Student Drug Testing Changes

Year round, Arrowhead high school randomly drug tests their students. As the 2017-2018 school year rolled around, students noticed the new policies regarding drug testing.  

The AHS drug testing policy was revised this summer and published on July 12th, 2017. It states that Arrowhead can test when it wants and how often it wants.

The 655.1 policy was created January 9th, 2008 and was first  revised on June 8th, 2016.

The new  655.1 policy states, “Students become eligible for random drug testing on the day their parent permission card is submitted to participate in an athletic or co-curricular activity, or or the day a parking permit is issued. Students remain eligible for random drug testing throughout the remainder of his or her high school years whether or not the student has been previously tested or is currently participating in athletics, co-curricular activities, or owns a parking pass, he or she might be selected for a drug test.”

The changes take place in the scheduling of the testing and what relation to the school students have to qualify to be tested.  
“It feels like they have been testing every day since school has started. I hear about it almost every day too. I used to never know when they drug tested because no one ever talked about it and they didn’t seem to test as many students as before. But now it’s seems like it happens often so I expect to hear about it. I also thought that if you owned a parking pass you were always eligible for testing, ” says Arrowhead junior, Meleana Strecher.

However, it isn’t that more students are getting drug tested per month, but that the school is spreading out the testing of their students.

“Puting the owners of parking passes as eligible students  to be drug tested gives us a bigger sample to look at. Spreading out the testing also gives us a more accurate sample.This way we can help more kids and will give us a more accurate representation of the student body. We changed it this year because we saw other schools like Oconomowoc testing kids with parking passes and saw that it worked well. Our schedule is based off of the school year calendar. So the scheduling is based on what works best for our student body (when they have vacation and testing) and what works best for administration as well, “says Arrowheads superintendent , Becky Gordon.

Staff also thinks that the changes to the testing is beneficial. “We spread out the testing to help make the process easier. This way the administration doesn’t have to take up full days to test students. Rather they can spread it out, testing less students each day but more frequently, makes testing easier and more efficient,” says Arrowhead Study hall teacher, Cathy Sirianni.

As the school year progresses, we will see how the new policy takes effect and if there will be revisions next year.