District considers drug-testing proposals

The attorney for Blaine County School District, Rand Peebles, was recently given a list of recommendations that some members of the district’s Drug Task Force Committee would like to see as the new drug-testing policy.

Peebles refused to give a copy of those recommendations to the Idaho Mountain Express and would not comment on them.

District officials said they do not want details of that "unfinished, draft proposal" to be public yet, but a member of the committee that generated it told the Mountain Express on Friday that the recommendations are similar to last year’s random testing policy proposal.

"We want to do random testing on all the athletes," said the committee member, Randy Kolash.

The committee is an off-shoot of the larger Drug Task Force Committee, a coalition of faculty, parents, administrators and students. This sub-committee was given the task in April of recommending a new drug-testing policy proposal.

Joining Kolash on the sub-committee were WRHS principal Bill Resko, WRHS wrestling coach Tom Goicoechea and resident Ed Sinnott.

Students participating in extracurricular activities would also be tested under the current policy recommendations, according to Kolash.

"I think it’s a good idea," Kolash said. "It’s just another way to give students a chance to say no to drugs."

Some members of the larger Drug Task Force Committee, however, believe it is a way of saying no to constitutional rights.

When the task force committee reviewed the latest policy recommendations on April 22, its response was tepid.

"I got the feeling it didn’t have much support," Kolash said. "It scared a lot of people."

A task force committee member and parent, Crissy Field, said many of her fellow committee members were opposed to the latest policy recommendations.

"We’re far from putting any drug-testing policy in place," Field said. "What we have in place now may end up working."

Currently, students participating in sports, band or various clubs sign a code of conduct stating they will not use drugs or alcohol, but there is no enforcement of the code.

And, under Idaho law, if there is reasonable suspicion that a student is using drugs, the district can call in law enforcement officers who can then administer a drug test.

Field said the school board asked that the Drug Task Force Committee propose a policy that is non-discriminatory. Because athletes would be the only group that could be tested under the current policy recommendations, it would be discriminatory and, thus, not meet with board approval.

Attorney Peebles would not discuss the specific recommendations, but said he has only a list, not a policy.

"It’s something that could be developed into a drug-testing policy," Peebles said. "But it’s nowhere close to a policy, and nobody asked me to turn it into a policy."

Before adopting a drug-testing policy, the district should quantify the existence of a drug problem based on the facts presented in a U.S. Supreme Court decision that made way for random, suspicion-less testing of athletes, Peebles said.

In that case, involving Oregon’s Veronia School District, the court gave its blessing to random testing of athletes, but only after certain findings of fact demonstrated a school-wide problem.

Peebles provided district officials with a list of findings from that case. A few of the 27 items follow:

·  The teachers testified at trial how appalled and helpless they felt as students increasingly expressed their attraction to and vocal defense of the use of drugs.

·  The evidence demonstrated that disciplinary actions had reached "epidemic proportions."

·  The teachers testified that organizations had been formed within the school by the student drug culture taking such names as "Big Elks" or the "Drug Cartel" and that loud bugling or head butting were the calling cards of these groups.

·  School officials had a clear perception that the discipline problems they were experiencing were the result of substance abuse.

·  Given the importance of athletics in Veronia, the trial court found that the very center of activity of the school in the community was being endangered by the level of drug use.

 Apparently, the current policy recommendations were formulated before a thorough review of the findings from the Veronia case.

"If you have the facts, you can build a policy," Peebles said. "But it’s not just something you pick out of the air. There has to be a factual basis."

According to Kolash, the current policy recommendations are based on a previous proposal put together last year by WRHS athletic director Charlie Miller.

Reached for comment on Friday, Miller said his original policy was meant to help kids, not hinder them.

"It’s preventative," Miller said. "It’s intended to make it easier for kids to say "no" because they might get tested."

Under his proposal, Miller said that rather than kicking students who test positive off athletic teams or extra-curricular activities, the students would be given counseling and could re-join the teams or activities later.

That proposal drew fire last year from many parents and students, who declared random testing an infringement on privacy.

"There’s still work that needs to be done on the drug-testing policy," said assistant superintendent Jim Lewis in an interview.

Beyond that, Lewis had no further comment on the current policy recommendations.

"It’s a hard process to do right," Peebles said of drug-testing policy-making. "The district is trying to understand what facts it has to quantify and to answer the question: "Do we have a problem?"