The Community Schools of Frankfort Board of Education unanimously approved random drug testing for students at Frankfort High School Tuesday night.
“We have randomly drug tested participants in co-curricular, extra-curricular and driving to and from school,” said Superintendent Don DeWeese. “We feel that is somewhat of a deterrent for kids when confronted to say ‘no.'”
DeWeese added they have not come up with a number of times an individual will be tested during the year.
“Much of this is driven by budget and we will have to create a budget line item (for this),” he said. “We have to pay for these tests. So, we have to make sure we have money available to do that.”
In other news, the board received an updated financial report on the renovation project at Frankfort High School. DeWeese said a total of $27,485,825.52 has been spent and added that project officials said they will be essentially done with the project by the end of March which will leave them time to fix any unexpected or minor contingency items.
DeWeese did say the board and school officials will have an open house and ribbon cutting for the project on Tuesday, May 1, at a time to be determined
In a related item, DeWeese said all of the damage caused by the straight line winds which hit the high school in November has not been fixed because the weather had been too cold and way too dangerous for workers to get on the roofs of Case Arena and the Auxiliary Gymnasium to fix damage. DeWeese did say the fencing that was damaged during the storm has been repaired.
Since this was the first meeting of the year, an election of officers had to take place. Sandy Miller was named board president, Bud McQuade was named vice president and Jeff Tatum was named secretary. In addition, board members were named to committees. They are Kristen Beardsley (High Ability), Mark Sheets (Building Trades), Karen Sutton (Frankfort Education Foundation), Sandy Miller (State Delegate), Bud McQuade (Redevelopment Commission) and Jeff Tatum (Grass Roots).