The District 205 Board of Education is kicking around a few new ideas.
Board members on Monday night discussed eliminating drug testing for student-athletes.
The board was split in some ways on the topic. Rod Scherpe, the board’s Vice-President, said he wanted to see random drug testing left on the code of conduct
However, board President Tianna Cervantez, shared a differing viewpoint, saying that random drug testing isn’t deterring student-athletes from consuming drugs.
“The challenges, I think, and the conversations that I’ve had and the conversations we’ve had on the code of conduct meetings is that… we’re not really seeing it as a deterrent,” Cervantez told the board. “Because the people who are going to participate in drug use are either finding ways to outsmart the test or not participating in activities that would require them to be randomly put into the system to be drug tested.”
Some board members expressed concerns over the costs of each drug test, which Athletic Director Eric Mathews revealed was $425 per test — which he said was better than what the district he was formerly working at, Farmington, was paying.
Another concern was the amount of time it takes for these tests. Some students have to miss upwards of half a day to be supplied with water so the test can be completed.
Because students couldn’t leave the office after being selected, for concerns that they’d find a way to cheat the test, students would potentially take up hours of administrators time and miss out on valuable instructional time.
Another idea that was being kicked around by school board members involved the elimination of virtually every fee applied to students for registering students.
“We are recommending a radical departure at this point now, obviously this discussion could change that,” Superintendent Dr. John Asplund told board members. “We would, essentially, like to eliminate all fees.”
Asplund said it wouldn’t cost parents anything to register kids for school, let children go out for extracurricular activities.
Asplund said that administrators spend so much time trying to get parents to pay the fees assessed to students that it almost wasn’t worth it. Administrators said that the accounts from 2016/17 were “zeroed out” and now the outstanding fees are upwards of $126,000.
There would be some fees implemented. Fees for damage to student’s Chromebooks, for example, but also for parking and driver’s education.
“However, we would like to amend two fees. Which are parking at the high school for a student, currently, it is $20, we’d like to make that $180, but then also driver’s ed right now is $230 — we’d like to raise that to $250.”
Board members were mixed on both of the suggestions with some saying that this could put a major financial strain on struggling families.
However, other board members pointed out that school buses are free for students to ride.
