Committee: ease student activity bans for drug use
Convictions for illegal drug use shouldn't keep students out of activities as long as they currently do, a legislative committee voted Tuesday.
Students right now are banned from sports and activities for 60 school days for their first drug offense if they complete treatment. A second offense bans the student from participating in school activities for life.
Sen. Tim Rave, R-Baltic, is proposing changing the first-offense penalty to 30 calendar days, and the second offense to 60 days. Subsequent offenses would still carry a permanent ban.
But Rave would also add a clause requiring all suspensions to make a student miss at least two events, even if their suspension unfolds during a season when they're not involved in any activities.
"The current law is driving kids out of activities, when in fact we should want them in activities," said Bob Sittig, the Baltic School District superintendent. "We want students to have some consequences for their actions, and we don't want to appear to be soft on crime... but we want to keep them in the activities."
Districts can still impose tougher penalties for drug use if they want.
The Senate Education Committee voted unanimously to send the bill, Senate Bill 113, to the full Senate for consideration.
As originally passed more than a decade ago, the law carried a one-year ban on the first offense and a permanent ban for a second. In 2006, the Legislature let students with a first offense lower their penalty to 60 school days -- though only after overriding a veto from then-Gov. Mike Rounds, who said reducing the penalty would cause "an increase in the number of students using drugs after their sport season is over."
Sen. Deb Soholt, R-Sioux Falls, said Rave's bill was in the spirit of last year's criminal justice reform, which encouraged alternatives to prison for nonviolent offenses.
Also on Tuesday, the Senate Education Committee approved a measure making it slightly more difficult for property owners to move their land into another school district. In considering whether the property was too valuable to let go, schools would under this measure be able to consider the impact on property value of expected future development.
A third bill, stripping professional licenses from people who obtained them with false or fraudulent degrees, was postponed until Thursday after Sen. Blake Curd, R-Sioux Falls, raised questions about how it should be worded.
That bill was inspired by an Argus Leader article last year about a psychologist whose doctorate was from an unaccredited foreign university.
