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By: Jeff Commings and George Sanchez, Arizona Daily Star, Tuesday, December 12, 2006
All students at Salpointe Catholic High School, in Tucson, Arizona, soon will face a test more stomach-wrenching and nerveracking than Advanced Placement exams or the SAT—mandatory drug testing. According to school officials, when the program starts next fall, Salpointe Catholic High School will be the first school—public or private—in the county to submit the entire student body to drug testing. The move is not entirely unprecedented. About 150 Catholic schools across the country have mandatory drug tests for all students, said Mike Urbanski, head of student services at Salpointe. Catalina Foothills High School, a public high school also located in Tucson, started a voluntary drugtesting program this year after three girls were arrested for using and possessing heroin on campus in September 2005.
Salpointe officials started thinking about mandatory drug testing earlier this fall, Urbanski said. After positive feedback on the school’s continuing efforts to reduce drug use on campus, he said, it was time to move to the next step. “We’re always looking for ways to be proactive with our drugand alcohol- prevention program,” Urbanski said. “I looked at other Catholic schools in the country to see what we could do.” He found the perfect model at Saint Patrick High School in Chicago, where hair samples have been used to test for drugs since 2004. The test uses a strand of hair from each student—a more reliable test for longtime drug use than the more common urinalysis, according to the Web site for Psychemedics, the Massachusetts-based company that will perform Salpointe’s tests, most likely in a California lab. Evidence of drug use stays in the hair for about 90 days, more than 10 times longer than it would in urine or saliva, the company says, and washing hair cannot remove any indication of drug use. The list of drugs that can be detected with hair testing includes cocaine, marijuana, opiates, methamphetamine, ecstasy and phencyclidine, or PCP.
Consequences of a positive test include a conference with parents and Urbanski, in which counseling options will be considered. The student also will have to agree to take another test 100 days after the first test. A second positive result could mean suspension or expulsion. Urbanski does not want a student to face that situation.
“This is not us being policemen,” he said. “We want them to get help, and we want to keep everybody here.”
Some of the more than 1,200 students at Salpointe said they learned of the program through word of mouth. Their reactions were mixed. “It’s almost untrusting of the students,” said sophomore Hank Mangen, 16. “It’s kind of necessary, though. If people need help, they need help.”
Sophomores Eddie Urcadez and A.J. Venne, both 16, said some students reacted by calling the new policy an invasion of privacy. “I don’t really see it like that,” Urcadez said.
Drug use and possession on Salpointe’s campus are rare. Tucson Police Department records show no calls to the school for drug-related incidents in the past 15 months, although some students said they recall classmates who showed signs of being under the influence of drugs.
The new program is not likely to deter students from participating in any of the school’s top-notch sports programs, Urbanski said. Athletes already are required to sign an agreement that includes not using drugs or alcohol during the season.
Though Salpointe is likely to be the first private school in Tucson, Arizona, to enact a drug program of any kind, Notre Dame Preparatory High School in Scottsdale began mandatory drug testing in 2003, and Saint Mary’s High School in Phoenix announced last month that a similar program is in the works.
The Paradise Valley Unified School District started the trend in 1991 by testing athletes after suspicions of steroid use arose. Since then, a few more public schools in Arizona have implemented campus-wide testing.
Mandatory drug testing for all students would be illegal in public schools, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne said. He fought to allow the drug testing in Paradise Valley while he was a school board member there and has pushed for more voluntary testing at the high school level. “I’m a passionate advocate of drug testing,” Horne said.
Salpointe officials are not sure exactly how much the mandatory drugtesting program will cost because they are still figuring out the final details.
The program will be supplemented by the school’s Community of Concern, a group similar to a parentteacher organization that focuses on eradicating drug and alcohol use. The school also is visited by a drug-sniffing dog and an alcohol-prevention unit. And for the past three years, parents have been required to attend a two-hour forum on substance-abuse prevention or their kids cannot go to the prom or winter formal.
“A lot of the stuff we do is more than what most schools do,” Urbanski said.
Read more about hair testing for drugs at: www.drugtestwithhair.com.
Reprinted with permission.
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