SCHOOL BOARD HASN'T ADDRESSED MORAL, ETHICAL QUESTIONS ABOUT DRUG TESTING

We hire or elect administrators like boards of education to carry out those
things that we know need to be done, those day-to-day, month-to-month
things that keep the school system functioning. We give them responsibility
for such routine things as teacher salaries, bus routes and furnishings for
renovated classrooms, and then rely upon them to use their best discretion
and their wisdom and get the job done. They usually do it.

With so much to do to keep a household and job going, most of us do not
take the time to show up at regular board meetings and give the board
suggestions and feedback.

It is not surprising that they begin to feel and operate as if our input as
constituents of the district is not needed; to believe that they know best
about the education and the upbringing of our children.

As a result of this recognition and the words of Alexander School Board
President David Kasler that, "Mr. Wiley was not at either of the meetings
when the (drug) testing companies answered all those concerns," I stand
chastised and repentant.

I am contrite.

Perhaps I'll do better in the future.

However, my failing to know that the drug testing companies were answering
all my questions while I slept, and that the Alexander Local School
District was so widely departing from its routine responsibilities and into
the systematic invasion of personal liberties, is not completely my fault.
Who could believe that anybody (such as a school board in a small community
where everybody knows just about everybody) would not recognize a major
departure from routine school business (such as it has taken by
implementing this drug policy), and take greater efforts to let the
district parents know what was going on very early in the rulemaking
process, in order to obtain their informed consent.

The board should have worked a little harder to assure that involvement
(unless they did not want us to know). It would have been easy and very
cheap to send notes home with children announcing their intentions to
evaluate this issue.

I am chilled by the implied meanings in Mr. Kasler's statement, "the
testing companies answered all those concerns (emphasis mine)." This
statement somewhat explains why an early version of the drug-testing policy
obtained by another Alexander parent just before the final vote reads like
an invitation to bid for drug-testing services.

There is a large and vigorous drug-testing industry that actively markets
businesses and schools.

These companies send marketing representatives -- salesmen (not scientists,
sociologists or ethicists) -- to schools to explain their laboratory
capabilities (and do I vaguely hear Preston Foster from "The Music Man"
staring up in the background?). These representatives can provide technical
answers, allege high levels of accuracy, and generally demonstrate that the
testing can be done. These private companies cannot, however, address
questions of whether such testing should be done. Discussion by the
drug-testing companies of the moral, ethical, social and practical issues
surrounding non-suspicion drug testing in schools is not only far outside
of their technical expertise; it is a conflict of interest for them to even
try to address such questions.

If, as Mr. Kasler insists, "all the questions were answered by the drug
companies," then the only questions he had must have been about laboratory
protocols and testing procedures. Surely, he would not believe the drug
companies that it is "OK" to do this. This means that he must have used his
developed understandings of whether the drug testing could be done, to
drive his decision that it should be done. At what point did he and the
voting majority of the board address and resolve all of the moral, ethical
and social questions?

Was there ever a discussion of need? The answers to these questions must be
"never." He, and they, just did it! They checked with their lawyers,
"Bricker & Eckler," to see if they could get away with it and just did it!
This is an incredibly heavy-handed approach to public policy for an elected
local school board.

Two other points made by Mr. Kasler deserve rebuttal.

First, Mr. Kasler minimizes the technical and false-positive difficulties
associated with testing by his mention of the split-sample method.

This useful QA/QC technique tests the competency of the laboratory but does
not address the mimicking problems caused by other legal drugs.

He also seems not to recognize that he is about to create records for
students that may be outside of his control to conceal.

Several recent scientific studies find that drug-testing programs in
schools are ineffective in achieving the primary objective of reducing
overall drug use (for example: Ryoko, Y., L.D. Johnston and P.M. O'Malley,
"Drug Testing in Schools: Policies, Practices, and Association with Student
Drug Use." Institute for Social Research. University of Michigan. Ann
Arbor, Mich., 2003).

Moreover (as cited in Jim Phillips' article), board member Fred Davis
states that he did not "see a demand in the district's population for the
policy." This feeling that a drug problem does not exist at a level that
suggests the need for such an extreme measure as this drug-testing policy
has been echoed by other school employees and parents in recent
discussions. It is unclear why the majority of the school board has taken
this action.

The board must be required to explain themselves before this policy is
implemented. I do not believe that the board researched this issue before
its action (except perhaps through its out-of-district, out-of-county law
firm). This policy is simply someone's personal agenda and must be reversed.

Editor's note: Robert L. Wiley is a Lee Township resident and parent of an
Alexander Local School District student.

He had another Reader's Forum on the same subject published on June 30. The
NEWS limits letters or Reader's Forums from the same person to one per
month, unless they are responding to direct criticism in these pages.

Today's opinion qualifies for that exception.