BOARD AMENDS SUBSTANCE ABUSE POLICY

The Shelby County Board of Education recently amended its extra curricular
and student parking privilege substance abuse policies.

The board unanimously voted to remove provision for blood tests and to make
other changes to make both policies more uniform at its June 26 regular
meeting held at the central office.

However, the board reserved the right to conduct initial drug tests for
parking privileges.

According to Board member and attorney Trey Ireland, the U.S. Supreme Court
has upheld random drug testing of students as long as the procedures are
designed to be of minimal invasion of the students' privacy.

"After we passed the policy announcing our intent to test students who
wanted parking privileges, Mrs. Zaragoza (Michele Trachy of Birmingham)
called and expressed her concerns about some of the specifics of the
procedures," Ireland said.

Zaragoza had objected to the policy for students seeking parking privileges
on school grounds. She called a required waver parents would be required to
sign allowing urine, breath, hair and/or blood samples "an instrument of
probable abuse."

And she objected to blood samples being taken by persons with less than
minimal nursing training.

Zaragoza further expressed the view that as a taxpayer and parent, her
daughter should be able to park at a tax paid facility without having to
take a mandatory drug test.

"I met with Mrs. Zaragoza one afternoon and went over each of her concerns
in detail. Most of her comments and suggestions were concerning changes
that would make our policy even better," Ireland said.

"Those changes were shown to the superintendent who agreed and he put them
on the agenda for board approval."

Ireland said of Zaragoza, "There is no doubt that her time and effort in
this matter has helped Shelby County create a better policy."

Ireland said the portion of the policy which allowed for testing blood was
taken from another policy which was reviewed in preparing the ones for
Shelby County.

Ireland stressed, "We have never tested for drugs using blood" and he was
unaware of any plan to do so.

"This is an example of some of the broad language found in the policy that
has been either removed or reworded to assure that we have a more narrowly
defined policy with minimal invasion of students' right to privacy,"
Ireland said.

"While we may disagree on whether or not we should test students, we all
agree that if we do, the procedures should not only be legal, but also be
designed to protect the students' privacy as much as possible,"

"We have achieved that result with these new procedures," he said.

"We now have an even better policy that protects the privacy rights of
students while at the same time allows us to move forward with this
component of our drug plan in Shelby County.

"Parents who care and who are involved, like Mrs. Zaragoza are a major
factor in the success of our schools in Shelby County."