of what we’re trying to explore,” he said. “Are there other ways to interact?”

Pardue said he hopes the ideas he, Gousse and Dyer come up with will involve programs outside of the school environment, too. Pardue acknowledged that programs like Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) have had their share of success in keeping the nation’s youth off drugs, but said there is always a chance that children will simply revert back to the mindset that breeds bad choices once the classroom-based lessons are over.

“The relationships, the education should not end at the end of a DARE program,” he said.

Dyer said the roots of substance abuse lie in the age-old problem of teenagers, and even pre-teens, having a lack of self-esteem and feeling alone.

“Nobody cares, nobody wants to stick up for them,” he said.

Part of what Dyer hopes to accomplish, he said, is to get students to sit up and take notice of those who feel neglected or lost.

“We’re trying to teach them to be involved bystanders, to do the right thing,” he said.

Dyer, who called it a problem for the community to handle, not just the schools, said today’s youth have “normalized” drugs and alcohol, meaning they’ve accepted it as a normal part of life.

“They’re using it to cope with all the stresses they’re feeling in their lives,” he said.

Magnes Lewis, 18, a senior at the high school, said being active really helps avoid the distraction of substance abuse. He said he usually doesn’t hear stories about binge drinking or other misadventures from kids who get into sports, music and other extracurricular activities.

“They find a purpose of school,” he said. Those who don’t, he said, “find other things to do,” which usually means substance abuse.

Megan Niehoff, 18, also a senior, said she knew of many people who chose the “other things to do” route in life, people she had been friends with until high school.

“I had a lot of friends who just every day after school, they just wanted to get high,” she said.

Niehoff agreed that high school students, especially freshmen, feel even more pressure to belong, and make the mistake of thinking getting into drugs and drinking will impress their older peers.

“When upperclassmen give lowerclassmen attention, (freshmen) do whatever they can to take advantage,” she said.

Jake Payne, 17, also a senior, said he is part of a program in which high-schoolers visit the middle school to talk about substance abuse. There, he said, he is already seeing a change in attitude that suggests to him that the problem is getting worse.

“There’s (comments) from (kids at) the junior high that you shouldn’t hear from seniors in high school.”

Gousse said the district will be introducing new ideas and/or programs starting early next year.