Hawai'i's public school teachers enter the profession because they have the well-being of children at heart. With all the challenges an educator must confront, it's hard to imagine anyone choosing this vocation without that core belief — it's about children.

It's that concern for children's safety that should be paramount for members of the Hawai'i State Teachers Association, who today should ratify a union agreement that would allow a reasonable program of random drug and alcohol testing for teachers.

This is a wrenching issue for our school community. While it's abundantly clear that drug offenders represent a small fraction of the teaching workforce, there have been cracks in the safety shield surrounding our campuses. And it's in the best interest of the children entrusted to their care that every reasonable safety precaution be taken.

HSTA members have been rightfully reluctant to yield an element of personal privacy because of the misdeeds of a few. But those misdeeds have become impossible to ignore. In the past year, at least four school teachers have been arrested on drug charges.

These episodes are symptomatic of the deeper drug problem plaguing Hawai'i, as well as communities across the country.

But schools are special environments, safe havens that need to be insulated from drugs and violence as much as possible.

Clearly, drug and alcohol abuse can't be tolerated here, and the time has come for a proactive response.

Several school districts in other states — North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Texas, for example — have embarked on a similar course.

However, in the nation's only statewide school district, taking this step will have to be done carefully, with rules in place to ensure that testing be minimally invasive. If this provision of the contract is ratified, this will have to be accomplished by June 2008, when the program is set to begin.

When random drug-testing policies were enacted for federal employees whose jobs involved public safety, they were challenged as a violation of the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. The Supreme Court ruled that these rights were not violated.

Precautionary drug testing cannot be viewed as "unreasonable," when the safety of our children is at stake.