RANDOM DRUG TESTS TEST TEACHER PRIVACY RIGHTS

Schools Adopt Policy For Safety

A growing number of school districts and states are trying to give
teachers random drug tests, citing student safety concerns, but their
efforts are running afoul of unions who say such tests violate
teacher privacy rights.

In Missouri, the House education committee is weighing a bill that
would require districts to randomly test teachers for drug use.
Hawaii last year adopted a policy allowing teachers to be randomly
tested, but implementation was stalled after the teachers union sued
to block the policy as unconstitutional.

Elsewhere, at least four districts that have tried to implement
random testing are either facing or have faced court challenges, with
teacher groups, unions and civil libertarians invoking the Fourth
Amendment that guarantees protection against unreasonable searches
and seizures.

Supporters say teachers need to be tested for drug use because of a
safety issue: children spend most of their waking hours in the
company of teachers.

"Why should a school employee not be tested? After all, police
officers, factory workers and people in most other industries can be
randomly tested for drug use," said Missouri state Rep. Don Wells, a
Republican who introduced the bill for testing teachers in his state's House.

The bill would require that districts randomly test teachers for
narcotics in their bloodstream. Teachers who test positive would be fired.

Opponents of teacher drug testing say mandates such as ongoing,
random tests are unnecessary, expensive and invasive.

"Folks who go into teaching are not the kind who use drugs," said
Michael Simpson, assistant general counsel for the National Education
Association (NEA), the nation's largest teachers union with 3.2
million members.

He said the NEA supports testing of teachers when an administrator
trained to detect drug abuse has reasonable suspicion that a teacher
could be under the influence. Most districts now require such
testing. But policies testing teachers for drugs at random force
districts and states to spend precious education dollars, Mr. Simpson said.

In the Missouri bill, a fiscal note cites the cost of a single test
at $51. Districts estimate that the cost could add up into thousands
of dollars each year if they were to implement such testing.

Maryland, Virginia and the District have no policies requiring
teachers to be tested randomly for drugs.

"This issue hasn't popped up here in Maryland," said Dan Kauffman,
spokesman for the Maryland State Teachers Association.

Virginia Department of Education spokeswoman Julie Grimes said such a
policy has not come up for consideration by either the department or
the state legislature. School districts in the Greater D.C. area also
say they have no such policies, nor are any under consideration.

In Fairfax County, spokesman Paul Regnier said the district would
test any employee or student on suspicion of drug use. However, he
said, the district has never considered a policy on randomly testing
teachers for drugs.

"We do a very careful background check including fingerprints and
previous arrest records" before hiring teachers, Mr. Regnier said.

Montgomery County Public Schools spokeswoman Kate Harrison said her
district does not have a policy on random drug tests for teachers,
nor does it have a policy requiring teachers suspected of drug use to
be tested. However, she added, "if there is any indication that the
teacher is unfit, the administrator and human resource office could
legally" call for an investigation.

Hawaii's policy resulted from a push by Gov. Linda Lingle, a
Republican, after six teachers were arrested in unrelated drug cases.
The state Department of Education and the Hawaii State Teachers
Association signed a contract last year agreeing to the tests in
exchange for an 11 percent salary raise.

But when the state insisted that anyone in the state's 13,000-teacher
work force could be tested at random under the policy, the teachers
union, which said it had hoped to negotiate how the policy would be
implemented, invoked teacher privacy rights and asked the state Labor
Relations Board for a ruling. The board referred the matter to the
circuit court, which has yet to issue a ruling.

Roger Takabayashi, the president of the Hawaii State Teachers
Association, added that the union is prepared to go all the way to
the state Supreme Court to ensure that teacher privacy rights are not violated.

Mitsue Kaneko, a special assistant in the Hawaii department of human
resources, said that the testing was not meant to be punitive, but
rather a deterrent. Teachers who tested positive would not be fired
but would receive help recovering from drug abuse, she added.

Court rulings on the issue of testing teachers for drug use have gone
both ways. While judges have sided with the teachers on privacy
rights in some districts, others have agreed that districts can
indeed test teachers.

In West Virginia, a federal judge in late December ruled against a
new drug testing policy in the Kanawha County school system, saying
it would force teachers to submit to an unconstitutional and
unjustified search.

In Louisiana, the East Baton Rouge teachers union last year
challenged a decade-long district policy for testing teachers who
were injured on the job. The district, under a court injunction last
month, agreed to suspend the testing for injured teachers. But it is
continuing with a random drug testing policy under which it tests
about 5 percent of the employees in the district in any given year,
school district spokesman Chris Trahan said.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana joined the teachers
union in challenging the policy.

"It is a warrantless and suspicionless invasion of privacy,"
Louisiana ACLU Executive Director Marjorie Esman said. She noted that
urine tests used to detect drugs reveal other private medical
information, including prescription drugs that the teacher may be
using, and even pregnancy.

But some districts in Kentucky and Tennessee have been randomly
testing teachers for drug use for years, and some say the policy has
helped. In Knott County, Ky., a federal court judge upheld testing
teachers for drugs on the grounds that school officials had the
authority to ensure a safe environment for children.

Knox County, Tenn., which won a lawsuit filed by its teachers union
over its drug-testing policy, now tests all teachers before it hires
them, but not after they have started working in the district. Kathy
Sims, the executive director of human resources for Knox County
Public Schools, said that the policy has been effective.

On average each year, she said, four or five hopeful employees test
positive. "It is a great safety device with the well-being and safety
of our students at heart," she said.

But teachers who have had to go through drug tests say they are
humiliating. In East Baton Rouge, teacher Peggy Reno filed a lawsuit
against the district. She said she was asked to take a drug test
after she injured her shoulder while trying to break up a fight
between two students.

Her attorney, Yigal Bander, who also represented the local teachers
union in its lawsuit against the policy, said that immediately after
the attack, instead of being offered any comfort or medical
attention, Ms. Reno was asked by administrators to report immediately
for a drug test.

"She was asked to wait around in a clinic for a drug test as if she
was suspected of something," Mr. Bander said. "But she was just doing
her job, and there was no suspicion of drug or alcohol use."