Teacher's New Contract

[Leo Lakio]

Quit trying to hide your pipe behind the Constitution.

Yeah! Screw that whole "innocent until proven guilty" crap!

['i'iwipolena]

Indeed. Rights are outdated.

[MountainBikeMike]

Look guys- there's no denying it...peeing in a cup is not going to be fun. But the good that this proposal brings far outweighs the bad. Random drug testing will quickly expose and delete the heavy users who somehow are able to show up to class everyday with our kids and fly under the radar without being detected otherwise, it is going to force the casual user to rethink whether they value getting high from time to time over their career, it is going to allow us to receive better compensation, and it is going to put better candidates next to our kids who deserve at least one role-model that doesn't do drugs.

As for innocent teachers turning up false positives, that's why they are tested again - innocent until proven guilty. And perhaps people being put into the position of having to reveal embarrassing medical history after a positive result could be handled on a case by case basis? Besides, these will no doubt be a small minority of cases, no?

No system is perfect, but this one clearly serves the greater good.



MBM

[GeckoGeek]

But the good that this proposal brings far outweighs the bad. Random drug testing will quickly expose and delete the heavy users who somehow are able to show up to class everyday with our kids and fly under the radar without being detected otherwise,

How is that so great or important? I don't see teachers as being in the same class as heavy equipment operators where one mis-judgment can kill someone. As for giving our kids good teachers, there are plenty of poor but drug-free teachers out there. How do we get rid of them?

Let's go after unacceptable performance and leave drug testing for when there's "probable cause".

[scrivener]

Look guys- there's no denying it...peeing in a cup is not going to be fun. But the good that this proposal brings far outweighs the bad.

I'm encouraged by your willingness to discuss the issue, rather than make sweeping generalizations that are clearly incorrect. You're the first teacher to post here in favor of the testing, so your perspective is welcome. Thanks for that.

I cannot agree with "the good...far outweighs the bad," but for the practical reasons you offer, I can totally understand why others would feel this way. My question for you is, where is the line? Would you be willing to have your mail randomly inspected? What about your credit card transactions? If you have nothing to hide, and if the money were good enough, you'd accept these conditions for employment?

I won't lie: I have a sell-out price. There are dollar-amounts that would convince me to accept any of these conditions I mention, but 8% is not one of them. Every state employee is getting something in the neighborhood of 8% anyway, without the testing, so in reality, the teachers were stuck. Bruises are still tender from the last strike, so the teachers had to accept the terms in order to avoid a major public relations issue (since there's been so much news lately about teachers and drugs).

As I've said earlier in this thread: The teachers voted, the thing's a done deal, and I lost. As Pua`i points out, I'm not even a public-school teacher and therefore don't even have a say, and as Ryan points out, I'm not a parent and can't understand the concern parents have about their kids' safety.

But America is not about the rule of the majority so much as the protection of all its citizens. The fact that the majority of teachers accepts this contract does not make it right. All it does is placate the masses, who think that FOUR highly publicized cases of teachers and drugs out of THIRTEEN THOUSAND teachers in the state means there's an epidemic of drug use, and this in spite of the fact that as far as anyone knows, no student has ever been harmed or endangered by a drug-using teacher. All it does is further erode civil liberties at the constitutional level AND alter the citizenry's own view of what its rights are. Like the ducks and geese on Orwell's Animal Farm, we are letting the pigs change the writing on the wall and forgetting what was there in the first place. And if a few outraged horses have to be sent to the glue-farm, that is the price of safety.

Random drug testing will quickly expose and delete the heavy users who somehow are able to show up to class everyday with our kids and fly under the radar without being detected otherwise, it is going to force the casual user to rethink whether they value getting high from time to time over their career, it is going to allow us to receive better compensation, and it is going to put better candidates next to our kids who deserve at least one role-model that doesn't do drugs.

I can't argue with this, because it's probably true. My argument has never been that some good can't come of it, but that the means is in no way justified by its ends. If the government screened the phone calls and letters of every citizen with an Arab surname, the threat of terrorism might go down. But is this how we want to treat our citizens in the name of safety? I say no. Especially when no threat has ever been revealed.

No system is perfect, but this one clearly serves the greater good.

Clear to you and just about everyone else at HT. I say it harms the greater good, especially professionals in future generations who won't ever recall the days when "probable cause" meant something.

[Pua'i Mana'o]

As Pua`i points out, I'm not even a public-school teacher and therefore don't even have a say...

Of the manymanymany words and perspectives I contributed to that thread, those are not among them. I have always respected your right to your perspective and your experience and ideas that found them, and in that same spirit I contributed my own.

[GeckoGeek]

I've been giving this some thought in the bigger context of the drug problem as a whole. Frankly, testing the teachers is just a knee-jerk reaction to a few arrests. I really don't see it as solving a problem.

I think a much more meaningful solution is to start drug testing the students. First of all, minors don't have the same rights as adults so there's less of a rights issue to deal with. Second, since a young persons mind is still forming, drugs can do much more damage to them then to an adult. As far as safety, I think a student in the school is at far more risk from a drug-influenced peer then a druged-out teacher. As for the good of society, we can hope that if students can make it though public school drug-free, they'll be more likely to stay drug free. The only way to win the war on drugs is to deal with the demand side. Hopefully this will make a dent in the demand.