Schools ready random drug tests

Students in the Lakeland School District who participate in school-sponsored activities will randomly be selected for drug tests starting this fall, and Coeur d’Alene school officials expect to approve a similar procedure sometime this school year.

The Rathdrum and Spirit Lake-area school district expects to spend about $4,000 annually to administer urinalysis tests at least once per season to about 10 percent of the 500 or so students who participate in activities such as football, volleyball, drama and band, said Superintendent Chuck Kinsey.

The policy is meant to help students stay off drugs and protect the district’s image, said Conrad Underdahl, principal of Lakeland High School in Rathdrum.

“We’re just trying to find kids another reason to say ‘no,’ ” Underdahl said. “It also helps the image of our programs.”

Those are the same reasons the Coeur d’Alene School District will likely adopt a similar policy this school year, said Vern Newby, chairman of the Coeur d’Alene Board of Trustees.

“If (students are) out there drinking and having drugs, that’s not good citizenship,” Newby said. “That’s an area where we have some control, and we’d like to advance it as far as we can.”

The school board’s policy committee will be examining the drug testing issue this year and drafting a recommendation, one the committee hopes can be implemented before the end of the school year, Newby said.

Under Lakeland’s new policy, any student participating in extracurricular activities will be required to sign a form consenting to the tests. Anyone who doesn’t consent will be barred from participating in any school-sponsored activities. The same company that tests the district’s bus drivers will administer the tests.

Students who test positive for illegal substances, including alcohol, face game suspension or possible expulsion from school-sponsored activities if they fail more than one drug test. Tests will be administered at random, though the policy allows the district to test students who show “signs of reasonable suspicion” such as constantly being late for class or having excessive disciplinary problems.

More than 35 school districts in Idaho had drug-testing programs last year, according to the state Department of Education. That includes West Bonner and St. Maries, districts that Lakeland used as a model for its policy. No district in the Spokane area has mandatory drug testing, but the West Valley School District administers tests at the request of parents.

Coeur d’Alene students participating in sports are encouraged to take a drug test, but it’s not required. Ninety-six percent of the nearly 300 Coeur d’Alene High School students who participated in sports last spring agreed to take the test, according to the district. Ninety tests were conducted at Coeur d’Alene High last year and 27 were given at Lake City High School, which didn’t promote the program as heavily, said Janet Feiler, the district’s spokeswoman.

The district spent $1,300 on the tests last year and expects to spend about $2,400 this year as Lake City promotes the program more.

The money the districts use for the tests comes from the Safe and Drug-Free Schools program of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

No one in the Coeur d’Alene district tested positive for illegal drugs last year, the district said.

Voluntary tests might seem futile because students who use drugs can refuse to take them. That’s why many parents and educators encourage mandatory testing, said Harry Amend, superintendent of the Coeur d’Alene district. Amend said he met with parents last year who encouraged the district to adopt such a policy.

The Shoshone School District in southern Idaho has randomly tested students in extracurricular activities on a weekly basis for two years, said Joe Hendrickson, principal of Shoshone Middle/High School.

Hendrickson praised the program for helping deter drug use in students and said it has a great deal of community support. He said one drawback is that the random tests mean students with suspected drug habits aren’t caught because the school can’t specify that they be tested.

Lakeland’s policy avoids this by allowing the district to test suspicious students. Whether that will be part of Coeur d’Alene’s policy will be discussed by the committee in the coming months, along with the consequences for failing a drug test, Newby said.

“We’ll hammer out something that is healthy for the students and tolerable for the community,” he said. “I’ve not heard anybody say it’s a bad idea.”