Between a Lava Rock and a Hard Place: To Drug Test or Not in Hawaii Schools?

A debate that has been unresolved for one-and-a-half years is whether or not to drug test teachers in Hawaii’s public schools. In return for signing over some of their rights to privacy, the teachers will receive a 4% raise in salary — to what is already considered an underpaid job. It should also be noted that there is a teacher shortage as it is, and placing further demands and restrictions would be discouraging to narrowing the gap between supply and demand.

The most confusing part about this debate is that the foundations to carry out a decision were not laid. The HSTA (Hawaii State Teachers Association) and the government did not specify who would foot the bill for drug testing- an estimated $2.3 billion tab. In addition to not being able to carry out an agreement either way, many teachers are unhappy with the idea of drug and alcohol testing.

There are two factors that directly acted as the impetuses for this issue.  The first factor is that two teachers were caught smoking marijuana on an in-service day in 2006, and 8 weeks later another teacher was caught selling crystal methamphetamine to undercover officers.  With only a two month span between incidents, that is discouraging to the Board of Education, as well as parents.

The second factor is that Hawaii has consistently ranked in the lower ten states in terms of student standardized testing. The added pressure (and often unrealistic expectations) of No Child Left Behind has teachers scrambling to do more than is humanly possible.  Also, there is an overwhelming number of factors that go into ranking. It does not measure the teachers’ abilities, necessarily. If a child comes from low-income housing or parents with little or no education, it will have a huge effect on the student’s standardized score.

Certainly there must be an appropriate response to teachers using and selling drugs or underperforming. There is no reason to argue otherwise.  But what is the appropriate response?

In a weak economy, where cuts are being made to bare-bone budgets, why is $2.3 billion going towards drug testing ten to twenty percent of Hawaii teachers? Governor Lingle says the State Board of Education has the financial resources to cover the testing; the Board of Education is claiming that shoring up costs would require taking money away from classrooms. It could be argued that perhaps drug testing teachers is a luxury afforded by a healthier economy.  $2.3 billion could put computers in school labs, replace badly damaged textbooks, and allow schools to take advantage of advanced technology for classroom instruction. Ultimately, money that is put into education now is an investment in saving for the future. The better the education we provide students of Hawaii with in the present, the less money will be spent in the future restructuring of the system.

In terms of faculty morale, this perpetrates a poor attitude on behalf of administration towards their teachers. One is innocent until proven guilty, not the other way around. It is a paradox to entrust a person with the education and safety of hundreds of school children.  However, say that those in charge don’t trust the teachers enough to live their own private lives and make professional decisions. In this case, the students should be drug tested as well; there have been a striking number of school shootings and murders, from as young as kindergarten straight into college. Should all students be drug tested, then?

HSTA voted 61% in favor of drug testing. A majority of the remaining percent feel that drug testing should only be warranted upon reasonable suspicion. Of course, this statement was made without any clear definition of what could warrant ‘reasonable suspicion.’  Would a parking ticket, frequent absences, erratic behavior warrant ‘reasonable suspicion’?  There is a very gray area with this term.

I believe that those reasons of suspicion can be drawn up and agreed upon by the disagreeing parties. This saves spending unnecessarily, as well as more accurately targeting those that garner suspicion.

A mass wave of McCarthy-esque paranoia is not the answer to the problem. Teachers that disagree with drug testing simply on the basis of privacy and misplaced funding start to sound like they are guilty. The immediate reaction is usually suspicion at the refusal to drug test, and that reaction allows people to ignore the reasons for refusal.

The means to an end should model our law system: Behave, and if you don’t, then there will be consequences. The fear of those consequences has led most people to live their life within the boundaries of the law. It works on a smaller scale, too.

From microcosms to macrocosms, it is important to remember how many people we allow to have an impact on the safety of our lives: city bus drivers, construction workers, food preparers, and government workers. Many politicians (our President included) have not provided a shining track record. So why, then, is this spotlight on those who have chosen one of the hardest and most thankless professions?

Tags: education, government, responsibility, teachers