Teachers Union Anti Drug Testing?

It’s your call, but it appears the Teachers Union is against random drug testing. They prefer “privacy” to safety?

As teachers’ union sues over drug testing, county wants to expand its testing program
by Ry Rivard
Daily Mail staff
Source-Charleston Daily

The Kanawha County Commission may join forces with the county school system in a legal fray and begin drug testing more, if not most, of its employees.

Its president, Kent Carper, wants the commission to expand its random drug-testing policy to include employees who handle money and records or deal with the public. This could include accountants, clerical workers and housing inspectors.

The commission already randomly tests “safety sensitive” county employees who operate vehicles and equipment or have firearms. Those categories include about 170 of its 417 employees.

Carper hopes the commission will join with the school board — a separate entity that is not controlled by the commission — to fight what may be a long and costly legal battle over the school system’s new policy to randomly drug test teachers.

Carper said the outcome of a lawsuit filed by one teachers union would affect the county commission’s current policy, the expanded policy he hopes to put in place, and drug testing policies around the state.

“To believe that the final result of this lawsuit will not affect and set the road map, the rules of the road, for drug testing public employees, you’d have to be naïve,” he said.

County commissioner Dave Hardy said that while he supports the Kanawha County school board’s endeavor to implement what he calls a well-thought out testing policy, he doesn’t want the commission to “jump on the bandwagon and make a rash decision” that could cost the county hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees.

Hardy said he is willing to consider filing a friend of the court brief in support of the school board. But he noted that it took the commission more than six months to arrive at its current drug testing policy and that it did so only after receiving legal advice.

The West Virginia chapter of the American Federation of Teachers filed a lawsuit Wednesday in Kanawha Circuit Court against the county school board and Superintendent Ron Duerring.

The suit alleges that the school system policy to randomly drug test teachers is an unconstitutional invasion of privacy.

AFT-WV also asked for a preliminary injunction to halt the policy while the courts consider the case. Both the school system and the union expect the injunction to be granted by the court, meaning the board could not begin testing teachers in January, as it had planned. The delay would likely last for years until a series of appeals from either side is exhausted.