When Spotsylvania County School Board member Rich Lieberman campaigned to win the Lee Hill District seat last year, he promised voters he would revisit drug screenings for school division employees.
Lieberman brought the issue to the forefront at Monday night’s school board meeting. However, it doesn’t appear to have any more traction than it did when the idea failed in 2024 following the arrest of a Spotswood Elementary School teacher who was found guilty of possessing drugs in her second-grade classroom.
Lieberman said in his conversations with county residents, many support the idea of testing employees who are in direct contact with children in the community.
But Superintendent Clint Mitchell said Monday that it would be a major hindrance to teacher recruitment and retention, and surrounding school districts would pounce on new talent and departing Spotsylvania employees.
“You’ll have vacancies because no one will want to work here,” Mitchell said … “It’s not my decision. It’s a board decision. But from where I stand, I think it’s a slippery slope, and I certainly hope the board doesn’t take any steps to entertain it.”
County staff provided a presentation to the board that didn’t support the need for drug testing employees. Bus drivers are currently the only ones who are drug tested, because Virginia law requires employees with a Commercial Driver’s License to be screened.
Staff’s presentation cited the Americans with Disabilities Act, stating that the school division could open itself up to lawsuits if it mistook an employee with a disability for being on drugs because of the way they behave.
“Singling them out for testing or disciplinary action could result in charges of discrimination,” according to the presentation.
Division staff later provided data that shows over the past three years, eight potential employees with a CDL failed drug tests and were denied employment and four randomly selected drivers failed drug tests and were terminated, including three who tested positive for cocaine.
Staff also noted that no other school divisions in the state conduct drug testing on non-CDL employees. Mitchell said the data staff provided does not support the need for drug testing and “being the first is not always a good thing.”
School board member Larry DiBella of the Battlefield District, however, pushed back on the statistics brought forth by the division. DiBella noted that he served as a School Resource Officer in Spotsylvania for 13 years and said that he also was drug tested as a CDL holder.
DiBella said school officials were often aware of drug use among workers, but didn’t dismiss the employees right away, so that skews the termination data. DiBella said, instead, school officials would allow the employees to finish their contracts and not renew for the following year.
“I know multiple times that’s happened, so it wouldn’t show up as a termination,” DiBella said.
DiBella also did not buy the staff’s cost estimates of $72,000 per year to test new hires and 25% of current employees. The cost is based on $21.17 per test from the current provider that screens the bus drivers, but DiBella said he’s found bulk distributors who charge as little as $4 per test.
Staff also offered data that showed educators are less likely to engage in drugs than other professions and informed the board of steps the division has taken since the Spotswood incident in 2024.
Those steps include training administrators on identifying reasonable suspicion for drug and alcohol use in the workplace, updating posters and information on school sites raising awareness of drug abuse, reiterating the Employee Assistance Program that can provide help if one is dealing with substance abuse, and an anonymous tip line for reporting anyone believed to be under the influence.
Courtland District school board member Carol Medawar said she appreciates Lieberman’s intentions for pushing the issue, but “this is not the problem we need to go chasing.”
Medawar said the steps implemented since 2024 are reasonable to her, and that even in the Spotswood incident, someone recognized the teacher was disoriented, spoke up, and the situation was handled properly. Medawar said educators are more likely to be assisting someone in their family on drugs than they are to be substance abusers.
“The cost doesn’t make sense to me. The solution does not fit the problem,” Medawar said. “It feels like we’re looking for the problem where there’s not a problem. I think we’re better served by making sure our schools are really supportive places and that the culture and climate is such that if somebody happening to be struggling with a problem or something is going on, they would feel comfortable to use the resources that [were] mentioned.”
Staff also said it would be difficult to implement drug testing because randomly selected teachers would need coverage for their classes while traveling to be screened. Medawar and Mitchell said it would negatively impact teacher morale to be subjected to drug screenings.
DiBella pointed out that when he was tested, a nurse who traveled to different schools in the county handled it with limited interruption to his workday.
“I have some concerns with the way this was presented,” DiBella said of the staff’s slideshow.
The board agreed to table the discussion and research Battlefield District board member Jennifer Craig Ford’s question regarding the constitutionality of drug testing public employees who may not directly impact the safety of others.
In other business, Mitchell noted that weapons detection systems will be in place at all seven middle schools in the county by the end of the week.
The board also voted unanimously to keep Friday as a teacher workday and make April 21, Election Day for a state redistricting referendum, a student holiday. Mitchell expressed concern that the two days off for students would shrink the pool of days to be counted toward a percentage that determines chronic absenteeism in the state.
“The threshold gets tighter,” he said.
