RANDOM DRUG TESTING MAY BE OFF TABLE FOR SCHOOLS

Dozens of Kanawha County school employees have spoken out against a
proposed drug policy, even as the school system appears ready to back
off random drug testing for faculty and administrators.

Board members are set to vote Dec. 13 on the proposed policy that
would drug test employees in safety sensitive positions, such as
principals, counselors, coaches, teachers and child care workers.

The proposed policy does not include random drug testing because some
education officials were concerned about becoming the first school
board in the state to enforce such measures, said Jim Withrow,
general counsel for Kanawha County Schools. An adviser earlier had
said the school system should brace for winding up in court as a test
case over the policy.

The policy does, however, include drug testing in six different
circumstances - pre-employment, for-cause, missing substance, fitness
for duty, promotion and transfer and return to duty testing.

Anyone being considered for employment by Kanawha County Schools
would have to undergo pre-employment testing.

When the Kanawha County Board of Education, through its
administrative assistant of human resources, reasonably suspects that
an employee is using drugs, a for-cause drug test will be performed.

A for-cause drug test can only be invoked in a chronic case and an
acute case.

A chronic case results from "deteriorating job performance or
observations in personal traits characteristics where the use of
alcohol or drugs may be reasonably suspected as the cause," according
to the revised policy.

An acute case happens when an employee appears "in a specific
incident or observation to then be under the present influence of
alcohol and/or drugs or investigation of an accident where the use of
alcohol or drugs is reasonably suspected to be a contributing
cause," according to the revised policy.

When there is a medication discrepancy or when a substance is
missing, all employees who were involved in the discrepancy or who
had access to the missing substance will go through a missing
substance drug test.

Any employees who are thought to be unfit for duty as the direct use
of drugs or the reasonably suspicious use of drugs will take a
fitness for duty drug test.

When a current Kanawha County schools employee applies for another
safety-sensitive position in the school system, he/she has to undergo
a promotion and transfer drug test.

Employees who go through a drug rehabilitation program must take a
return to duty test before going back to work.

The current county policy already in effect only allows for mandatory
drug testing of bus drivers and for cause testing.

Almost all of the 50 people who commented on the proposed drug policy
on the Board of Education's Web site have lashed out against it.

"I have taught students for 36 years and I am personally insulted
that a school board would have so little respect, nay hatred, of its
employees that universal drug testing has even been proposed," Greg
Dodd said on the comments page.

"I have dedicated my ENTIRE adult life to education and have never
once used drugs. If the school board has so little confidence in me,
I see little use of continuing in this system. The day that I am
asked to fill a bottle for a drug test will be the day that I tender
my resignation as a teacher in Kanawha County."

If teachers are drug tested, then everyone in the school system also
should be, one teacher said.

The current policy does not list administrators or board members as
people who are in safety sensitive positions.

"If this is truly a measure of wishing to keep our schools drug free,
then the policy in all of its forms should be extended to include the
students, as well," Diane Ferguson said. "Bring in the drug dogs to
all schools on a regular basis, etc. Otherwise, the proposed policy
is yet another teacher witch hunt. I have yet to see a teacher 'high'
in any Kanawha County school building, but I observe and am forced to
tolerate the affects of students who appear to be under the
influence of illegal substances in the high school setting
frequently. Be consistent to all who are in a Kanawha County School
setting or in the proposed policy is unequal and therefore,
constitutionally unsound."

Withrow said board members could include administrators and
themselves under safety sensitive positions if they so wished.

The policy, which does state that it applies to all faculty, includes
administrators, Withrow said.

"When you talk about faculty, that's in a generic sense," he said.

Not everyone was as critical of the policy.

"Drug testing teachers is something the majority of taxpayers
support," Bill Lamont said on the comments page. "I will not pay for
a bunch of drug-addicted people to teach my children."

Board member Pete Thaw would like to see random drug testing included
on the policy.

"If you don't have random, you don't have anything," he said. "It's
foolish to do away with that. I will vote for random drug testing
until the cows come home."

The school system is willing to shell out money for other programs,
and it needs to be willing to pay for drug testing, Thaw said.

"When you can waste a million dollars on Teach First, if you can
spend $400,000 on travel, then whatever it costs to do drug testing,
then you've got to put those things in perspective," he said. "That
(Teach First) is wasted money. That has nothing to do with the safety
of the children. Yet we can't swallow a bill for $200,000 for drug
testing? I don't think it's a needless expense.

"I think we have a (drug) problem in Kanawha County Schools."

Board member Barbara Welch disagrees.

"I don't think we have a problem," she said. "I just think it's (the
policy is) something we need to look at very carefully. I don't want
something to be very punitive."

School board members need to make sure any policy that is passed is
consistent with the law, board member Bill Raglin said.

"I don't know whether we would want to go beyond that at this point,"
he said. "I would love for it to include random testing, but I don't
know if at this point, it would fly. I think we ought to pick the
best policy we can and move on."

School board President Jim Crawford said he will have to wait until
the Dec. 13 meeting to see what the board would like to do.

"I'm not going to do something that won't stand the muster of the
courts," he added.

School board member Becky Jordon likes the policy as it is.

"Pre-employment is fine," she said. "No random is fine."