Mr. Pendergest held a school-wide assembly on Nov. 12 to address Badin's new health and wellness initiative. The administrative team has decided to start mandatory drug testing in a nonpunitive manner.

Badin has decided to work with Great Lakes Biomedical for the testing services. Other schools in the area are doing the same thing as well.

The new drug testing policy sparked a lot of conversation among the student body.

Many students seemed to be confused about the types of tests, whether they would be with urine or hair.

"There are different options for the tests. We haven’t determined exact numbers of which tests [urine or hair] that we will do. Urine tests will be more common. They both test for the same drugs but from the company's standpoint there are different reasons for each," Pendergest said.

Different substances stay in the hair and urine for different amounts of time, so students were wondering what exactly would be tested. There seemed to be a common misconception that alcohol cannot be detected in these tests.

"Anything that is illegal can be screened. The company that we work with doesn’t say the exact drugs that are screened for each test. Part of this is because if we’re only testing for five things, and someone really wants to do drugs, people might go outside of what’s screened to an even more dangerous drug. The company rotates different things to test. However, we will be testing for alcohol, nicotine and marijuana every time with other things rotated through," Pendergest said.

The students that are selected to be tested are not selected by anyone from the school.

"We will send the student roster to the company. They will assign a number to every kid. The company picks those numbers with a random number generator for who will be tested. It is possible for people to get tested twice before everyone else gets tested once. My guess is that the first two rounds of testing all new people will be tested. But after that, I don’t know for sure [if people will be retested or not that school year]. Everyone will be tested at least once," Pendergest said.

Another common question students have had is how long it will take to get results from the tests.

"The results should come in fairly quickly. They will do an initial screening and right away in some cases, they can tell the levels right then. Some don’t show right away, and they will go to a lab and get results in a few days. For example, if a test is on a Monday they will know results on Wednesday or Thursday," Pendergest said.

The nonpunitive aspect of the new policy has also raised questions, especially for seniors who will be graduating.

According to the new initiative, "If a senior student is randomly selected for a drug and alcohol test and the test results positive within 90 days of graduation, this student must complete the intervention steps prior to receiving a diploma. If this is the student's second offense, he/she is subject to disciplinary action as per the guidelines set in the Drug and Alcohol Policy, as well as the potential to not participate in Badin High School senior awards ceremony or graduation."

This new policy is being called the Health and Wellness Initiative because it has to do with our Hallmarks as a Notre Dame learning community.

"We talked about it as an administrative team. It’s truly about student health and wellness. As a result, we want to work with kids and families. We understand that there are times of bad decisions, and punishing them immediately is not what we’re looking at. However, if a student is doing something at school, they will still be punished. That policy still stands," Pendergest said. (See Page 16 of the Student Handbook)

If you have any additional questions, ask them on the Google Form from Mr. Keating.