School board meets with drug-testing company rep.

“I thought we are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty but here we’re going to be guilty until we’re proven innocent.” – Caroline Burek

BY JENNIFER KOHLHEPP Staff Writer

ALLENTOWN – A drug-testing company representative fromOhio is the latest to weigh in on the random drug-testing issue in the local school district.

Sport Safe, a for-profit company founded in 1996, helps schools collect and analyze student urine samples. Currently, the company has 45 clients and is seeking to do business with the Upper Freehold Regional School District. The school district has proposed implementing random drug testing for high school students in extracurricular activities and with parking permits.

Matthew Franz said his father, Joseph Franz, a family physician and medical review officer (MRO), started Sport Safe after a student in their local school district was killed over a $50 drug deal. He then explained the standard procedures his company employs for drug testing.

Franz said the school would round up its pool of eligible students and send Sport Safe their identification numbers. Being based in Columbus, Ohio, the company doesn’t know who the students are, which helps protect confidentiality, he said. Sport Safe enters the numbers into a computer, which randomly selects who to test.

The company forwards the list of students to be tested to the school district and sets a date for testing. On that date, Sport Safe sends an independently contracted collector to the school district for urine specimens from those on the list.

Franz said students are usually taken out of class a couple at a time and grouped by gender. The collector has students fill out a five-page, carbon-copy form. The lab gets the top sheet, which contains just the student’s identification number. The second page, with the student’s name, phone number and birth date, goes to the MRO. The third copy goes to the collector but is ultimately shredded, he said. The fourth copy goes to the school district and the fifth goes to the student once the test is complete.

Students undergoing testing are asked to wash their hands with a nonalcoholic wipe andmay be asked to empty their pockets and to take off extra layers of clothing, Franz said. The testing kit, which should be factory sealed, is then opened in the presence of the student. The student is given a plastic container and is sent to a bathroom in the same office where all water sources have been shut off. Students are given two to three minutes to fill the container with 45-60 ml of urine, he said.

“We certainly respect all cultural and ethical issues,” Franz said.

Once the student turns the specimen in, the collector splits it into two vials, which are sealed and then signed and dated by the student.

“The whole process should take nomore than five to 10 minutes,” Franz said.

However, students who cannot urinate for the test must remain in the presence of the collector until they can, Franz said.

“They will drink water until they go,” he said. “The collectors follow protocol and show compassion. They give as much time and privacy as needed but they don’t allow anyone to get out of a test.”

The collector sends the specimens to a Substance Abuse and Mental Health ServicesAdministration (SAMHSA) certified lab that Sport Safe works with.

The school district’s proposed random drug policy defines drugs as alcohol, amphetamines, barbiturates, benzodiazepines, cocaine, marijuana, MDMA (Ecstasy), methadone, methamphetamine, opiates, oxycodone, PCP, anabolic steroids, tricyclic anti-depressants or any other substance which is defined as a controlled substance, or their metabolites, by New Jersey law. If any of those drugs show up in a specimen, a second test would determine concentration levels and identify the specific drug.

The concentration of the substance found, expressed in nanograms, determines whether a test is positive. For example, a positive marijuana sample contains at least 15 nanograms per milliliter, with anything less considered to be a negative test that the school district is not notified about, Franz said.

The testing also identifies the molecular fingerprint of the substance, which helps reduce false positives, he said. For example, a student wouldn’t test positive for heroin after eating poppy seeds as each substance has its own molecular fingerprint.

The lab further protects itself against false-positive results by having the two vials, Franz said. One vial is frozen so a student’s family can opt to have the test redone. He said the family would have to pay for the second test at a SAMHSA certified lab, which costs between $100-$150.

“It’s happened seven times in 12 years,” he said. “And all of the tests had the same result.”

If a student tests negative, the company destroys both vials within five days, according to Franz, who added that he doesn’t like to think about all of that plastic as the company does not recycle.

If a student tests positive,MRO Joseph Franz calls the student’s parents or guardian.He determines if the positive test is due to prescription or over-the-counter medicines by speaking with the parents and asking for documented proof. Even if a student tests for trace amounts of a substance that Safe Sport cannot notify the school about, theMRO would likely call the student’s parents to discuss the issue, Franz said.

“We started this company to protect kids and we wouldn’t implement a policy or protocol that didn’t do just that,” he said. “The MRO we use is my father. When he calls parents, it’s usually a 15-20 minute conversation about what to do to get the kid back on track.”

If the MRO concludes that the test is positive, he notifies the school district.

“Once the school is notified, the policy goes into place,” he said.

Sport Safe would charge the school district $27 per test, according to Franz. He said the company’s employees are all required to have background checks, fingerprinting and drug testing.

When people in the audience voiced concerns over Franz’s father being the sole MRO at the company while continuing practice as a family physician, he said, “We haven’t run into the problemof having to hire another one yet.” Franz said that below 1 percent of the tests are positive. He said his father is usually responsible for making 5-10 calls per day, which he usually does from his office or cell phone.

When a parent asked what would happen if she gave her daughter a glass of wine with Sunday dinner, Franz said, “Once you’re involved in the policy, you can’t give your kid a glass of wine with Sunday dinner.”

He then said that if the parent discussed the issue with the MRO and the wine was used for religious purposes, the test might not necessarily be related to the school as a positive.

Franz also talked about his company being for-profit. He said, “That doesn’t necessarilymean wemake a profit. I came here on our dime because I believe in what we do.”

He said public schools cannot mandate random drug testing for every student because courts wouldn’t allow it. However, he said some schools are close to having 95 percent of their student populations tested because they have implemented a policy like the one the local school district is considering.

He continued, “I know what it did for me and my teammates. To see it work and to fine tune it to see it work better is a satisfaction I cannot explain.”

After hearing Franz’s presentation, Allentown High School sophomore Caroline Burek, 15, said, “This is not a good thing.”

She said the suggested policy is degrading and an attack on her rights.

“I thought we are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty but here we’re going to be guilty until we’re proven innocent,” Burek said.

She also said the $5,000 per year cost to run the program concerns her.

“We don’t have textbooks but we’re going to have drug testing,” she said.

Sophomore Katelyn Richmond, 15, commented that the proposed policy and testing don’t seem to be targeted at the kids who need help themost, those who forgo extracurricular activities to use drugs.

Senior Maggie Meyer, 17, considers the proposed policy and testing unfair because it gives the school district the authority to regulate what students are doing when they are not in school.

“They’re testing for things happening outside of when the school has control over you,” she said.

Senior Rose VanHandel, 18, said she’s against the proposed policy and testing as it could affect a student’s academic record.

“I’m going to college on a full scholarship next year,” she said. “Had this policy been enacted, with my mom adamantly against it, I may not have been allowed to participate in extracurricular activities. That shows right there how this could hurt kids.”

Upper Freehold’s Richard Edgar, who attended themeeting as a representative of the libertarian party and has no children in the school district, said the policy would make kids choose between their rights and extracurricular activities. He also took issue with the board only presenting speakers in favor of the proposal and suggested it talk to the Drug PolicyAlliance in Trenton.

Senior Matthew Dallas, 17, said the school district is sending its students the wrong message in teaching kids not to use drugs because of the punitive effects, instead of teaching not to use drugs because doing so is harmful to a person’s health and well-being.

“When you walk into the health room, there’s a poster that lists the No. 1 reason not to do drugs as punishment, [when it should be] because of the damaging effects to the body,” he said.

The students offered some suggestions other than random drug testing to better help students in need. They said the district should focus on better using the policy it already has in place, offer more drug- and alcohol resistance programs at every grade level and better educate administrators, teachers and counselors to recognize alcohol and drug problems with continually updated training and reviews.