(Charter) school wants to drug test students

[FLAprogressive]

SARASOTA COUNTY - Students as young as 11 years old would be tested for use of marijuana, pills, cocaine and heroin under a proposal by a North Port charter school that wants to institute the region's most aggressive student testing program.

Imagine School at North Port hopes to begin drug testing students at its junior high school campus next school year, including sixth-graders. Students would be required to pass a drug test to attend the school and pass at least one random drug test per year to remain enrolled.

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20120418/ARTICLE/120419606/2416/NEWS?Title=School-wants-to-test-all-students-for-drugs

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Gotta get the kids prepared for the fascist employers of the real world, after all.

[pnwmom]

1. Yay! Got to help those drug test companies increase their profits! Let's test the 1st graders next!

[FLAprogressive]

2. Never too early to instill the values of fascism!

[Recursion]

3. Meh. Yet another way to winnow out "undesirable" kids.

Drug testing never particularly raised my civil liberties hackles, personally, but this does seem like just another way to falsely inflate charter school test scores.

[MattBaggins]

5. And still suck money away from the public schools

Every last charter school fanatic in my community when really pressured will open their mouths and reveal that they want to get their kids away from the undesirables.

[FLAprogressive]

7. And it's interesting that this school is ran by "a management company that operates 75 schools"

[Recursion]

10. I'm not anti-charter in principle, but I'm definitely anti-EMC

DC, where I live, has some really good charter schools and an absolutely broken public school district (the brokenness long predates Rhee, and the frustration of citizens helps explain why she seemed like a good idea at the time). But this whole "education management" racket needs to stop.

[NotThisTime]

4. Kids shouldn't be doing drugs, period.

[MattBaggins]

6. This is a money grabbing scam

they will steal money from the real schools in the area to pay off the companies that do the testing.

I will bet a dollar that the owner of this school has a wife/sister/brother/in-law/friend with a testing company.

[FLAprogressive]

8. That's a parental issue not an issue for the school.

[NotThisTime]

9. Well as a parent of a teenager who does drugs I have no rights to have him tested but I have to

financially support him and be financially responsible for his reckless behavior. I wish to hell someone had the legal right to test the kid and make him seek help, doesn't work that way. Once they are 12 here forget it....

[FLAprogressive]

11. As far as I know you can have him tested. There's nothing legally stopping you as a parent. But....

...if you know he does drugs, why bother testing him?