School board – not the teachers union – has the responsibility to establish school policy
This may be the lamest reason for a teachers’ strike we’ve ever seen.
The Illini Bluffs Federation of Teachers is preventing the start of the new school year because it is unhappy over demands that employees be subjected to random testing for drug and alcohol use.
The Illini Bluffs School District 327 and the union have agreed to new salary and health insurance provisions, but cannot agree on the new random testing policy.
School board members believe the policy is necessary to ensure school safety, and cite as evidence a recent drug-related traffic accident involving two students. One of the students died as a result of the accident.
The union is balking at random drug testing, suggesting that it violates members’ Fourth Amendment protection from unreasonable search and seizure. The union’s angst over random testing is interesting, considering that the school’s support staff is already being tested, and that school administrators have agreed to submit to random testing, as well.
In our view, the Illini Bluffs school board has the legal right and responsibility to run its school district the best way it sees fit. Teachers are public employees working in publicly owned buildings. That gives the public, as represented by the school board, the right to determine the safety rules that govern the schools.
While collective bargaining grants the union a say in members’ working conditions, it should not grant them veto power over basic safety rules. And ensuring that students will not come in contact with employees who may be drunk or high is a fundamental safety issue.
If the teachers are not drunk or high, what do they have to worry about? And in today’s culture, where substance abuse is so prevalent in all walks of life, can they blame board members and parents for being concerned?
That the union would hold up the start of the new school year over this issue is disgusting. This strike is just the latest example of how teachers unions continue to be nothing but a destructive force in our public schools.
Many individual teachers are terrific, but their unions are nothing but a roadblock to common sense policy and quality instruction.
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