SCHOOLS AGAIN DISCUSS PRE-EMPLOYMENT DRUG TESTING

The Alamance-Burlington Board of Education has talked off and on
about pre-employment drug tests for school system employees since 2005.

At the request of Tom Manning, the school board's chairman, board
members again discussed the possibility during a retreat session
Wednesday in Burlington.

This is the first time the subject has come up since Randy Bridges
became superintendent in 2006.

Manning said he hopes for a report from local school administrators
before long about what other school systems do.

"I'd like to see what that looks like," he said about a potential
pre-employment drug testing policy. Manning said later Wednesday he's
convinced the testing is a good idea regardless of how many other
sys-tems do it.

Manning, who works in banking, said people he talks to in the
business community typically support drug testing for employees and
are sometimes surprised the school system isn't already doing it.

School board members have discussed in passing whether it would be
legal to do random drug testing of people already working for the
school system. The board was discouraged from considering the idea by
its attorney, Ann Majestic.

Majestic said court rulings have been more sympathetic to
pre-employment testing of public em-ployees than to random testing of
people who have already been hired.

Manning said Wednesday his interest is in testing as a condition of employment.

As to testing of current employees, "I don't think we can," he said.

"And I don't think we need to," said board member Jackie Cole.

Cole sounded more receptive to considering testing as a hiring condition.

"There aren't many places that you can go to work that you don't have
a pre-employment test," she said.

THE SCHOOL SYSTEM already does some drug-testing of employ-ees.

"We do randomly drug test every-one in safety-sensitive positions,"
Bridges said, which includes any-one who drives school-system vehi-cles.

Bridges said he's one of those employees.

The system also does suspicion-based testing of employees.

In spring 2005, the school board approved random drug tests for high
school students who participate in extracurricular activities.

Jim Merrill, the Alamance-Burlington School System's super-intendent
at the time, said the student drug testing was largely a response to
a drug bust that re-sulted in dozens of students being arrested in 2004.

On Wednesday, Bridges said the school system has begun looking at
what other systems do in terms of drug testing of potential
employees. So far, he said, "we didn't get enough response for me to
tell you how many school systems in North Carolina are doing this."

Board member Mary Alice Hin-shaw noted that drug testing of students
was in response to evi-dence of a problem, and questioned whether
there's a similar need to expand the testing to include em-ployees.

She said Wednesday afternoon her concerns were mostly in regard to
random testing of current employees.

"I haven't given as much serious thought to the pre-employment
issue," said Hinshaw, a former teacher. She described herself as
undecided on that proposal for now.