Pottsville Area High School

Pottsville Area mulls random drug-testing policy

Pottsville Area students enrolled in extracurricular activities could be subject to random drug testing next school year.

The Pottsville Area school board on Wednesday announced its intent to adopt a random drug-testing policy for junior and senior high school students. Superintendent James T. Gallagher said the board will review a proposal and may approve it in July.

There are eight school districts in Schuylkill County that have such policies, and it's time Pottsville Area take the initiative, Jeffrey Zwiebel said before Wednesday's meeting. Zwiebel is principal of Pottsville Area's John S. Clarke Elementary Center and representative of the district's Tide Task Force.

"One of the main concerns when the Tide Task Force got off the ground in the fall was a question regarding student drug-testing policies. So members of the task force spent the last several months researching other districts' drug-testing policies, and we've been able to construct what we believe is a strong one," Zwiebel said.

Zwiebel said the policy the Tide Task Force is proposing is similar to that used by North Schuylkill, Tamaqua Area, Mahanoy Area, Pine Grove Area, Minersville Area, Williams Valley, Shenandoah Valley and Schuylkill Haven Area school districts.

All students in extracurricular activities in grades seven through 12 would be required to sign up for random drug testing. Students not participating in extracurricular activities would not have to sign up, but their parents could contact the school to have them added to the list, Zwiebel said.

The random tests would be administered by Schuylkill Health, Pottsville, during the 2011-12 school year at a cost of $51,000.

Fifty students would be selected by lot per month, Zwiebel said.

Pottsville police Lt. Steve Durkin, who was present at the meeting, said if the district approves the policy, city police would not be informed of test results.

"The school district would only be notified of the results if there was a confirmed, positive test. At that point, the building principal would be notified, and for a first offense, a student would be excluded from their extra-curricular or co-curricular activity for 45 student days," Zwiebel said.

James Toomey, middle school social studies teacher, criticized the first offense penalty.

"How much do you want to put on a kid first time out? For a student in sports, that's a season," Toomey said.

Zwiebel and Gallagher said they've spoken to representatives from other school districts who've said the first-offense penalty gets results.

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