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Indian Lake School officials said Monday they are not planning to recommend random drug-testing when the school board votes on a more aggressive drug policy for student athletes and participants in extracurricular activities.
“We’ve concluded the efficiency of random drug-testing is hard to determine and at the same time is quite costly to implement,” high school Principal Rob Underwood told the board of education at the regular meeting.
After meeting with the board’s policy committee, which includes board members Steve Spath and Gabe Wickline, he said the group has begun crafting changes to existing policy that would require any students who are found to have abused illegal drugs to voluntarily enroll in counseling or face removal from extracurricular activities.
Currently, policy calls for the student to be suspended from 20 percent of a team or club’s contests on a first offense and 50 percent of the activities on a second offense. According to the policy changes discussed Monday, the student would also have to enroll in substance abuse counseling and then pass a drug screen — both at the cost of the student’s family, insurance or through support of local social service providers — in order to return to the activity.
A third violation of the policy would remain as a complete suspension from all school activities.
“The premise behind it is a hybrid drug-testing and strengthening of what policies we already have in place,” Superintendent Pat O’Donnell said. The district’s lawyer has also reviewed the proposed changes and determined it to be legal, he said.
Board members discussed the policy and suggested certain changes — including whether alcohol should be considered separately from or jointly with illegal drugs.
“If we are going to have a delineation between drugs and alcohol, we probably need to have descriptive language about what illegal drugs are,” board member Chad Ross said.
Mr. Underwood said he would meet again with the policy committee and prepare a new draft for review at the June 20 meeting and the board should be able to vote in July and have the policy in place by the start of the new school year.
Mr. Spath reminded his fellow board members any changes made now can be revisited in the future.
“This is going to be a living document that will change as social issues change,” he said. “In the other districts we talked to, we didn’t see the value in having random drug-testing, but it was adding a cost. It didn’t change the number of incidents they were reporting.”
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