ISB understands its educational role and responsibility concerning substance use and abuse. In addition to education in our Health and Wellness classes, we also put in place means for early detection of use, so that we may respond and support the student to prevent long term addiction or risky behavior.
In Middle School, the latter means that we have a drug testing process in place, starting from 8th grade.
From the ISB MS Student Handbook (p 22):
As a Middle School student you may be subjected to ad-hoc breath analysis, urinalysis, or drug hair testing. Random drug hair testing of grade 8 students occurs regularly.
We will be beginning our random hair testing next week with grade 8 students. Each week we select 10-12 grade 8 students at random.
An administrator meets with students to explain the process and a school nurse takes a small sample of hair that will be sent to a lab in the U.S. for testing. Parents will receive a letter home when their child is tested, which also provides an opportunity to detail any medication that the child is taking in case it surfaces in the testing. Test results are sent to us within one week, typically. Overwhelmingly, results are negative (as in “no trace of substances”) and we only contact students and parents in the cases of a positive test.
Our goal, particularly in middle school, is to introduce the process which is used throughout all grades of ISB high school. Students have told us that they appreciate the process because it provides them with a “way to say no” to peers if/when they are offered any substances that they don’t want to use. This is another reason why our drug testing serves as a positive component in preventing dangerous substance use and abuse.