Testing Our Teachers
Disclaimer: IANAL. All of the following post is based on things I’ve been told by people who are, similarly, Not Lawyers. If I’m wrong, I’d love to be told how by someone more knowledgable.
As some of my readers know, I have a “baby” sister who is still in high school. When she told Dad a while back that there were rumors (from people my sister considered trustworthy) that one of the teachers was doing drugs. Dad, quite understandably, was upset. To my knowledge, there was no rumors that he was high at school, but still, it’s troublesome*.
One of the advantages of a rural community is the fact that everyone knows everyone else (that’s also one of the disadvantages, but I digress…), so Dad made some calls, requesting that teachers be tested for drugs, just like students have been.
At first, he was told it couldn’t be done – teachers’ bodies, apparently, are sacrosanct; students’, not so much. Obviously not pleased with this answer, he pointed out that he wasn’t asking for a single teacher be singled out for testing – he wanted EVERY teacher to be given a drug test. Eventually, he extracted promises from a couple of local politicians that they’d “see what they could do”.
This is absurd. I can’t remember working anywhere that didn’t make me aware that it was at-will employment, that either I or the company could end our professional association at any time, for any reason. They’ve also all made me aware that they reserved the right to do “random” drug screenings. I thought that was standard. Am I to understand that teachers, the people we trust with the country’s children, aren’t subject to the same sort of rules?
* The libertarian in me doesn’t necessarily see anything wrong with teachers doing drugs in the privacy of their own homes, provided they don’t come to school under the influence, but as long as there are laws against it, as representatives of the government, they, perhaps moreso than non-government workers should be required to obey the law.