Pubdate: Thu, 17 Nov 2005
Source: Madison Courier, The (IN)
Copyright: 2005 The Madison Courier
Contact:  http://www.madisoncourier.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3648
Author: Peggy Vlerebome, Courier Staff Writer
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?225 (Students - United States)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/testing.htm (Drug Testing)

MCS CONSIDERS DRUG TESTS FOR STUDENTS IN SOME ACTIVITIES

Students who participate in extracurricular activities or drive to school 
would be subject to random, unannounced drug testing in a policy the 
Madison Consolidated Schools board will consider at its next meeting. The 
policy would go into effect Jan. 1, 2006.

The two groups were singled out because the state Supreme Court has upheld 
a school's right to check those two groups for drugs in a court case from 
the Rushville school system, Superintendent Tom Patterson told the school 
board this week. The board could vote on the policy at its next meeting, 
which will be at 7 p.m. Dec. 13.

The policy would continue to allow school officials to require a drug test 
whenever they have suspicion of drug use.

Copies of the policy are available from Pam Smith, secretary in the 
superintendent's office. School board president Linda Darnell said that 
people who have opinions about the proposed policy should share them with 
Patterson before the next school board meeting. Patterson said he can make 
corrections and additions to the policy if necessary before it goes back 
before the board.

School nurses want policy on lice changed

Absenteeism due to head lice is so high it is a problem, and children who 
have the blood-sucking bugs in their hair are victimized by the Madison 
Consolidated Schools policy for dealing with lice and lice eggs, or nits, 
the school system's head nurse told the school board this week.

The nurses, backed by a Madison pediatrician, want the policy changed, 
nurse Terry Kapfhammer said.

The policy is unfair because it requires children who have head lice to be 
sent home immediately and to not return until they pass an inspection by 
the Health Department, a school nurse, or a designated person in their 
school. Yet, she said, no such policy covers coughs, colds or other things 
children can catch from each other, she said.

Some parents are unable to get their children to school on their own when 
they are ready to be inspected, so they keep the children at home for what 
are logged as unexcused absences, Kapfhammer said. If enough unexcused 
absences pile up, Child Protective Services can be called in, she said. 
Every time a child gets lice again, the absences are longer, Kapfhammer 
said. Sometimes, she said, children are kept home longer than necessary 
because they or their family are embarrassed.

Everyone knows who has lice, and panic sets in among parents and the school 
staff, Kapfhammer said. She said the nurses try to educate parents about 
lice, but more education is needed. Lice can be spread only by contact, 
Kapfhammer said, so being in the same room with a child who has lice does 
not mean that they will spread from head to head, she said. One control 
measure is to not have children work so closely together that their hair 
touches, she said. Another is to have cubbies or another way to store 
winter coats, rather than pile them together in a corner because lice can 
get shaken from one coat onto another, Kapfhammer said. Spreading lice this 
way isn't very common, though, she said, because lice must be on a person 
in order to live.

Children who have lice suffer from low self-esteem because of embarrassment 
at being singled out, Kapfhammer said. "The social effect is horrible," 
Kapfhammer said.

The current policy puts the responsibility for controlling lice on the 
schools, not on the homes, she said.

And, Kapfhammer said, there is no getting rid of lice completely, so the 
best that can be done is control them as much as possible.

Mass screenings of schoolchildren are not an effective way to find lice, 
and no such screening is ever used for other things that children can catch 
from each other, she said.

"We don't screen an entire class when a kid comes down with strep throat," 
she said.

"We have allowed fear to take over our sense of reason," Kapfhammer said of 
the school and parent reactions to outbreaks of lice. There's no similar 
reaction when a child has ringworm or other condition that is "much more 
contagious" than lice, she said.

The current policy allows a school to notify parents of lice outbreaks, but 
Kapfhammer said such notices start "gossip wheel" at the school.

The board took no action on the policy.

Saturday evening graduation possible

Madison is probably going to change graduation next spring to the Saturday 
of Memorial Day weekend, a departure from the traditional Sunday afternoon 
ceremony, but the time is in question.

A committee at the high school recommended moving graduation to Saturday, 
but did not specify a time, member Kim Deffenbaugh said. But the time that 
was in the proposal sent to the school board, 4 p.m., is only two and a 
half hours after the start of Hanover College's graduation.

Parents Rick and Linda La Cour asked the board to change the time because 
they don't think they will have time to get from their son's graduation at 
Hanover to their daughter's graduation at Madison Consolidated High School.

When they started looking into the time conflict, the La Cours said, they 
learned from Hanover officials that eight students from Madison will be 
graduating from the college, so other families could be facing the same 
time crunch. Deffenbaugh said the committee did not check for possible 
conflicts with Hanover and other Indiana colleges.

The board consensus was to say that for now, it will be at either 4:30 or 6 
p.m., and vote on the time after hearing from the public before the next 
board meeting Dec. 13.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom