PAMLICO SCHOOL BOARD LOOKS AT DRUG TESTING

BAYBORO -- The Pamlico County Board of Education will consider at a
meeting tonight whether to hire an Ohio-based drug testing company to
do the random drug testing of students who participate in
extracurricular activities.

Superintendent James Coon said that the Pamlico County Health
Department does not have the resources to continue testing the
system's students, so the board will consider a contract with Sport
Safe Testing Service Inc.

The company was selected by school staff from an initial list of six
companies. Sport Safe's services are estimated to cost between $5,000
and $7,000, and Coon said that includes several services such as
supplies, shipping the samples to a laboratory and calling parents.
The board did not initially budget the expense, but he said there is
money available for it, he said.

The board had discussed at its September meeting revising the random
drug testing policy to give the testing responsibility to school
nursing staff, but the board's attorney counseled against that. The
last random drug testing in the system was done in September of 2008,
Coon said.

Having an outside agency conduct the testing makes it more random, he
said, and could cut down on the possibility of accusations that the
system is targeting certain students.

"The further you get away from your district employees and the
people who know the kids, the least claim you can make that there's
any collusion to falsely accuse them," Coon said. "They don't know
the kids, they become less entangled in community, and they don't
know who the child is."

At its September meeting, the board also considered changes to the
policy language to make sure the wording was clear as to which groups
of students would be tested, which includes students in athletics as
well as cheerleaders, students in the driver education program, and
those who drive to school and park on campus.

Coon said the board could possibly discuss the revisions at its
December meeting.

He said the board is looking at the policy since there are issues
that need to be worked out in its application.

"When I came in January, there were a lot of things that had to be
worked out in the application of the policy," he said in a previous
phone interview with the Sun Journal.