WOODWAY, Texas (KXXV) — Midway ISD is adding vape detection systems in their high school.
“We have drug issues that we deal with, we put out a while back that we’re doing the vape detectors,” Midway ISD Police Chief Jeff Foley said.
It’s part of the district’s security comprehensive plan, which has a $395,000 budget.
“Vaping is a huge problem across every school district in the state, and we’re battling it here just as well as we’re battling it everywhere else,” Foley said.
The district is adding Halo Air Quality Sensors to restrooms and locker rooms on campus.
25 News spoke with MSSSI VP of IPVideo, Motorola Solutions, David Antar, to learn more about how these systems work.
“It has a censor that’s able to determine the size of particles, and by those size of particles we’re able to determine whether it’s vape, vape with THC — because we also detect THC oil that’s put into vape pens — and then we can also pick up traditional smoking or traditional smoking of marijuana,” Antar said.
Midway ISD’s Board of Trustees approved the new addition in July — they saw a 58 percent increase in discipline referrals for vaping last school year.
“We’re starting to enforce those, you see the kids start catching on, they start realizing that people are getting in trouble for this,” Foley said.
25 News spoke with vape shops in the community that say this is a big issue in Waco.
Despite checking everyone’s ID, one employee says he sees minors coming in multiple times every day, especially after school gets out.
So far, Midway Police say the new systems are helping fix the issue.
“We have about a 93 percent accuracy for vaping,” Antar said.
“It really does deter it a lot — it’s made our numbers go down a lot on those contacts and what we’re dealing with,” Foley said.
