At Katz Yeshiva High School of South Florida, this past year, we began a new program whose goal was to deter drug use among our students and to provide awareness about the dangers of drug use. In the interest of both getting feedback from other schools and sharing a program that seems to be working I wanted to present the idea to the Lookjed community.
In a nutshell - every student in the school is drug tested on three random dates during school (in our first year we did not test 9th graders, but this year we will be testing all students.) The results of individuals’ drug tests are NOT shared with the school. The results are sent only to the students’ parents. The school receives aggregate anonymous data from the lab indicating how many boys and girls tested positive for each substance.
Please see below for a description of the plan and the rationale behind it.
Please click here [
docs.google.com] for the letter that I sent to our parent body at the end of the school year, reflecting on what we learned about the program during its first year.
We introduced this program after many meetings with small focus groups of parents, meetings with graduates and several meetings for our entire parent body. I’ve been really pleased with the level of buy-in from parents and even from students. As each school determines how to best address the issue of drug use among their students, I wanted to share our experience and invite other schools to provide feedback and/or to adapt it to their own school environment.
Sincerely,
Jonathan Kroll
Head of School- Katz Yeshiva High School of South Florida.
~~~
Creating a Healthy Environment for our KYHS students
The Situation:
• We live in a culture that sends mixed messages about drug usage.
• Teenagers’ brains are wired in a way that makes them prone to risky behavior.
• There are teenagers at KYHS who experiment with drinking alcohol and drug usage.
• Drug usage is harmful to overall health and to a teen’s developing brain and creates a toxic social dynamic.
• Many parents are unaware of their children’s behavior.
• Many parents are aware but unsure how to navigate the situation with their teenage child.
Principles:
• Parents and KYHS need to work collaboratively to help make sure that our teenagers make healthy and safe choices.
• Drug usage and underage drinking are illegal and unsafe. KYHS and the parent body unequivocally communicate that message to our teenagers.
• It is the parents’ role, not the school’s, to supervise and discipline our teenagers’ behavior outside of school hours.
• Students’ behavior outside of school affects the culture inside of school.
The Plan:
• In order to help foster an environment that provides a deterrent to risky behavior and to allow for more students to engage in more wholesome behavior, we will adopt a PRO (Parent Results Only) program of drug testing.
• All students will be drug tested in school three times during the school year at unannounced times.
• Professional technicians from a local lab will collect urine samples from each student.
• The urine test can detect drug usage up to 30 days prior to the test.
• The results of the test will be shared ONLY with the parents and not with the school.
• Each test will cost $39. Parents will pay the cost of each test. In the event of financial hardship, the school will cover the cost.
• It is illegal for the lab to share any of the results with anyone but the parents of the student tested.
• KYHS will provide education to students about the risks associated with drug usage and drinking.
• KYHS will provide information to parents regarding how to talk with teenagers about these issues and suggestions for how to respond to positive drug tests.
• We believe that drug testing will serve as a deterrent to drug usage. Students will be empowered to say, “I can’t try the drugs since I may get caught when I get drug tested and the same goes for you!â€
• A student whose parents approach the school for support in the event of a student testing positive will not face any punitive consequences for that matter. The school will support a therapeutic approach when dealing with a student’s drug usage.
• In the event that the school suspects a student is in school under the influence of drugs, the school will test the student with a saliva swab that detects recent drug usage.
Narrative:
Parents want their children to make healthy choices and resist drug experimentation and use. Drug testing serves as a good deterrent. It will not deter all experimentation, but it will deter most of it. Schools that conduct random drug testing report that they are generally unhappy with their program. Inevitably, a culture of suspicion is created when some students are selected for testing while others are not. These schools usually issue a series of consequences when students test positive. No matter how clearly the consequences are delineated, when the consequences need to be meted out there is almost always a sense of resentment on the part of parents and students who feel that the consequences do not properly address that student’s particular needs. We think the reason why schools are unhappy with their random drug testing programs is that these school are operating on a faulty assumption, namely that it is the school’s responsibility to discipline their students for their behavior outside of school. We reject that assumption. It is the parent’s responsibility to supervise and discipline their children, and parents are able to do a much better job at it than the school is able to do.
By testing all students we communicate the message that we as an entire school are working together to solve this problem. We empower students to make healthy choices and we partner with parents to provide them with the information that they need in order to help their children.
We have reviewed this plan with a number of psychologists, school leaders, students and graduates of our school. It has been met with unanimous approval. There is a good deal of hope that this approach may serve as a model for Jewish schools across the country.
FAQ
May a student and their parents choose to not participate in the school drug testing program?
No. In order for this program to work everyone must participate. As long as everyone is
being tested, no one is being singled out.
Can a student mask drug usage by ingesting certain solutions meant to neutralize the drug test?
Such solutions are available, but the drug test will detect that the student has taken a masking agent. A positive result for a masking agent should be considered the same as a positive result for drug usage.
What if a student uses another student’s urine to avoid detection?
The urine test also detects the temperature of the sample. An irregular temperature will
result in the invalidation of the sample. Professional technicians will collect the samples and ensure their validity.
If a student is taking medication for ADHD will that create a false positive?
Yes. Certain ADHD medications will result in a positive result for amphetamines. Parents
of children on ADHD medication should be aware of that when they receive the test results.
Will the school really not have access to the test results?
Indeed the school will NOT have access to any of the results. We believe that this is a
critical component of the program.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/30/2017 07:05PM by mlb.
