Pubdate: Wed, 21 Jan 2009
Source: Asheville Citizen-Times (NC)
Copyright: 2009 Asheville Citizen-Times
Contact: http://www.citizen-times.com/contact/letters.shtml
Website: http://www.citizen-times.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/863
Author: Jordan Schrader
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/testing.htm (Drug Testing)

RANDOM DRUG TESTS RARE FOR TEACHERS

ROBBINSVILLE - Navigate the winding mountain roads into town and 
approach Robbinsville High School on a driveway lined by grazing 
goats, and you'll find one of the few places in the country where 
teachers have been ordered to submit to random tests for drugs and alcohol.

Teachers in the school district are divided over the policy, which 
would test all employees and which remains on hold awaiting a state 
appeals court's decision. Third-grade teacher Denise Moody has mixed 
feelings. "I don't disagree with drug testing," she said, "but some 
people, you know good and well there's no chance in the world they're 
doing drugs. You know what I mean? They're just not. Why waste your 
time on them?" After all, everybody knows everybody in Graham County, 
where two school buildings in Robbinsville house all of the 
district's 1,200 students. The county is 70 percent government forest 
land. A graduating class might top 70 students. Several other school 
districts with random drug testing policies also are in rural 
Appalachia. At least four in eastern Kentucky have such policies, 
with the blessing of a 2004 ruling from the region's U.S. District 
Court. But they're among the "very, very few" that randomly test 
teachers, American Civil Liberties Union staff attorney Adam Wolf 
said. Another federal district court in southern West Virginia 
stopped a similar policy three days before its Jan. 1 start in 
Kanawha County. The idea is also on hold in Hawaii's statewide school 
district, awaiting a state board's ruling. Exceptional children's 
teacher Cheryl Morgan says testing would pull her from the classroom 
when she's under pressure to boost test scores and meet deadlines. 
Fifth-grade math and science teacher Crystal White, though, says no 
one under the influence should have charge of dozens of children. 
Teachers groups say the policies violate their constitutional freedom 
from unreasonable searches.

"I think when I put my kids in their hands, they lose their rights," 
counters Robbinsville parent Mitch Colvard. "My rights are more 
important." Colvard pushed for and won the policy in 2006 as Graham 
County school board chairman. He had seen in his day job as a 
paramedic a worsening local drug problem, he said.

A lawsuit by the N.C. Association of Educators kept random tests from 
starting in summer 2007. Though a judge upheld the policy, the 
association appealed. The state Court of Appeals heard arguments in 
December. Sharon Larson, a researcher at the Geisinger Center for 
Health Research in Danville, Pa., says she doubts random drug testing 
among teachers would reveal much more than the common suspicion-based 
testing. That's because few teachers use drugs, Larson said. A study 
she co-authored in 2007 for the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental 
Health Services Administration found 4 percent of educators reported 
drug use. That's fewer than in most other professions, like 
construction, with 14 percent, and food service, with 17 percent, 
according to her report.

Reports of drug use have spurred the districts that do random 
testing. "Like many other folks, we have had a number of our 
employees either on or off the job found with drugs or been accused 
of having drugs," said Jim Withrow, Kanawha County Schools' general counsel.

Similar headlines led Hawaii's statewide school system to make random 
tests part of its 2007-09 contract with teachers, state chief 
negotiator Marie Laderta said.

Board members in Graham County had heard only rumors of drug use when 
they passed the policy. But then last March, Robbinsville High's 
former head football coach was charged with 14 counts of conspiracy 
to possess methamphetamine with intent to manufacture, sell and 
deliver. Colvard, who lost his board seat in November's election, 
doubts many Graham teachers use drugs. But he says the district's 
previous policy of testing based on suspicion is "worthless" because 
it depends on teachers informing on their co-workers.

New employees are tested, too, but Colvard says that's no better. "If 
I know I've got to pee in a cup tomorrow, it'll be clean," he said. 
In Hawaii, teachers voted to approve a contract that included both 
random drug testing and annual 4 percent pay raises, Laderta said. 
But no one has been tested.

Laderta said the teachers' union reneged on its promise, but union 
president Roger Takabayashi said the union just wants a ruling on 
whether the practice is constitutional.

Courts have ruled certain jobs pose safety risks that override 
privacy rights. Judge Joseph R. Goodwin, though, wrote in his West 
Virginia decision that a teacher doesn't fit that bill.

"A train, nuclear reactor, or firearm in the hands of someone on 
drugs presents an actual concrete risk to numerous people -- the same 
cannot be said for a teacher wielding a history textbook," he wrote.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom