(Joe Robertson) Beginning in the fall of 2013, every student at Rockhurst High School will be tested at least once a year for drug and alcohol use.
“It’s a huge shift,” Principal Greg Harkness said Thursday. It’s an unprecedented step among Kansas City area schools.
“But it’s one we need to do,” he said.
Not because the private Jesuit school has any extraordinary drug and alcohol abuse problems, Harkness said.
But because the school wants to help its students take a stand against illegal substances, and aid those at risk of abuse.
The new policy, announced Thursday, came after two years of research and discussion and retriggered an ongoing debate on the roles schools can and should play to influence their students’ lives.
Many members of Rockhurst’s junior class in the all-male school were involved in the conversations between school staff, trustees and parents as the policy was shaped.
Students in those meetings, like 17-year-old Matthew Brocato, anticipated some of the concerned reactions among students hearing the news for the first time, because he went through the same emotional swirl.
“When you hear ‘drug testing,’ you think cops,” Brocato said. “At first you’re taken aback. Is it for the better?”
But the purpose isn’t to punish students, he said. The school wants to help.
The first time a student tests positive, there will be no disciplinary consequences, but a confidential meeting will be held with a school counselor and the student’s parents.
A second positive test would go to the dean of students for possible discipline.
What students are learning through the process is that, while the pressure to use drugs or alcohol may sometimes be high, the actual amount of use among Rockhurst teens is not as high as many students think.
A testing policy will make it easier for students to turn down offers for drugs or beer.
“It’s helping the students out,” 16-year-old Dante Pennipede said. “I’ve seen kids succumb to peer pressure. This gives another reason not to.”
Rockhurst officials aren’t aware of any other Kansas City area schools that test all of their students. The nearest model they found was Christian Brothers College High School in St. Louis, an all-male religious private school that has been testing its students for six years.
Public schools’ drug-testing policies are restricted by the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment prohibition against unreasonable search and seizures. Supreme Court decisions have upheld public school policies that administer drug tests in limited ways, such as on students participating in extracurricular activities and students who drive themselves to school.
Several area public schools have limited testing policies.
Private schools, however, can test all students, just as private businesses can test prospective or current employees.
Organizations that oppose random drug testing of students argue that some research shows such policies do little to deter drug use.
The American Civil Liberties Union and the Drug Policy Alliance’s 2006 report argued that drug testing is not worth the cost.
Schools risk false-positive drug tests, they say. The tests take dollars away from other prevention programs. They can undermine trust and drive away students who might otherwise have gotten help in other school programming.
“Nothing prohibits it,” said Doug Bonney, the legal director for the ACLU of Kansas and Western Missouri. “But it is a colossal waste of money.”
Like Rockhurst, Christian Brothers College High School weighed many of these concerns when it opted to test its students six years ago, said the school’s president, Mike England.
“In our mind, it was a student health issue,” he said. “It would be in the best interest of our students to give them a reason to say ‘no.’”
The St. Louis school has used the testing company Rockhurst will use, Psychemedics, to take hair samples from students to detect drug use and evidence of binge drinking.
Families pay an annual fee of $60 per student to cover the program’s costs, England said. As with Rockhurst’s plan, Christian Brothers does not discipline students if they test positive for drugs or alcohol once, but tries to provide support.
Students who test positive a second time are asked to withdraw, England said, which he estimated happens three to five times a year.
The school saw a dip in enrollment from about 1,000 students to 930 after it started the program in the 2007-2008 school year, he said. Some of the decline might have been a reaction to the policy, but the declining economy also probably hurt enrollment.
But support for the policy overall has been strong, he said, and the drug testing is continuing. More than 99 percent of the tests this year were negative, he said.
Harkness said Rockhurst’s costs will be similar to Christian Brothers’ and that the fees can be covered under the existing fee structure for families.
The school’s leaders determined the testing would be a valuable aid in helping students in a world that is much different than when Harkness was a 1981 Rockhurst graduate, he said.
Family life is different. Both parents more often are working. Students’ lives are more programmed with after-school commitments. Students are coping with more intense competition for college while managing 700 Facebook friends.
“It’s profoundly different,” Harkness said. “A lot is riding on them.”
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