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Jacksboro ISD changes drug testing policy

Wed, 02/22/2017 - 12:01 pm

Jacksboro ISD has updated its drug testing policy. During this week’s school board meeting, trustees voted to alter the policy significantly. 

Superintendent Dwain Milam said in the days following the death from overdose of Trey Pruitt students shared with school staff that the current drug testing was ineffective.

“They felt like on more than one occasion, a student had taken part in those activities over the weekend and tested on Monday and came out with a clean test,” Milam said.

Milam said the school has performed 1,820 drug tests since the 2009-10 school year and found 24 positives. One-hundred forty-eight tests have been given this year with no positives.

Students who participate in extracurriculars or who have a permit to park on campus are subject to random drug tests. Milam said parents can opt-in to have their child added to the drug testing pool. Also, students may be tested if a teacher witnesses certain characteristics under the authority of the school’s code of conduct.

Prior to the new policy, the school used a saliva test which according to testing laboratory NarcoCheck has a drug detection time of 4 to 48 hours depending on the drug.

“The goal of the drug testing as a policy is never to catch a student that’s doing something,” Milam said. “But to give them a reason not to. The word we’re getting back from our students is there are some that are using but the tests are proving that out.”

The policy, FNF Local, was changed to allow the school to add urine testing to possible methods. It also allows the school to randomly test as many as 50 percent of the students within the testing pool.

The board discussed consequences for a positive drug test. There was some discussion about positive results being cumulative through the student’s enrollment in middle school and beginning anew for high school. 

To read the complete article, see the Feb. 17 edition of the Herald-Gazette.