Iowa district to test all prospective employees for alcohol and drug use
According to education officials, a West Des Moines school district decision to test all prospective employees for alcohol and illicit drug use is believed to be the first policy of its kind in Iowa. The policy, approved unanimously, mimics drug screening used by private companies across the country, but experts said the practice is uncommon in U.S. public schools. The new policy also affects employees already on the job. Workers suspected of drug use who test positive, and those who come to work with a blood alcohol concentration of .04 or more, could be fired or forced to get professional help to keep their jobs. Teachers will not be tested at random, however. “It was surprising to me that other districts don't do this,” said West Des Moines school board member Susan Moritz, who helped craft the policy. “It came out of the idea that our bus drivers were already being tested, and if we felt that was important for our bus drivers, wasn't it also important for the people who were in our buildings?” Federal law mandates that school employees required to have commercial driver's licenses, such as bus drivers, be tested for drugs.
Ben Stone, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa, said the expanded policy unnecessarily targets potential employees who are already subject to criminal background checks. The “reasonable suspicion” clause that affects employees already on the job leaves a lot of room for interpretation, he added. “Drug testing should only be done in limited situations where there is a real demonstrated problem,” Stone said. “This policy really appears to be very broad.”
Stone questioned whether the tests are a “wise use of district resources.” Lana Oppenheim Schlapkohl, a spokeswoman for the Iowa State Education Association, the state's largest teachers union, agreed that the policy has gray areas, but she said union leaders will not oppose it. However, “we don't support random testing,” she said. School board member Tom Suckow called the rule change a “great deterrent to keep everybody else's rejects out of our district.” A “vast majority” of West Des Moines municipal employees are subject to similar tests, said the city's human resources manager, Jane Pauba Dodge.
Teacher drug tests have been hotly debated in several states in recent years. School officials in Wyoming earlier this month asked their lawyers to research the issue after two school employees in Cheyenne were arrested as part of a cocaine ring. Tennessee state legislators have shelved a bill that would require random drug tests of teachers, principals and other staff members. Lawmakers cited the financial impact on tight school budgets. Money concerns also have developed in Hawaii, where Gov. Linda Lingle's office is embroiled in a battle with the state Board of Education to determine who will pay the estimated $500,000 cost to drug-test teachers as part of an employment contract due to take effect July 1. The American Civil Liberties Union already has threatened to sue over the measure. Random drug testing of teachers survived a court battle in Kentucky three years ago. A federal judge ruled in December 2004 that any impingement on teachers' privacy was warranted “due to teachers' status, their job responsibilities, their diminished expectation of privacy, and the highly regulated nature of their profession.”
Source: Des Moines Register, 2/27/08, By Jared Strong
[Editor’s Note: Hawai‛i teachers had agreed to a random drug testing provision in a collective bargaining agreement that also netted them pay raises. The agreement was negotiated by the governor rather than the board of education because Hawai‛i’s unified school district is a state agency. See below. The second link is to an NSBA resource that discusses the issue.]
NSBA School Law pages on Hawai‛i teacher drug testing
Leadership Insider on legal questions