SUMMER VACATION: Substance editors going off the grid until August 19
Vacations keep everyone sharper.The main Web production editors of Substance will be on vacation for a week, beginning on August 12, 2011, and will not be posting new stories until August 19. We will in fact be "off the grid" without access to e-mail or the Internet for most of that time. Please continue to share your comments with Substance and send us your stories via email to Csubstance@aol.com. We will work overtime as soon as we're back to update our readers.
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By: John Whitfield
IFT teachers don't bluff
By GREG STEWART (gstewart@pjstar.com)
It is common in many area school districts for certain students to be subjected to random drug testing. The proposed policy in Illini Bluffs District 327 to randomly drug test teachers is a first in the greater Peoria area.
Wednesday's return to classes was canceled over a division between teachers and the administration, which led to a teachers' strike.
Ray Roskos, a field service director at the Illinois Federation of Teachers for the Peoria area, said this was an issue he had not encountered before.
"For certified teachers, I have not seen another contract (involving random drug testing) and I have 14 school districts in the Peoria area," Roskos said. "I've talked with other colleagues, and we have yet to find one. If there is one, we are unaware of it."
Bus drivers are federally mandated to undergo random drug testing. Non-certified support staff at Illini Bluffs agreed last year to undergo random drug testing. He said no one has tested positive since it was implemented.
Other districts are paying close attention to the situation at Illini Bluffs.
"Our random testing is only for students involved in extracurricular activities and does not involve any teachers, staff or administrators," said Dennis McNamara, superintendent at Brimfield. "Other than that, we do not have a policy in place.
"But if a situation came up that we felt needed addressed, we would use legal authority rather than collective bargaining. We just don't have any language in our contract to address that."
Likewise, Metamora has no random testing for its teachers, but does require new employees to submit to drug screening. But a drug-testing program for bus drivers has created de facto testing for many teachers and coaches in District 122.
"We do not have a random drug-testing policy, but do require any new employee in the district to be tested," said Ken Maurer, recently retired superintendent in Metamora. "But our bus drivers are tested annually and randomly, and I think almost all of our coaches have a bus driver's license because they drive their teams."
Maurer explained that many young teachers/coaches are eager to earn the extra pay that comes with transporting their teams to athletic contests, and thus seek the certification necessary to drive a school vehicle.
Consequently, any coach who drives a school bus/van is subjected to random testing.
"We're not aware that (drug/alcohol abuse among teachers) is even a concern," Maurer said. "But if we thought it was, we would go to that individual and test at our expense. We could do that if we needed to."
Greg Stewart can be reached at 309-686-3251 or gstewart@pjstar.com.