Positive Drug Tests Remain Low at West Deptford High School

Positive random drug tests remain in the single digits annually under ’s drug-testing program, Superintendent Kevin Kitchenman said Monday night.

There were six positive tests among about 220 randomly tested students throughout the 2010-11 school year, Kitchenman said. There were also around 15 students included because of disciplinary reasons. According to previously published reports, there were a total of eight positive tests in both 2008-09 and 2009-10.

In the latest round of testing, completed in the last week of May, there were zero positives.

“It gives our students another good reason to say no,” Kitchenman said of the program, which puts all students who participate in extracurricular activities, seniors with parking privileges and students whose parents opt them into the program into a pool from which the random test subjects are drawn.

Between 15 and 18 students are tested every two weeks, Kitchenman said, in a program that costs the district upwards of $10,000 per year.

“It’s well worth the investment,” Kitchenman said.

Students who test positive lose out on participating in extracurricular activities for 15 days, have to undergo counseling and have a clean drug test before they can participate again under the current policy, which has remained unchanged from its adoption in 2008.

The current program doesn’t include testing for steroids, because that test is prohibitively expensive, Kitchenman said.

Beyond the random testing, Kitchenman said the district also immediately tests students who staff members suspect of using drugs, as required under state law.

Any instances like that aren’t included in the random testing statistics, however.

West Deptford isn’t alone in testing its students. Other schools that randomly test include Collingswood, which , and Hunterdon Central Regional High School, which began random testing in 1997 and withstood a legal challenge to its program that went all the way to the state Supreme Court.