Bill seeks drug testing of driver's ed instructors

HELENA – Montana's driver's education teachers would have to submit to random drug and alcohol testing under a bill heard today by the Senate Education Committee.

Senate Bill 312, sponsored by Senate President Robert Story, R-Park City (pictured), would allow traffic educators to be tested under Montana’s Drug and Alcohol Testing Act. The law allows random testing for workers in potentially hazardous jobs, like airline pilots and school bus drivers.

Story said the bill springs from a case in Columbus in which a driver’s education teacher was using prescribed drugs while teaching. He said driver’s education teachers are unique from other teachers in potentially dangerous classrooms, like science labs or woodshops.

“These (driver’s education) teachers are not under the direct supervision that these others are,” Story said.

The bill was supported by the Montana Association of Superintendents and the Montana School Board Association.

But Jane Hamman, representing the Montana Traffic Educators Association, said the bill is unnecessary and insulting to traffic educators.

“It is totally inappropriate to require drug and alcohol testing of our teachers of traffic education,” Hamman said. She said the traffic educators already have their driving records checked annually and a drug and alcohol problem among traffic educators is nonexistent.

Marco Ferro of the Montana Educators Association/Montana Federation of Educators said the bill would be discriminatory.

“This bill casts a very wide net,” Ferro said. “We do not support random drug testing of employees.”

Other opponents said the bill would create an unreasonable cost for school districts in tough financial times and that traffic educator drug and alcohol use is not a common problem. They also said it would make hiring these teachers even tougher, that the job is already stressful enough.

Story said hiring may get more difficult, but the bill would ensure schools don’t hire “anyone who comes along.”

“It may weed out the driver that, because it’s stressful work, deals with that stress inappropriately,” Story said.

- by CNS correspondent Molly Priddy