By Andrew Martins, Managing Editor
District officials recently returned to the issue of drugs, their availability to students and what could be done to reduce their presence in Hillsborough’s schools., For the second consecutive meeting of the Hillsborough Township Board of Education, members debated the merits and faults of the district’s drug policy during the Feb. 27 hearing, focusing predominantly on the drug testing process for students., Recent discussions on the school’s drug policies were kickstarted by a random sweep for illicit drugs at Hillsborough High School on Friday, Feb. 3., At approximately 7:45 a.m. that morning, 50 personnel and 13 drug detection dogs from throughout the state were brought into the high school to conduct a sweep of the building., Officers, canine units and investigators from the Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office, the Somerset County Sheriff’s Office, the New Jersey State Police, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Bound Brook Police Department, Passaic County Sheriff’s Office, Morris County Sheriff’s Office and Hazlet Police Department were involved in the search., Police said the search included student vehicles parked at the school, as well as hallway lockers and nine randomly selected classrooms, but no drugs were located on the property., In light of the search, school board member Judith Haas reported that the district’s Education Committee spent time during a recent meeting to discuss the randomized drug testing process and what can be done to improve on it., “Right now, the committee was not particularly interested in re-litigating the policy,” she said. “We felt that we wanted to spend attention to the younger students … because we feel it was important to catch kids before they get into situations where they might need support.”, Haas said the committee was interested in highlighting programs that were already available in the district., Though fellow board member Dana Boguszewski was unable to attend the previous meeting, she said she was in agreement that the district should turn its eye to the younger pupils when it came to drug prevention., “Maybe we should even (test) some of the students in fifth and sixth grade,” she said., Along with that assertion, Boguszewski proposed that the district take a firmer stance on drug testing by pushing for a policy that would increase the number of tests done each year., “Prior to getting either a parking permit or begin allowed any extracurricular activities, I highly suggest that parents go out and get a drug test,” she said., That new drug testing policy, she said, should be started before the start of the 2017-18 school year., Encouraging the parents to go out and do the drug tests themselves, she said, would push the issue back onto the community’s parents and force them to take ownership for part of the problem., “It’s not necessary for our district to pay for something if the parents just go and do this,” she said. “I feel as a parent, as a nurse and a board member, that if my child brought home a letter and it was suggested that prior to them doing any activities, the school would want to see a drug test, I would do it – hands down.”, Boguszewski said that the number of students who get randomly drug tested every year was low, questioning what could be done if parents, teachers and local health officials were on board for increasing drug testing., One issue, she posited, was the reduced number of nurses on hand at any given time in the district., “I can round up 20 volunteer nurses in our town alone and dedicate 40 hours a week to test every single student in this district if you want,” Boguszewski said. “It’s beyond cost. If our town works together, we can abolish this.”, Board member Steven Cohen agreed with those assertions, citing an offer by Mike Reilly to purchase drug test kits and anonymously provide them to local parents., “For the moment, we have an opportunity to do something that won’t cost us any money, send a message to the community to own it and for parents to be parents and not their kids’ friends,” Cohen said., Both Cohen and Boguszewski said the new policy would have to have a stronger, more punitive response to any positive drug test results., “If it comes back positive, it should not be just a five day slap on the wrist. The student should not be allowed to participate and their parking pass should be stripped if they’re a driver,” she said. “I really think that we as Hillsborough can stand up and districts will follow us.”, Though he did not explicitly weigh in on the suggestions put forth by board members, Superintendent Dr. Jorden Schiff said the issue was a potentially tricky one with precedent at the federal level., “Drug testing in school has been adjudicated at the Supreme Court level of our country…so we want to make sure that we provide an environment that doesn’t inadvertently violate law or a child’s constitutional rights,” he said., When questioned about the required number of drug tests done each year, Haas said the figure was consistently low over the last five years, but that the number of positives were consistent year after year., To that end, Cohen pointed to a 2008 policy that called for at least 10 percent of students needing to be drug tested under that grant’s requirements., To further clarify the issue, Gillette said the policy did not come with a hard number, but rather called for 10 percent of the district’s testing pool, which was the students who participated in extracurricular activities and parking passes., For the first three years of that policy, the number of students in that pool was approximately 1,800, Board President Gregory Gillette said. Of those years, he said, the district exceeded the target 180 pupils., “After that, the policy became a tool for the administration in this battle against a national drug problem,” Gillette said. “We’ve already admitted tonight that we’ve done fewer in the last five years.”, He also said the exact figures have been purposely obfuscated in order to protect the random nature of the testing policy., Schiff said there would be multiple steps that needed to be taken before any actions could be taken to draft and introduce a new drug testing policy., “Any policy has to have two public readings before it’s implemented, so the process is about two months … so that the public does have an opportunity to share their thoughts and desires as we go through this process,” he said.
