TEACHERS SHOULDN'T GIVE UP THEIR RIGHTS

As a Social Studies teacher and a former military police supervisor, I
would like to add my comments on the issue of "search and seizure" in
terms of random drug testing of 13,500 teachers.

I had the honor of voting "no" on the contract for drug testing,
resulting in a vote of "no" for pay raise and a "no" to give up my
Fourth Amendment rights. It is the basic freedom that my father
earned, while serving during World War II, as he liberated a
concentration camp called Dachau.

I had the honor of voting "no" for my mother, an American citizen who
lost her right of "habeus corpus" and was placed, along with 110,000
Japanese-Americans, in concentration camps in the western U.S. She
spent her high school days behind barbed wire at Heart Mountain camp
in Wyoming.

In keeping with legal precedent governing "search and seizure," we
have used the concept of "probable cause." The courts have allowed
random testing search for police with arms, nuclear power plant
operators, and air traffic controllers and areas of public safety to
warrant such action. Although important, teachers do not meet the test
of a job "dealing with life or death issues."

You cannot give away the very freedom men and women in Iraq and
Afghanistan protect daily for you. No contract should give away our
liberties, which have already been paid in full.

Cliff Fukuda

Kaneohe