Through the course of this summer, District 95 board members have been debating whether or not to implement a drug testing program suggested two years ago.

What the district has not done, however, is prove the community there is a sufficient drug problem in Lake Zurich. Due to this lack of research, and many other problems a drug testing program would cause, implementing this program should be dropped from the school  board’s agenda.

           The proposed plan is to subject all students involved in extracurricular activities and students who park on campus to random testing. Of the roughly 1100 students this pertains to, 15 different students will be tested on six separate occasions during the year, bringing he total number of students who will be tested per year to 60. State law does not allow public schools to be able to drug test the entire school population.
           The thought of random drug testing may intimidate students into not experimenting with recreational drugs, but what the board has yet to prove to us is that the severity of LZHS’s  drug problem is at the point where a drug testing program must be implemented. District 95 has failed to perform this important research and should not move forward without ensuring the community this program is desperately needed.
          According to a July Daily Herald article, district parents claimed that LZ Police Chief Kevin Finlon stated our drug problem is no different than any other high school in our area. If this is true, then why aren’t schools such as Mundelein, Stevenson, and Barrington jumping on the drug testing bandwagon as well?
           Another problem with this program is the amount of money that would come out of our budget should this be implemented. Just two years ago district faculty and programs were being cut due to budget cuts in the district. Students are able to speak from experience as they watched sports teams and other extracurricular activities lose district funding.

Spending tight budget dollars on this program would not be a wise fiscal decision. This money could be better spent on assets which would be much more useful to our educations such as providing new books, computers, or hiring new teachers to decrease class sizes. Isn’t the main duty of a school to give students a high quality education they can take with them after high school?

As well as spending tight budget dollars, instituting a drug testing program takes the responsibility of our well being from our parents and local law enforcers. The responsibility of our safety only rests on the schools shoulders while we are there learning. We have parents and other public officials to keep us safe from drugs while we are not at school. Therefore, the school should have no right to drug test the student population unless there is reasonable suspicion. The school is overstepping its boundaries and trying to take these duties from our parents and local police officers.

Also, the proposed program has a few major faults. The program states that if a drug test were to come back positive, then the person who tests positive is to be terminated from the sport or extracurricular activity for 50 percent of the time span of the activity. If 50 percent of the time span has already passed, then the punishment will carry over into the next academic year or season. This is completely counterproductive and the total opposite of what should happen should a test come back positive.

If anything, students should be given more extracurricular activities to keep them away from doing drugs. Termination from their activities is just going to give them more free time to fuel their drug use. The logic behind the consequences of this program is completely absurd.

The board plans to release another survey to parents in the district in regards to the proposed plan. The policy could come up for voting in November, and if approved could be implemented as early as January 2012.

The proposed drug testing program would do more harm than good for our community that has yet to be shown to have a drug problem any more severe than neighboring communities. Tax dollars could be spent on programs much more useful. It’s a shame school board members think the content of our urine is more important than the quality of our educations. That being said, district board members should stop wasting their time and rid their agenda of this proposition.