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Lack of privacy is a huge concern with Park City student drug testing
During this week’s Park City School Board meeting, a draft policy of the district’s proposed drug policy was presented. While drug testing for Park City students has not been approved, now is the time to provide any objections. One of our major concerns is student privacy.
The district policy describes who will have the results of the drug testing. It says:
- Information regarding the results of the drug tests shall be kept confidential among the building principal, designees, any employee with a need to know, the student’s parent or legal guardian, and the student.
Unfortunately, nowhere in the draft policy does is mention the word privacy. The only time it speak to confidentiality of results is the above bullet point.
Let us give you an example of our fear. Let’s say Johnny Smith plays wide receiver for the Miners Football team. On Monday he gets pulled out of class for a random drug test. He fails. He is then suspended for two football games. Sure, officially only the Principal, the Assistant Principal, a school counselor, and his coaches know that he has been suspended for failing a drug test. However, it doesn’t take a genius for his classmates to figure out he failed a test (why isn’t he playing in these two games?). Then various people at school turn to social media and post that Johnny failed his drug test. Then the whole school knows. Then so do colleges that wanted to recruit Johnny for football … or maybe it’s the college admission officer who is reviewing his application for Westminster.
We just don’t see how the school can protect our students’ privacy. They can’t outlaw freedom of speech — especially when it’s true. We don’t have to look much farther than last year’s security scare at the high school, to see how fast and far social media spreads.
Messing with kids’ lives in order to have the appearance of “doing something” is a horrible approach. We hope the school district stops this madness immediately.
Parkrag
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8 Comments
My understanding was that Johnny wouldn’t be suspended because the drug tests wouldn’t be used in a punitive way. I thought it would be business usual and the powers that be would get Johnny the help he needs. Did I misunderstand? I didn’t go to the school board meeting.
Erma-
You are correct. The child will not be suspended from school. He or she will just be prevented from participating in extra curricular activities for some period.
Or…maybe Johnny will stop doing drugs because he wants to play football in college and do well in school. Maybe the drug test teaches Johnny a valuable lesson. Save one kid and it’s a success.
You may be right. Perhaps a 16 year old will think about this in an adult and rational way.
As for the save one kid’s life mantra, I’m not so sure. This has the potential to negatively impact many kids who wouldn’t have “ended up dying.”
If the goal of our school district is to “save one life,” and we want to approach that in a rational way, then we should probably not allow kids to drive to school.
The problem is the pharma industry pushing the drugs and their accomplices in the DEA. They have succeeded in making sure their drugs are everywhere and tons of people are addicted. They are making billions on this legal drug pushing. All over the house, in mom’s purse, in dad’s briefcase, at ever body’s house. At work. In the school office. Get them from the doctor, the pharmacy, on the street, from your friends and co workers. The industry and the DEA know exactly what they are doing, and it is criminal.
Meanwhile the war on drugs the pharma industry doesn’t produce or distribute rages on. Everybody knows what a horrible, disgusting hypocritical farce that is. Including the kids.
I’m sure PCSD will be hiring a public auditing firm to ensure the randomness of the lottery selection. After all, we wouldn’t want this test to be used for retaliatory purposes.
As far as the school board listening to the plebeians, when has that ever happened?
Drug testing kids is beyond stupid. It will drive many kids with otherwise unproblematic minor drug use (which is tons of kids who turn out fine) away from extracurricular activities which might well be a big part of their later success in life. It will make extracurricular activities more expensive and drive kids without lots of money away. It will undermine trust.
And it won’t freaking WORK. Kids will continue to experiment with drugs just like they have forever. Most of them will be fine, occasionally some will be stupid enough to harm themselves.
PR is right – if we want to save lives, we should be looking at putting all kids on the bus and raising the driving age to 18. That would save a TON of lives immediately. But apparently dying in a car wreck isn’t as big of a deal as dying of a drug overdose.
Idiots.
Drug testing is a cop out and an excuse for not parenting.
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