January 25, 2008
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:
media@aclu.orgHONOLULU – The American Civil Liberties Union applauded the Hawaii State Board
of Education for its decision not to fund the random drug testing of Hawaii’s
educators. In a unanimous vote yesterday evening, the Board of Education
rejected a motion that would have allocated $400,000 just to initiate the random
testing policy – additional funds would be necessary to conduct the actual
random tests. In response to the Board’s decision, Governor Linda Lingle
today threatened to withhold a wage increase included in the teachers’ union’s
most recent contract.
“The Board has done Hawaii’s students a tremendous
service in recognizing that our precious school dollars should be devoted to the
classroom, not diverted toward an ineffective, unconstitutional teacher drug
testing scheme,” said Daniel Gluck, Senior Staff Attorney of the ACLU of
Hawaii. “Governor Lingle should be ashamed of her attempt to score
political points at the expense of teachers’ livelihoods and students’
well-being.”
In the course of last night’s proceedings, Board members
repeatedly criticized Governor Lingle for her failure to fund the random drug
testing policy, which she insisted be instituted during contract negotiations
with the Hawaii State Teachers Association (HSTA) late last year. Without
a special allocation of funds from the Governor, Board members concluded that
the Board would have to take money away from student services and educational
programs to pay for the drug testing program. The Board unanimously
declined to take money away from Hawaii’s schoolchildren to implement the
Governor’s unfunded mandate.
The plan to randomly drug test educators
absent any suspicion is the first of its kind in the United States. In
addition to violating Hawaii educators’ constitutional right to privacy, the
drug testing program teaches a perverse civics lesson to Hawaii’s
students: that the democratic and constitutional values taught in the
classroom are meaningless in the real world.
Critics of the blanket
testing policy also point out that provisions already exist under current
Department of Education policy to take action on any educator who arouses
suspicion of drug use, rendering the random drug testing proposal almost
entirely symbolic.
Teachers opposed to the random drug testing proposal
yesterday voiced their concerns before the Board, emphasizing the
unconstitutional and wasteful nature of the plan.
“By opposing this
random drug testing policy, some people have asked whether I have something to
hide. I tell them that I have nothing to hide, but I do have something to
protect: my constitutional right to privacy,” said Tony Turbeville, a math
teacher at Kawananakoa Middle School in Honolulu and 14 year veteran of the
Department of Education. “I am a teacher. I have a duty to teach my
students that they have to stand up for their rights.”
Robin Fancy,
formerly the only school librarian at Lanai High and Elementary School before
her position was cut for lack of funding, echoed the sentiment of several Board
members: “I cannot understand how it makes sense to fund this drug testing
program when we have failed to provide even the most basic educational services
for Hawaii’s students.”
The ACLU has been contacted by more than 200
educators seeking to challenge the random drug testing policy and plans to file
a lawsuit should the policy ever gain necessary funding. Were the random
drug testing policy ruled unconstitutional, its removal would have no bearing on
the rest of the recently negotiated HSTA contract, including the wage increase
that the Governor has threatened to withhold.
“Let us hope that this vote
marks the end of the road for the Governor’s politically motivated drug testing
proposal,” said Gluck. “If we are truly concerned about student safety,
resources should be directed toward fact-based education about the dangers of
drugs and alcohol, not this ineffective, unconstitutional and exceedingly costly
program.”
Additional information on the random drug testing proposal and
the ACLU’s objections, including biographical materials and video testimonial
from impacted teachers, can be found online at:
www.aclu.org/teachersjoinus.
