Drug Testing in Public Schools Should Be the Minimum
This should be an easy lay-up for Spotsylvania parents. If you do drugs, you don't get to be around kids. Zero tolerance.
by Shaun Kenney
Spotsylvania County Public Schools just can’t seem to stay out of the public spotlight. The schizophrenia might be a good sign. Perhaps all the other problems of the world have been resolved so as to offer free time to focus on banning books? Testing the boundaries of contract law? Or in the latest instance, whether or not teachers and staff are using narcotics — illegal or otherwise?
Yet in a 4-3 vote, the elected leaders of Spotsylvania’s public school system decided to abandon the idea of mandatory drug testing after several weeks of debate. The spur for this debate? A 2nd grade teacher allegedly overdosed on fentanyl some years ago, which was confirmed by local law enforcement professionals after her husband brought the illicit narcotics to the school himself and was also caught overdosing in the parking lot while with his two-year-old daughter. The schoolteacher was sentenced to two years behind bars for possessing drugs in school and 17 counts of child endangerment and felony child neglect.
Opponents of mandatory drug testing for hard drugs have made their case emphatically, citing Fourth Amendment and medical privacy concerns. While the District of Columbia checks as a matter of routine, of the 131 local school districts in Virginia none of them require mandatory drug screening according to Spotsylvania County Public Schools. Not one. Yet Spotsylvania Superintendent Clint Mitchell’s reasoning for not implementing mandatory drug testing? Teacher retention.
What other careers should exempt employees from routine screenings for drug use? Medical professionals, perhaps? Heavy equipment drivers? Regardless as to whether one believes the book banning fiasco was either too rigid or too loose — pornography is one thing, but banning Chaucer? Shakespeare? The Book of Genesis? — one has to find it obtuse to the point of obstinate to argue that children should be exposed to people who abuse illegal narcotics. All of these strike the average observer as a bridge too far, yes?
An informal WJLA poll showed that 77% of viewers supported mandatory drug screening for teachers. Perhaps there is some concern about newly licit drugs being included in the dragnet? Yet this should not be the case. Just as one would not permit a habitual drunk from being exposed to one’s children, we should hold the same standards for THC use as well, including opioid abuse, fentanyl, and other drugs.
When teachers are overdosing on fentanyl in the classroom, that would seem to be the moment to start raising standards. Surely this is the moment to maintain professionalism, and while one example should not tarnish the reputation of the rest, bad apples tend to spoil the bunch.
After all, it’s for the children — and we are reliably told that this argument trumps all other concerns. As in most things, what we tolerate, we deserve — and our children surely deserve better than a single-digit chance of exposure to drug culture with their own two eyes.
