Salpointe Bundles Hair and Sends to California!!!!!

Published: 12.12.2006
Salpointe to drug-test all students
Mandatory program, first in Pima County, will start next fall
By Jeff Commings and George Sánchez
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
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Read about hair testing at: www.drugtestwithhair.com/ questions.htm#g3
All students at Salpointe Catholic High School soon will face a test more stomach-wrenching and nerve-racking than Advanced Placement exams or the SAT — mandatory drug testing.
When the program starts next fall, Salpointe will be the first school — public or private — in Pima County to submit the entire student body to drug testing, school officials believe.
The move is not entirely unprecedented. About 150 Catholic schools across the country have mandatory drug tests for all students, said Mike Urbanski, head of student services at Salpointe, 1545 E. Copper St.
And Catalina Foothills High School started a voluntary drug-testing program this year after three girls were arrested for using and possessing heroin on campus in September 2005.
Salpointe officials started thinking about mandatory drug testing earlier this fall, Urbanski said. After positive feedback on the school's continuing efforts to reduce drug use on campus, he said, it was time to move to the next step.
"We're always looking for ways to be proactive with our drug- and alcohol- prevention program," Urbanski said. "I looked at other Catholic schools in the country to see what we could do."
He found the perfect model at St. Patrick High School in Chicago, where hair samples have been used to test for drugs since 2004.
The test uses a strand of hair from each student — a more reliable test for longtime drug use than the more common urinalysis, according to the Web site for Psychemedics, the Massachusetts-based company that will perform Salpointe's tests, most likely in a California lab.
Evidence of drug use stays in the hair for about 90 days, more than 10 times longer than it would in urine or saliva, the company says, and washing hair cannot remove any indication of drug use.
The list of drugs that can be detected with hair testing includes cocaine, marijuana, opiates, methamphetamine, Ecstasy and phencyclidine, or PCP.
Consequences of a positive test include a conference with parents and Urbanski, in which counseling options will be considered. The student also will have to agree to take another test 100 days after the first test.
A second positive result could mean suspension or expulsion.
Urbanski doesn't want a student to face that situation.
"This is not us being policemen," he said. "We want them to get help, and we want to keep everybody here."
Some of the more than 1,200 students at Salpointe said they learned of the program through word of mouth. Their reactions were mixed.
"It's almost untrusting of the students," said sophomore Hank Mangen, 16. "It's kind of necessary, though. If people need help, they need help."
Sophomores Eddie Urcadez and A.J. Venne, both 16, said some students reacted by calling the new policy an invasion of privacy.
"I don't really see it like that," Urcadez said.
Drug use and possession on Salpointe's campus are rare. Tucson Police Department records show no calls to the school for drug-related incidents in the past 15 months, although some students said they recall classmates who showed signs of being under the influence of drugs.
The new program is not likely to deter students from participating in any of the school's top-notch sports programs, Urban- ski said. Athletes already are required to sign an agreement that includes not using drugs or alcohol during the season.
Though Salpointe is likely to be the first private school in Tucson to enact a drug program of any kind, Notre Dame Preparatory High School in Scottsdale began mandatory drug testing in 2003, and St. Mary's High School in Phoenix announced last month that a similar program is in the works.
The Paradise Valley Unified School District started the trend in 1991 by testing athletes after suspicions of steroid use arose. Since then, a few more public schools in Arizona have implemented campus-wide testing.
Mandatory drug testing for all students would be illegal in public schools, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne said. He fought to allow the drug testing in Paradise Valley while he was a school board member there and has pushed for more voluntary testing at the high school level.
"I'm a passionate advocate of drug testing," Horne said.
Salpointe officials aren't sure exactly how much the mandatory drug-testing program will cost because they're still figuring out the final details.
The program will be supplemented by the school's Community of Concern, a group similar to a parent-teacher organization that focuses on eradicating drug and alcohol use.
The school also is visited by a drug-sniffing dog and an alcohol-prevention unit. And for the past three years, parents have been required to attend a two-hour forum on substance-abuse prevention or their kids can't go to the prom or winter formal.
"A lot of the stuff we do is more than what most schools do," Urbanski said.
Do you support Salpointe's decision to drug-test all students? Vote in our online poll at azstarnet.com/educationMORE online
Read about hair testing at: www.drugtestwithhair.com/ questions.htm#g3
● Contact reporter Jeff Commings at 573-4191 or at jcommings@azstarnet.com.


Comment from ET McCrone, Tucson Elevator Operator:


Since 1891, the Social Encyclicals of the Catholic Church have been expanding the Church's vision of human rights. Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum accepted workers' rights . Quadragessimo Anno was Pius IX 's reaffirmation of this broad view of human rights in 1931.John XXIII celebrated the anniversary with Mater et Magister and Pacem in Terris' denunciation of war and violence. Paul VI defended the rights of the poor in Octogesima Adviens and Populorum Progressio and John Paul II celebrated this new Catholic vision of human rights in Centisimus Annus in 1991. Authentic Catholic Social Teaching has taken our understanding of human rights over the last one hundred years beyond the rights declared by secular governments. A true Catholic high school would teach their students that they have more inviolable rights than their public school peers, not less.

http://www.catholiclabor.org/encyclicals/papal-encyclicals.htm