Pubdate: Wed, 20 Apr 2005
Source: Burlington Times-News (NC)
Copyright: 2005 The Times-News Publishing Company
Contact: http://www.thetimesnews.com/letter_to_editor/splash.php
Website: http://www.thetimesnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1822
Author: Mike Wilder
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/testing.htm (Drug Test)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/youth.htm (Youth)

MOST OF BOARD FAVOR DRUG TESTING

Mike Wilder Times-News Alamance-Burlington Board of Education members 
remain mostly supportive of a proposal to require drug testing for some 
high school students in the local system. None of the board's seven 
members, interviewed last week, said they are opposed or are leaning 
against voting for the proposal.

"I think it's heading (toward approval)," said board member Mary Alice 
Hinshaw, "although I don't know if it will be unanimous or not." Hinshaw, 
who has voiced the most reservations about the policy, said she's still 
undecided and has wavered as the school board, system employees and the 
public have discussed drug testing.

She said last week she is more inclined to support the proposal than she 
has been at some other points during the debate. The board will discuss the 
policy at its April 25 meeting. Under the procedures it uses to consider 
new policies, it could vote on the proposal that night, although board 
members said they may or may not make a decision then. The policy would 
require high school students who participate in extracurricular activities 
to agree to random drug testing.

Students who test positive for drug use and whose test results are upheld 
would be suspended from activities for three months for a first offense. 
The second offense would mean suspension for a year, and a third offense 
would mean suspension for the rest of high school. Students who test 
positive would be required to get treatment if they wanted to regain 
eligibility for sports or other activities. The school system estimates 
drug testing would cost the system about $25,000 a year.

Superintendent Jim Merrill has said the proposal is one result of an 
undercover drug operation in the system's high schools during the 2003-04 
school year that resulted in the arrests of dozens of students on charges 
of dealing drugs. Hinshaw, a former teacher, said the drug operation shows 
a serious problem with drugs.

"Had we not had that drug bust last year, I feel much more certain I would 
be against it," she said. Three board members - Hinshaw, Todd Baker and 
Steve Van Pelt - said the policy would likely give students a strong 
incentive to refuse to use drugs if their peers suggest it to them. "It 
gives students another avenue to turn down that peer pressure," Baker said. 
"That's what really strikes me about the policy." Most board members say 
the majority of comments they've heard about the proposal have been 
positive, with some mentioning margins of at least 3-to-1 or 4-to-1. The 
board's chairman, Tom Manning, and board member Jackie Cole are among the 
members who say the positive comments they have heard far outweigh the 
negative ones. At the last school board meeting, however, several people 
criticized the proposal or said they had serious reservations about it, 
while no one who spoke enthusiastically supported the proposal. The local 
NAACP has announced it opposes the proposal.

Some school board members said that while they want to hear people's 
concerns, opponents of any kind of proposal tend to be more outspoken than 
people who support an idea. School board member Gayle Gunn said she has at 
times been frustrated at the lack of response to the proposal among some 
groups that are involved in the schools.

Both Gunn and the school board's vice chairwoman, Brenda Brown Foster, said 
they tend to take silence as an indication of support for the policy. When 
she recently asked a group of parents if that were a valid assumption, Gunn 
said, "all the heads started nodding, 'yes.'"
- ---
MAP posted-by: Beth