(Lander, WY) – The six candidates vying for three open seats on the Lander School Board this year answered several questions about recent school board decisions during a candidate forum this month.
Drug testing
One of those decisions resulted in a new drug testing policy for students in grades 6-12 who are involved in extracurricular activities.
The two incumbent candidates running for re-election to the school board – Taylor Jacobs and Scott Jensen – both supported the drug testing policy, which Jacobs said stemmed from a community conversation following the overdose death of a local student in 2022.
Jacobs, who is a school psychologist and behavior analyst, said the goal of the new policy is to “provide the mental health that we need for these students” – and “in order to (do that), we need to be able to identify which students have been using drugs.”
Jensen – an Army veteran with 19 years of experience in law enforcement – said he voted in favor of the new drug testing policy because of the “exponential increase” in the number of students coming to school intoxicated and bringing drugs to school.
“(It’s) something that we need to try to curtail,” Jensen said. “Our kids deserve drug-free campuses (and) activities.”
Initially, Jensen said he was concerned that the new policy might lead to a decrease in the number of students participating in extracurricular activities, but so far, he said the opposite has been true – and there have been no positive drug tests.
Candidate and educator Mara Gans, who spoke against the drug testing policy, said the new rule might have kept her from participating in extracurricular activities when she was a student, suggesting that, instead of drug testing, the district should develop a stronger drug-free “culture” at local schools.
“We do need to address the drug issue, and we need to think about how we are supporting students and how we are encouraging them to ask for help,” she said. “We need to create a culture where students will ask for support – (not) hide from us that they are using drugs. … Let’s try and find ways to get our students into counseling and real support for drug use.”
When he read through the new policy, candidate and educator Daniel McLane said he couldn’t find “one redeeming quality.”
“(It’s) bad all around,” he said. “(There’s) nothing good about it. … I want kids in class learning – not taking drug tests.”
Similarly, candidate Buck Tilton, who recently retired after 50 years of teaching, said “there’s very little indication that legislation alters behavior.”
“What alters behavior is education,” Tilton said. “So I’m not in favor of drug testing. I’m not in favor of its cost, and as far as I know, there’s no great amount of data that shows it works very well. … I’m in favor of having a robust drug education program.”
Candidate Virginia Arbery, who has also been teaching for 50 years, called it a “complicated issue,” sharing a story about someone she knows who was “given drugs as a 10-year-old boy.”
“Drugs are everywhere, and parents are using them,” Arbery said. “Normally, I would not approve of (a drug testing) policy, but … this is a problem in our whole culture, and we need to address it in ways that we would normally not want to, because it is a life-or-death issue.”
Educational materials
When asked about the district’s updated policy governing complaints about curriculum and instructional materials, Gans said her “fear” is that the new rule “allows one parent, with the support of the board, to remove a material from the library – from every student.”
“It’s really important to remember that parents have rights over their own students – but (not) everybody else’s students,” she said. “We need to design systems that allow parents to have input in their own child’s education … but we cannot let those systems take (resources) away from other students.”
Jensen said the updated policy does not allow a “single parent” to “veto the content being used” in local schools – but it does provide “a transparent process” for reviewing parental complaints.
“That complaint and the result (will be) published on our website,” he said. “No material is removed without the public knowing.”
School libraries are “tiny,” Jensen added, and each one contains a “highly curated, small collection of books that’s meant to enhance the education of our kids.”
“There are plenty of materials that have no business in a school library,” Jensen said. “We’ll ensure they’re not there.”
Arbery agreed that there are “certain things” that don’t have “a socially redeeming value – especially if they expose children to habits of sexual behavior that have nothing to do either with the natural order or with what we want to teach children, which is moderation and restraint.”
“All knowledge is not necessary,” she said. “Some knowledge should be siphoned out … until the appropriate time in life.”
Tilton said he’s a proponent of using the “Miller test” to determine whether certain materials are appropriate for school.
He also noted that he “would never argue” with a parent who “feels strongly that what their student is presented with in school is something they disagree with.”
“Parents totally have the right to set boundaries for their own children about what they read,” Tilton said.
McLane said his stance on the updated “book policy” prioritizes the “protection of student free speech rights and individual liberties.”
“Once we start removing materials, it’s not a good thing,” he said.
Jacobs agreed with Jensen that the updated material complaint policy “just honors parents (and) shows transparency” by allowing the public to “look at what books are being reviewed, (and) the result.”
Transgender students
The candidates were also asked to discuss the proposed “Student Transgender Considerations” policy that was tabled this year pending further review.
The proposal includes a “names and pronouns” section that says “students may refer to another student, regardless of that student’s preference, by the name recorded on that student’s official record” and “students may refer to another individual using whatever pronoun the speaker prefers, regardless of what the person being referred to prefers or requests.”
Jacobs said the policy was tabled because, while students “do have free speech,” their speech is “hindered when it could be implied that they are bullying” other students.
Jensen talked about the “balance” between free speech and bullying, too, calling that the “crux of this question.”
“Speech that is respectful and that is sincere is not bullying,” Jensen said. “A student that decides to use pronouns that are generally accepted by a majority of the people in this country as appropriate – that’s not bullying. And using a student’s name that is the name they have on their records at the school is not bullying.”
Gans said she opposed the policy because it “violated national federal discrimination laws,” while Arbery focused her answer on linguistics and “the relationship between language and reality.”
“If we use a singular noun, we should use a singular pronoun,” Arbery said. “(It’s) a little presumptuous of us to be changing the language to suit an individual’s preference at a given time in their adolescence.”
Tilton said he doesn’t have “any problem referring to someone by the pronoun they prefer,” however, and McLane said “I don’t have an issue with it,” either.
“I want them showing up for class, (and) I want them engaged in a learning environment,” McLane said. “If that means I have to call them by a different pronoun, so be it.”
Other topics discussed during this month’s candidate forum include:
-staff recruitment and retention
-the role of the school board
-college, career and military readiness for students
-student enrollment
-mobile phones in schools
-staff carrying concealed weapons in schools
To watch the entire forum, click here.