Pubdate: Fri, 28 Jun 2002
Source: Joplin Globe, The (MO)
Copyright: 2002 The Joplin Globe
Contact:  http://www.joplinglobe.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/859
Author: Susan Redden
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/testing.htm (Drug Testing)

RULING OPENS DOORS

Court Decision Allows Area School Districts To Expand Drug Tests

Members of the Carthage R-9 Board of Education got the answer they've been 
waiting for Thursday when the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, ruled 
that school drug testing can be expanded to include students other than 
those in interscholastic athletes.

Questions remain, however, as to whether a drug-testing program can be in 
place in the Carthage district for the coming school year.

A majority of the board favors a proposal for drug testing, but members are 
divided on whether there is time to develop and implement a program by the 
time the school year starts Aug. 18, said Neel Baucom, board president.

And, as a result of Thursday's court decision, the Carl Junction School 
District may "take a strong look" at expanding its testing program this 
year, Superintendent Larry Thomas said.

Inclusion

The program being considered in Carthage is based on one that started in 
Carl Junction for the 1999-2000 school year.

"It's a board decision, but I think we would look at expanding it to all 
competitive activities, because we think what we've done has been 
successful," Thomas said. "Since we have a program in place, it wouldn't be 
like we were starting all over."

Baucom and Gary Reed, Carthage superintendent, said the decision by the 
high court would allow Carthage to include more students in a testing program.

"We need to get further clarification, but it appears the decision opens 
the door to broaden the testing," Reed said. "It assists the board and 
administration in addressing the single biggest concern we've heard from 
parents and the community in relation to the proposal."

Parents who have questioned the Carthage proposal have complained that it 
would target athletes. School officials want the program to be as inclusive 
as possible, Baucom said.

"I'm hoping that all parents will step up and ask us to include their 
children," he said. "That would open it up even more and be a better cross 
section. And I'm hoping that I can be one of the first ones tested. We all 
need to step up."

But crafting a program to be as inclusive as possible is, for Baucom, an 
argument against trying to start it for the next school year.

"I want to make sure everything is in place and that the program affects 
everyone equally," he said. "We thought about starting a program in this 
year, for spring sports. But then we'd have people saying we ignored fall 
sports."

Broader testing

Drug testing for student athletes has been allowed since a 1995 Supreme 
Court ruling.

Thursday's 5-4 decision would allow the broadest drug testing the court has 
permitted for students whom authorities have no particular reason to 
suspect of wrongdoing. It applies to students who join competitive 
after-school activities or teams, a category that includes many if not most 
middle school and high school students.

"We find that testing students who participate in extracurricular 
activities is a reasonably effective means of addressing the school 
district's legitimate concerns in preventing, deterring and detecting drug 
use," Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for himself, Chief Justice William H. 
Rehnquist, and Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Stephen Breyer.

The court stopped short of allowing random tests for any student, 
regardless of whether the student is involved in extracurricular 
activities. But several justices have indicated they are interested in 
answering that question at some point.

The court ruled against a former Oklahoma high school honor student who 
competed on an academic quiz team and sang in the choir. Lindsay Earls, a 
self-described "goody-two-shoes," tested negative but sued over what she 
called a humiliating and accusatory policy.

"I find it very disappointing that the court would find it reasonable to 
drug-test students when all the experts, from pediatricians to teachers, 
say that drug testing is counterproductive," said Graham Boyd, director of 
drug policy litigation with the American Civil Liberties Union and Earls' 
lawyer.

'Invasion of privacy'

The Pottawatomie County, Okla., school system had considered testing all 
students. Instead, it settled for testing only those involved in 
competitive extracurricular activities on the theory that by voluntarily 
representing the school, those students had a lower expectation of privacy 
than did students at large.

"We are not opposed to drug tests, but when we have situations where they 
are done in a suspicionless situation, we believe that is an invasion of 
privacy," said Bob Chase, president of the National Education Association, 
a teachers union. "If there is suspicion of drug use, that is quite another 
story, but in this case it was not."

The NEA filed a brief opposing the Oklahoma district's testing policy.

The ruling is a follow-up to a 1995 case in which the court allowed random 
urine tests for student athletes. In that case, the court found that the 
school had a pervasive drug problem and that athletes were among the users. 
The court also found that athletes had less expectation of privacy.

Thursday's ruling is the logical next step, the Oklahoma school district 
and its backers said, and the court majority agreed.

"The particular testing program upheld today is not reasonable, it is 
capricious, even perverse," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in dissent 
for herself and Justices John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor and David 
Souter.

In a brief, separate dissent, O'Connor and Souter said they disagreed with 
the court's ruling in 1995 and that they disagree now.

Of the estimated 14 million American high school students, more than 50 
percent probably participate in some form of organized after-school 
activity, educators say. The trend is toward greater extracurricular 
participation, largely because colleges consider it a factor in admissions.

Numerous schools installed drug-testing programs for athletes after the 
1995 ruling, but wider drug testing remains relatively rare among the 
nation's 15,500 public school districts. Lower courts have reached 
differing conclusions about the practice.

The Tecumseh, Okla., testing program ran for part of two school years, 
beginning in 1998. It was suspended after Earls and another student sued. 
Earls is now a student at Dartmouth College.

The Tecumseh policy covered a range of voluntary clubs and sports, 
including the Future Farmers of America club, cheerleading and football. 
Students were tested at the beginning of the school year. Thereafter, tests 
were random.

Overall, 505 high school students were tested for drug use. Three students, 
all of them athletes, tested positive.

A federal appeals court ruled against the program, saying it took the 
Supreme Court's 1995 ruling too far. Sports are different from other 
extracurricular activities, the lower court said, and the school had not 
done enough to show that students who participated in those activities were 
abusing drugs.
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