Last summer, the Tyrone School District Board of Directors approved a random drug testing policy for students who participate in extra-curricular activities. After the first school year in which the policy was in place, the administration has been pleased with the results.
Throughout the 2002-03 school year, 148 students were tested. Seven tested positive and one refused the test, which is considered a positive test.
“The first year of the testing gave us the opportunity to streamline the process,” said Dr. William Miller, Tyrone superintendent of schools. “The students got aquatinted with the process and it made a statement to the students. The board will be reviewing the policy this summer and has already talked about changes.”
Of the seven positive tests, the drugs that came up in the samples were morphine, marijuana and propoxyphrene.
Tyrone High School Principal Rebecca Erb believes the testing program is a positive step.
“It will take years to determine if the testing program will start preventing kids from getting involved with drugs,” said Erb. “What it shows the kids and parents is that the school and the community is serious about the problem. The students and parents were 100 percent aware of what was going on and how the program worked.”
There were some flaws in the first year of the testing that the administration would like to iron out by next school year.
“We learned that testing between 10 and 12 at a time was much more efficient than testing 18-20,” said Erb. “We also wanted to test more students, but the turnaround time was an issue. We didn’t want to have a huge backlog at the lab.”
There were more than 600 students in the middle and high school who were involved in extra-curricular activities during the past school year.
Of the students that tested positive, Erb was only surprised by one positive result.
“Most of the kids who came back positive were recommended to be put into the testing pool because they were suspected of doing drugs,” said Erb. “Most of the students who came from the random pool tested negative.”
Parental support was positive during the first year.
“We did not have one negative encounter with a parent,” said Erb. “We had one parent who questioned the test at first, but after talking with a friend of theirs who does lab work, accepted the results. We had three kids who tested positive, come back to test again and tested clean to resume their extra-curricular activity.”
As part of the policy, a positive test would suspend the student from the extra-curricular activity for an amount of time, depending on the offense, and to re-enter the activity, the student must pass a test.
Other districts such as Bellwood-Antis are looking at the Tyrone policy and starting to implement it at their schools. Bellwood-Antis will have voluntary tests for the 2003-04 school year before the test becomes mandatory.
Tyrone is looking to make its policy better each year.
“We’re looking to improve the testing program,” said Miller. “We need to do more frequent testing and get a quicker turnaround time. The board has been responsive to the policy and the changes that we as the administration are looking at.”
The first drug test took place on October 18, 2002 at Tyrone because the policy was not put into effect before the start of school.
“We’re already working on our mailing list to have the letters to the parents by the end of July,” said Erb. “We are planning to have everything ready to go before the first day of school in August.”
