"St. Viator to drug-test all students in fall
Drugs aren't a big problem, school says; it's just a 'proactive approach'
BY SHEILA AHERN
[email protected]
Posted Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Next fall, St. Viator High School students will map out routes to new classes, memorize locker combos and shop for a homecoming outfit.
This year, they can add this to the autumn back-to-school rituals: a drug test.
The 20-member St. Viator Board of Trustees has unanimously approved a new drug policy where each student will be drug-tested using a strand of hair.
Every student will be tested in the first six weeks of school, and 20 will be randomly tested weekly for the rest of the year, said the Rev. Robert Egan, president of St. Viator.
"We are not the police, and our intent is not to try and catch our students using drugs," he said. "Rather, we seek to provide a program that allows them to say no to drugs - if for no other reason than the knowledge that they will be tested."
Each test costs $45. The school has budgeted $65,000 to $75,000 for the drug tests for the 2007-08 school year.
St. Viator now randomly tests for drugs only members of the boys football and hockey teams. A drug dog also visits five times a year, and random students are picked for breathalyzer tests at school dances, Egan said.
'No drug problem'
There is not a drug problem at St. Viator, Egan said.
"This is proactive approach," he said. "We didn't want to wait until something horrible happened."
This year, "one or two" students showed up at school under the influence of marijuana, Egan said.
"I don't know the exact number of times it happened," he said. "It wasn't in the dozens. We're just like another school with more than 1,000 kids."
Hair samples will be tested for cocaine, opiates, PCP, marijuana, amphetamines and Ecstasy, whose use within 90 days of the test can be detected. It does not detect steroids or alcohol.
A student who refuses to be tested will be kicked out, Egan said.
The faculty and staff will not be tested.
An increasing number of schools are drug-testing athletes or those in other extracurricular activities. According to the National School Boards Association, about 5 percent of school districts drug-test athletes and 2 percent test for extracurricular activities.
In Antioch-Lake Villa High School District 117, students participating in extracurricular activities and those seeking parking permits are drug-tested.
But it's much rarer for a school to test every student.
Going too far?
Some educators in nearby local public schools said they weren't sure they'd have the resources to handle such a vast task. And even if they did, they add, they're not entirely certain the drug treatment community would have the resources to handle the drug-testing aftermath.
Some also said they believe such testing may go too far.
Maine East High Principal Dave Barker, for one, is quick to acknowledge it's likely all American schools have been touched by drugs. But he says he's not sure the situation in his district now warrants testing of every teen.
"We are not hiding our heads in the sand. We clearly understand there are young people in our schools who are caught in the vice of illicit drug use," Barker said. "But I'm not at all convinced ... (it's) at a level at which we need to be frightened for every student or that we would need to be so invasive into a student's and a family's interests."
Barker said St. Viator's tactic "seems extreme" and likens it to plopping a metal detector at a high school's front door: It primarily, he says, instills fear and suspicion in the community.
But the program is seen as a huge success at St. Patrick High School in Chicago. Since 2004, the school has spent $60,000 yearly to drug-test every student. Each year, less than 1 percent tests positive for drugs, said school spokesman Chris Nelson.
"The parents couldn't be happier," he said.
Will policy last?
Across the nation, drug-testing high-schoolers has become increasingly popular in the past five or six years, said Ed Yohnka, a spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union.
Most policies don't last more than a year, he said.
"Check back in six or eight months," Yohnka said. "Many of these programs get dropped because they're very expensive and don't get a lot of results."
Reaction from St. Viator students has been mixed, Egan said.
"I wouldn't say they stood up and cheered," he said. "They had questions. The reaction pretty much runs the gamut."
On the other hand, some St. Viator parents are big supporters of the change. Nancy LaMontagna's daughter will be a sophomore next year.
"I think it's great," said the Mount Prospect resident. "The whole summer these kids will know in the back of their head, they'll be tested."
Pat Kozicki of Prospect Heights has two sons at St. Viator and backs the change.
"It give these kids a way out," she said. "It's a better excuse than, 'My mom will kill me.'æ"
â?¢ Daily Herald staff writer Erin Holmes contributed to this report."
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