Pubdate: Thu, 15 Aug 2002
Source: Amarillo Globe-News (TX)
Copyright: 2002 Amarillo Globe-News
Contact:  http://amarillonet.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/13
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/testing.htm (Drug Testing)

GUYMON TO ELIMINATE DRUG PROGRAM

GUYMON, Okla. - The Guymon Public Schools board of trustees decided Monday 
night to end the 3-year-old program that randomly tested student athletes 
and students in competitive extracurricular activities for drug use.

Scot Dahl, vice president of the school board, said the program was 
administered by an outside drug-testing firm that provided a list of 
randomly selected students to be tested each month.

"We didn't think it was the deterrent that we thought it would be," Dahl 
said. "We didn't think it was as effective with the money we spent on it."

School officials started hearing stories about how students tried to beat 
the test by drinking bleach or researching test-beating techniques on the 
Internet, Dahl said.

One student quit his athletic team before testing came up because he knew 
he had smoked marijuana over the weekend, but his test came back negative, 
Dahl said.

"Of people that called me, they were 100 percent in favor of doing away 
with the program," Dahl said. "A lot of them thought it was a big joke."

The school board discussed the possibility of abandoning the program for 
the past few months, with those safety and effectiveness concerns in mind, 
as well as some unforeseen consequences, Dahl said.

"One reason was how many kids are not going out to extracurricular 
activities because they are afraid of being tested?" he said. "If they're 
not in school, they'd be out on the streets. If we could pull more kids in 
extracurricular activities where there's a little more supervision, then 
they wouldn't be on the streets where they can pick up drug habits."

Now, the school district is looking to hire a liaison police officer who 
would be on-site at the junior high and high school and would look for drug 
problems in the total school population, Dahl said.

"He'd be trained to look for drugs and alcohol and he'd look at the whole 
student body, not just those in extracurricular activities," he said.

The officer, who has yet to be hired, would be paid between $20,000 and 
$25,000, Dahl said. The district is waiting on a grant that would pay for 
the cost of hiring the officer, Dahl said.

The district will also implement a Student Crimestoppers program and a teen 
court program, where a student would have to plead guilty to an offense 
before being "sentenced" by his peers, usually to community service, Dahl said.
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