Marijuana Policy Project

JOLIET — Joliet Catholic Academy will become one of just a handful of private schools in the region to institute mandatory drug testing for its students.

All 850-some of the school's students will be tested in the first semester beginning this fall, with about 25 percent of the student population being randomly retested in the second semester.

JCA joins only a few others in the mandatory testing program, including St. Viator in Arlington Heights, which started testing its students this past school year, and St. Patrick High School in Chicago, which started testing its students in 2004.

"The intent is to give our kids one more reason to say no," Jeff Budz, the school's principal, said. "If they are out somewhere and somebody offers them something, they can say, 'No, we have drug testing.' Our primary purpose is to help the kids."

The school contracted with Psychemedics Corp. a California company that conducts testing on small hair samples about an inch long and about as wide as a shoelace.

According to the company's Web site, the test detects the use of cocaine; marijuana; opiates, including heroin and oxycodone; methamphetamine; Ecstasy (MDMA); Eve (MDEA); and PCP. It detects usage within the past 90 days, Budz said.

The test does not detect the use of alcohol or steroids.

Students who test positive will be urged to undergo counseling through a partner program at Provena Saint Joseph Medical Center and must be retested within 100 days, Budz said.

"We're going to get some help for the student," Budz said. Students who fail a test for a second time, "may face discipline" on a case-by-case basis, he said.

According to information on St. Patrick High School's Web site, less than 1 percent of students tested positive in that school's first three years of implementing the program. And of 34 positive tests, only eight tested positive on the follow-up test.

At JCA, Budz said only the school's head dean will know whether or not a student tests positive.

"He's the only one that gets the result," Budz said.

Parental concerns
JCA has been thinking about instituting the program for a number of years, Budz said.
Early this past school year, the school began discussing the proposal with parents and students. Only a handful of parents expressed concerns ranging from privacy to parental-responsibility issues, Budz said.

The program costs $60 per student, but a state safety grant will cover half the cost. The rest will be billed on tuition, he said.

Budz said a Carmelite sister school in Tucson, Ariz., has instituted a drug-testing policy for a number of years. Several administrators from JCA visited there in the past year to discuss the benefits and implementation of the program there.