GOVERNOR'S DEMAND FOR DRUG TESTING LINKED TO ELECTION

The week before the teacher's conference, Gov. Linda Lingle slammed
the negotiations team with an unprecedented demand -- accept random
drug testing or the contract package that was on the table was going
to be taken away.

Random means you are subjecting a percentage of teachers with a test
that has shown to have 30 percent false positives. However, HSTA is
behind drug testing as long as it is done with reasonable suspicions!

Under Lingle's draconian, scapegoat proposal a totally clean teacher
could register a false positive and then have his or her image ruined
in the community once that information got out. A teacher could eat a
poppy seed muffin or be prescribed some legal medication or purchase
an over-the-counter medicine and trigger a false positive.

Random drug testing as opposed to reasonable suspicion-based testing
will take tons of money away from our schools. In order to avoid a
civil rights claim or a claim of a constitutional violation nearly all
the teachers will have to be tested equally. For example, if you have
13,000 teachers and it will cost $250 per test, not including the cost
of a substitute that day, and we're looking at about $3.3 million just
for one round of tests.

The sad thing about this situation is that Lingle went after teachers
because HSTA did not support her in the last election. I can only hope
that Hawaii has now seen Lingle's true colors and her political future
is over in Hawaii!

JUSTIN HUGHEY

Lahaina