ACLU FIGHTS HAWAII TEACHER DRUG TESTING

The American Civil Liberties Union is expected to deliver a letter to
Gov. Linda Lingle today demanding the state halt plans to randomly
drug-test public school teachers and employees.

After a series of six meetings with hundreds of educators around the
state -- the last of which was held last night at Leeward Community
College -- the ACLU said it has gathered a list of more than 150
teachers who are willing to participate in a legal challenge of a new
contract that allows random drug testing of Hawai'i public school employees.

"We've heard a wide range of reasons why teachers oppose the testing.
Teachers are quite angry, upset and insulted by the governor's
drug-testing proposal," said Graham Boyd, director of the ACLU Drug
Law Reform Project.

The ACLU said it will hold a press conference after delivering the
letter to the governor at 11:30 this morning at the state Capitol.

"In addition to being demonstrably ineffective and exceedingly costly,
random drug testing violates Hawai'i educators' constitutional right
to privacy," the ACLU said yesterday in a news release.

The state Department of Education and the teachers union, the Hawai'i
State Teachers Association, are scheduled to hold talks this month to
establish guidelines for a random drug-testing program, said Greg
Knudsen, spokesman for the Department of Education.

The governor's office and the Hawai'i State Teachers Association did
not immediately return phone calls for comment.

Hawai'i's approximately 13,500 public school teachers ratified a
two-year contract on May 2. The union forwarded the contract to the
membership without its endorsement, but 61 percent of union members
still voted to ratify the contract.

The contract also included a 4 percent pay raise in each year, plus
"step" increases -- a move up on the salary ladder -- for many teachers.

The insertion of the random drug-testing provision into the contract
was suggested by the governor just a week before contract negotiations
were completed, union negotiators said.

Before that, negotiations had centered around a suspicion-based
program.

The state said it would not agree to a contract that did not include
random testing.

"There were literally months of negotiations about the probable-cause
drug-testing provision and that makes sense to literally all of the
teachers we've talked to," Boyd said.

"What teachers are upset about is the casting a dragnet of suspicion
on every teacher," he said.

Boyd said he suspects that the list of teachers willing to participate
in a legal challenge will continue to grow.