By the numbers
$15,525 — Amount spent on drug and hearing tests for Springfield City School employees last year.
591 — Springfield City School employees drug tested over the past two school years.
11,000 — Approximate amount of drug tests Community Mercy Occupational Health & Medicine performs a year.
8.5 percent — Approximate percent of American boys prescribed a stimulate medication.
3 percent — Approximate percent of American girls prescribed a stimulate medication.
Unmatched Coverage
The Springfield News-Sun reached out to every school in Clark and Champaign counties to find out if they drug test employees before they are allowed around your children. The News-Sun will continue to report information that can make local youth safer.
Only one school district in Clark and Champaign counties conducts drug tests with job applicants before hiring them to work in schools, a Springfield News-Sun investigation showed.
State law requires bus drivers to take drug tests but is silent on the issue for teachers, administrators, nurses and other staff members who work with children. All school employees are required by law to go through background checks for any criminal records.
“There is a protocol for public schools and that involves the BCI/FBI background check,” Clark-Shawnee Local School Superintendent Gregg Morris said.
>>RELATED: Clark County school district regrets 2nd medication theft arrest
The News-Sun asked every district in Clark and Champaign counties and found that the Springfield City School District is the only local one that uses drug tests for new employees.
Many private sector employers screen job candidates and perform random or post-accident testing — especially in light of the heroin epidemic in recent years, said Linda Gillis, president of the Springfield Human Resources Management Association.
“If they are addicted, it can be a big risk for the company,” she said. “They could hurt themselves or others.”
Many Clark and Champaign County school leaders said they don’t screen potential workers for drugs because it’s never been an issue for them.
“It’s not that we don’t ever have a concern in the work place, but I have yet to run across it where it is an issue,” Southeastern Superintendent David Shea.
The News-Sun began digging into the issue of drug tests after the Sept. 15 arrest of former Clark-Shawnee Clinical Aide Amy Baumgardner. She’s accused of stealing students’ Adderall pills at Reid Middle School.
Baumgardner started working for the district this school year and wasn’t drug tested.
A second Reid employee, custodian Kevin Williams, was arrested Friday, also accused of stealing Adderall. He also wasn’t drug tested prior to being hired last year.
Clark-Shawnee has never drug tested potential employees, Morris said, but can send an employee to be screened if the district suspects that they’ve taken an illegal substance. He’s never sent a Clark-Shawnee employee to be tested, he said.
The district will review its drug testing and medication storage policies in light of the two arrests, Morris said, but it’s too early to say what could change.
“We’re concerned about the safety of our students and we do not take it lightly when someone has made a decision to put our students at risk like this,” he said.
>>MORE: Clark County district drug oversight based on documentation, trust
Local districts all have similar processes for handling student medications and said they take the responsibility seriously.
Northeastern Local Schools Superintendent John Kronour said he’s worked in four districts and hasn’t seen many employees with substance abuse issues.
“We do an extensive background check on FBI/BCI and we would know if they had any arrest or concerns,” Kronour said. “I think we do a pretty good job that we are checking references, we are hopefully getting that questioned answer. While it is not the same as doing an official drug test, we try to be thorough.”
Brandon Bryan, who has a child at Reid, said he believes schools should test their staff.
“I also think they should have to take tests periodically,” Bryan said. “I find it very surprising. I did not know that.”
What’s the law?
No law in Ohio requires school districts to drug test employees before they are hired.
Sara Clark, an attorney at the Ohio School Board Association, said courts have ruled schools need to show cause before administering a drug test to existing employees due to the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. It falls under search and seizure, she said.
“In order to do a test, they have to demonstrate a ‘special need’ that outweighs the privacy interest,” Clark said.
There’s no clear definition of what is and isn’t a special need, she said.
But that’s not the case for job applicants, Clark said, because the expectation for privacy is lower for them. Yet it’s uncommon for districts in Ohio to pre-screen job candidates, she said.
The law does require bus drivers to be tested. Every school district in Clark and Champaign counties said they regularly test drivers.
Drug tests may not be effective for someone who has a prescription for a drug and is trying to get more, Morris pointed out. Baumgardner reportedly told deputies she had a prescription for Adderall.
Decisions as to how schools hire teachers and staff members should be made by individual districts, said state Sen. Bob Hackett, the Republican who represents Clark County.
“I believe in having authority with the local school board and I believe they want that control,” Hackett said.
But school boards should look into their pre-screening policies, he said.
“If you are around children, you should have high requirements because everyone wants their children to be safe and taken care of,” Hackett said.
He believes the vast majority of teachers and staff members would pass a drug test.
Attempts by this paper to contact multiple local teacher unions were unsuccessful.
Parents and grandparents waiting outside Reid Middle School this week were surprised to hear most local school districts don’t test candidates before hiring them.
>>DETAILS: Aide indicted, accused of stealing drugs from Clark County school
Grandparent Raymond Green, from Urbana, said he believes it would be a good idea.
“You don’t want them to bring drugs in school,” Green said. “I think they ought to be tested. There are too many drug problems going on.”
Great-grandparent Danny Hutslar said he believed that drug testing would be a good idea, but that it shouldn’t necessarily be a priority.
“I think the teachers are OK,” Hutslar said. “I trust the teachers.”
‘Getting leery’
Nearly 60 percent of private employers drug test potential employees before hiring them, according to a 2011 poll conducted by the Society For Human Resource Management, the most recent available.
Gillis has found many employers here screen their employees for substances before hiring them and it has increased in recent years.
“A lot of them are now,” Gillis said of local employers drug testing candidates. “I think given the opiate epidemic we are seeing, employers are getting leery.”
The most common drug test employers use is a pre-employment screening, Gillis said, and businesses also often test an employee after an accident at work.
Community Mercy Occupational Health & Medicine conducts nearly 11,000 drug tests a year for local businesses, spokesman Dave Lamb said.
“They do testing for businesses, schools, municipalities, health care, trucking companies and others,” Lamb said.
He said school districts primarily have them test school bus drivers.
A study by Quest Diagnostics found U.S. workers are testing positive for illicit drugs at a higher rate in recent years.
Springfield is the only district in Clark and Champaign counties who drug tests all teachers, staff members and substitutes before hiring them. They also drug test randomly throughout the year.
“The only exception is for student workers,” Human Resource Director Stacey Tipler said.
If an employee fails a drug test they have shown cause for termination, Springfield Superintendent Bob Hill said, and they must either resign immediately, or agree to 30 days of unpaid leave and complete a rehab program.
Springfield schools have had staff members fail drug tests in the past, he said.
The district drug tested more than 370 workers last year. It spent more than $15,000 on screenings last year, including tests to ensure bus drivers can hear traffic noise.
In the 2014-2015 school year, the school spent more than $9,000 to test 220 employees. And in the 2013-2014 school year, the school spent more than $12,000 on testing, according to Tipler.
Jessie Steiner, the superintendent at Northwestern Local Schools, said during his time in education he has had to deal with staff members with alcohol abuse, but nothing drug-related.
“It has never been an issue for us,” Steiner said.
Protecting student medications
Many U.S. students are prescribed stimulate drugs such as Adderall, according to Dr. Michael Schoenbaum, a senior adviser with the National Institute of Mental Health.
About 8 percent of American boys and 3 percent of American girls are prescribed stimulates, he said.
“ADHD is relatively common in kids from elementary school on,” Schoenbaum said.
Medications often come in a variety of forms, he said, and are typically safe. How long the drug lasts would determine if the student would need medication at school, he said.
“Schools tend to have fairly restrictive policy about medication on the premises,” Schoenbaum said. “Normally what would happen is the parents would hand a bottle of pills to the school nurse or some other responsible adult and if the kid needs to take a pill at school, they would go to that adult.”
No uniform protocol exists for schools on securing medications in Ohio, said Kenna Haycox, a policy adviser for the Ohio School Boards Association. Each district is required to adopt a policy and follow some general rules.
“They must keep it in a locked storage area,” Haycox said. “Schools must keep track of what medications are entering the school.”
Springfield City Schools keeps its process simple, Coordinator of Safety and Security David Lyle said.
“We have a sheet for intake of meds,” Lyle said. “When (the medications) come in with the parent, we record what they have. We really try to use two people, sometimes that second person is the parent themselves.
“We do a pill count as they come in and then those medications are secured in the clinic,” he said.
The count is recorded and stored, he said, and nurses or school administrators can check the sheets whenever they want.
“For the most part they are just used for checks,” Lyle said. “I wouldn’t say they don’t ever get audited but we don’t do it monthly. They are checked especially toward the end of the year.”
Clark-Shawnee has followed the law when securing medications, Morris said. It will conduct a thorough review of its policies after the two arrests, he said.
“If there are areas that we can improve upon, we’re certainly going to do that,” Morris said. “We’re making sure we’re employing all best practices in that respect.”
Morris and Lyle both said it’s important for parents to keep track of their children’s medications and to have a count in case something goes wrong.
Other schools around both counties use a similar system and said they take securing student medications seriously.
Their superintendents said medication is recorded by a school nurse and then distributed by the same nurse. They said their schools don’t constantly check drug information and documentation, but reserve the right to audit it at any time.
School officials installed surveillance cameras at Reid near the medication storage unit after Baumgardner’s arrest, Clark County Sheriff Gene Kelly said, which allegedly caught Williams on camera taking pills from the locked cabinet.
Schools need to examine the way they handle medications to make sure they are following best practices, Kelly said.
Williams reportedly gained access to the drugs using his janitor’s keys, the sheriff said, who pointed out he doesn’t have a key to where deputies store confiscated drugs.
“They’re going to have to come up with more stringent guidelines and a more secure way of protecting medications,” Kelly said. “I haven’t seen the video, but it’s my understanding that too many people have access.”
The people in charge of the medications must be accountable and take every precaution to protect the prescriptions, Kelly said.
“As more and more students have prescription medications, there’s a very big accountability factor here,” he said. “Whether the state of Ohio comes out with some guidelines (or someone else), somebody is going to have to have a model policy and some new restrictions on how it’s all secured.”
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