Pubdate: Tue, 30 Aug 2005
Source: Athens News, The (OH)
Copyright: 2005, Athens News
Contact:  http://www.athensnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1603
Author: Jim Phillips, Athens News Senior Writer
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/testing.htm (Drug Testing)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?225 (Students - United States)

SOME ALEX PARENTS STILL FIGHTING STUDENT DRUG TESTING

An area eighth-grade student who was banned from playing volleyball
because she had missed a mandatory drug test will reportedly be
reinstated to the team once she gets a clean result from a drug test
she submitted to on Friday.

The larger issue of student drug testing in the Alexander Local School
District is still raising the hackles of some district parents,
however, and a handful of them raised further concerns about the new
policy at Thursday's school board meeting.

The policy requires students who engage in athletics or cheerleading,
or drive to school, to undergo urine testing for drug and alcohol use.
Some students have already undergone initial urine testing under the
new policy.

Nancy Schell, a district parent and health professional at Ohio
University, has been one of the more outspoken opponents of the policy
since it came to the public's attention She reported that she was one
of a number of people who attempted, without success, to get the board
to continue discussion of the controversial policy at its latest meeting.

"It was really, really awful," she said, adding that in her opinion,
the board still hasn't adequately addressed ongoing concerns from the
public.

"They were totally unresponsive to the parents -- totally," she
alleged.

The board, however, seems to consider the policy firmly in place, and
to feel that any complaints about implementation from now on should go
first to the district superintendent.

"The board's role in any school district is to set policy," explained
board President Dave Kasler Sunday. "Issues that arise about
implementation of the policy and adherence to the policy are purely
the administration's role... Community members need to understand that
the board's role is to set policy."

Some district residents, he suggested, don't seem to realize this, and
when they have problems with the policy, "rather than try to work with
the administration, they want to go around the administration and come
straight to the board."

Among parents who spoke at Thursday's meeting was Cathye Williams,
mother of Shelby Williams, an eighth-grader at Alexander Middle School
who was not allowed to take part in a school volleyball game Aug. 20
because her family had been out of town when the first drug testing
was scheduled for student athletes.

Williams said Friday she personally opposes the testing, but is
willing to have Shelby and her sister Chelsey McIntosh, an 11th-grader
who runs cross-country, take the tests if the alternative is having
them quit sports.

"I did sign the papers because I had to, but if I did have a choice, I
wouldn't have (them take) a drug test," Williams said.

She added that she's upset that someone in the school system didn't
forewarn her daughter, leading to Shelby's being rejected from the
game in front of her friends and teammates.

"They could at least have just made the phone call, to save her the
embarrassment," Williams said.

District officials reportedly made arrangements with its contracted
drug testing company Sportsafe to set up a special testing session.
Contacted Friday, Williams said she planned to take the girls in for
testing later that day, and was glad the district had made this
arrangement.

However, she said she agreed with Schell that the board members
"didn't really answer any of the questions brought up by the public."

One issue that was raised, she said, was whether parents with a
student in Shelby's position could simply pay to have drug testing
done by someone other than Sportsafe. The board has said it will not
accept the results of such testing to qualify students for sports or
driving, though Kasler said Sunday that this has nothing to do with
the fact that Sportsafe is under contract to the district, but is
simply a matter of stated board policy.

In her comments at the board meeting, Schell noted that she has
submitted a long list of questions to the board about the drug testing
policy and its implementation, but has gotten answers -- and
inadequate ones at that -- only to some of them.

"I asked 19 questions to the board at the July 21 meeting and received
complete answers to only 7 of the questions," Schell told the board,
according to a copy of her remarks.

Schell wanted to follow up on a number of questions to which she felt
the board's answers were incomplete. For example, the board had said
that it used policies from the Nelsonville-York and Meigs Local school
districts, as well as the Ohio School Boards Association, as templates
to write the Alexander policy. Schell questioned, then, why the policy
as adopted was worded the same as a draft policy on Sportsafe's Web
site.

She has also questioned whether the board will provide counseling
services to students found to have used drugs. The board responded
that it will not provide such services, but will leave this up to the
parents. Schell noted in response that the policy requires such
counseling to be obtained within five days of a positive test result,
and questioned whether this can always be done in Athens.

In response to Schell's questions, the board has acknowledged that it
did no cost/benefit analysis of the policy, leading Schell to ask:
"Why not - is this showing fiscal responsibility with $25,000 minimum
of general education fund money?"

In response to a question about how school officials will deal with
"false positive" test results, the board stated, "there are no false
positive readings" -- an answer Schell said she finds implausible, as
any test involving a human factor can suffer from error.

Citing letters to local newspapers, Schell said they "would suggest
that strong public support is lacking" for the policy. She added that
some parents who oppose the testing may have signed consent forms
because they "refuse to have their children used as pawns and have
signed consent against their beliefs. Do not assume if parents signed,
they are in support."

Schell is among those who have been distributing petitions against the
policy, and she reported that about 310 signatures had been collected
in the district -- a number she calculated "potentially represents 35
percent of our families." She suggested some opponents have not signed
because they fear "repercussions for their children."
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MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin