School Board Could Consider Voluntary Random Drug Testing

After hearing a report that 70 percent of Ridge High School seniors anonymously admitted drinking alcohol within a month's time, and 28 percent said they had used marijuana during the same time period, the Board of Education could revive the idea of random drug testing among high school students next year.

But the difference between this proposal — and the program scrapped by a narrow majority of the school board about two years ago — is that this testing plan would be voluntary. 

Parents could chose whether to include their students' names in a pool of those who would be chosen at random to undergo urine tests in the school nurses' office, Chad Gillikin, student assistance counselor, told the board last week. Otherwise, those who sign up for parking permits or who sign up for school activities would be included unless their parents "opt out," he said.

The proposal next will be examined by the board's policy committee, said Schools Superintendent Valerie Goger.

Goger said the policy committee is due to meet some time in June, although she has no idea when the idea will next come before the school board.

The test that could be used would look for trace amounts of marijuana and other drugs, Gillikin said said.

At this time, the district does not propose testing for alcohol, even though surveys through the year have consistently showed that underage drinking, particularly among seniors, has been the most common form of substance abuse at the high school, he said. The available test for alcohol has not been tested in the courts, Gillikin said.

Nevertheless, the anonymous survey – administered earlier this year — also indicated that 45 percent of high school seniors said they had been drunk in the previous month, Gillikin said. 

"We have a problem," he said. The national average for high school seniors who said they had drunk alcohol within the previous month was 41 percent, according to figures presented to the school board.

A much smaller number of Ridge seniors, about 4 percent, said they had used narcotics or painkillers, Gillikin said. He said the students with substance abuse problems he sees in his office said it is easy to obtain drugs in the township.

Gillikin said the proposal is different from the existing suspicion-based policy for testing for substance abuse. In that case, a school official who believes a student appears to be drunk or under the influence of drugs automatically must leave school and be tested, he said.

School officials said the focus on a random drug testing program would be focused on obtaining help for the student, rather than through punishment. However, a student could be temporarily removed from an activity or lose parking privileges if they test positive, according to the proposal.

The anonymous test, which supposedly includes a way of weeding out unreliable answered, had been administered every two years since the 1990s, school officials said.

Board President Susan Carlsson said the program actually originates in the township Department of Health.

A health department employee said the survey soon will be posted on the website for the Municipal Alliance against Substance Abuse. The website contains figures from previous years. For example, the survey said that 69 percent of Ridge seniors had used alcohol and 33 said they used marijuana during the previous month in a survey of 2006-07 seniors.