DRUG-TESTING POLICY AT ALEXANDER RAISES QUESTIONS ABOUT PROCESS

I appreciated the letter published in your paper on June 29 by Robert
Wiley, who was able to express many of the same thoughts and concerns
that I share about the Alexander School Board's 4-1 vote at their June
meeting to implement a random urine drug-testing policy for students
wishing to participate in extracurricular sports or who wish to obtain
a school parking permit.

Briefly, those concerns include:

1) Urine tests are a violation of personal privacy and thus a
violation of the Fourth Amendment of our Constitution. 2) The
possibility exists of obtaining false-positive urine test results. If
this occurs, an innocent student's future in sports and driving
privileges would be jeopardized, and he or she would suffer untold
stress and mental anguish as well. 3.) The policy seems to indicate
that the cost of these tests will be the responsibility of the persons
wishing to obtain parking permits and possibly of those wishing to
participate in extracurricular sports/cheerleading.

This to me was not clear in the policy upon my review of it. The point
is that the school board is not going to pay for these tests, and is
thus mandating a policy that will require the students or parents to
come up with another household budget item in times that most all
families are on very tight budgets already.

What bothers me the most about this entire Alexander drug-testing
policy decision is the swiftness with which it occurred. It started as
the brain child of a few individuals sometime in the latter part of
2004; then showed up as a presentation by a drug lab in December 2004;
then formation of a policy development committee in early 2005; then
to development of a draft policy (not sure when this occurred); then
to a final draft policy sometime in May (my best guess); then to the
final reading and vote taken at a June board meeting.

To my knowledge, the proposed policy was never printed in the local
newspapers; no public service announcements as to the availability of
the policy to be obtained or reviewed was given; and no mailings were
sent out to the parents, students, teachers or voters of the district
as to the policy being considered by the board.

This failure to inform the voters, parents, students and teachers of
the school district of the proposed drug-testing policy and thereby
not allowing them adequate time for review and comment of an issue of
this importance demonstrates an arrogance and abusive use of the
powers vested in these elected officials.

Robert Rhyan

Alexander School District parent

and registered voter

Lee Township