ADMINISTRATION SHOULD PAY FOR DRUG PROGRAM

I am clean and sober. I am a teacher. Drugs are for sick people.

The Department of Education already has a law in place that states
that if a teacher is suspected of taking drugs, she or he will have
to be tested.

Although the majority of teachers voted to ratify the contract that
included the governor's drug testing program, they did it, in my
opinion, because it was tied to pay raises.

I did not succumb to what I saw as blatant extortion; I voted no on
ratifying the new contract.

From the beginning, there appeared to be a problem regarding which
entity was going to pay for this program.

Now we are down to crunch time, and nothing has been resolved.

Adding insult to injury, the governor has just taken $10 million from
the DOE budget, yet has threatened to cancel the next pay increment
for teachers if the DOE does not begin the drug tests.

The teachers were forced into agreeing to Lingle's demands because
they could not afford to lose out on a pay raise.

Once again, it is the teachers who will pay personally for this
bureaucratic impasse.

To me, it seems that those who impose a program should be the ones
who have to pay for it. This strikes me as similar to the No Child
Left Behind mandate, a terribly flawed program, which in no way
provided enough funding to carry it out.

Perhaps the governor and her administration should first implement a
similar drug-testing program for themselves, setting a good example for us all.

John C. Nippolt

Kane'ohe