Pubdate: Fri, 22 Mar 2002
Source: Odessa American (TX)
Copyright: 2002 Odessa American
Contact:  http://www.oaoa.com/index.html
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/708
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/youth.htm (Youth)

COMMUNITIES SHOULD DECIDE SCHOOL POLICY

The Point -- Children Have Limited Rights In Controlled Situations.

It should go without saying, but in this era of hypersensitivity, we 
probably have to say it anyway: The fact that children cannot vote, drive, 
drink, etc., doesn't mean they have no rights at all.

Certainly, adults cannot abuse them physically or otherwise. And children 
are of course have a right to expect their parents' love and all that goes 
with it, including food, shelter, guidance, moral nurturing and so forth.

That disclaimer having been stated, we must say we found ourselves 
reassured by the overall good sense on the subject of children's rights 
that seemed to emanate from the nation's highest court this week.

As noted in coverage of a case argued before the Supreme Court Tuesday over 
drug tests for students, several justices strongly suggested they don't 
have a problem with broad intrusions into students' personal lives -- 
whether by testing for drugs or screening for weapons -- even absent 
specific suspicions about individuals.

The case at hand involved a sophomore choir singer at a rural Oklahoma high 
school who had objected to the mandatory urine tests that came with 
participation in extracurricular activities, whether or not any student was 
believed to be using drugs.

Sweeping aside the student's lawyers' concerns about the need for precisely 
such "individualized suspicion" -- some evidence the student to be tested 
is under the influence or uses controlled substances -- before a school can 
test for drugs, several justices made clear the Fourth Amendment's bar on 
unreasonable searches and seizures simply doesn't apply to those in the 
custody of the school system.

"You are dealing with minors here. You can keep them in prison in effect, 
and say, 'You have to stay after school because you haven't done your 
homework,' " said Justice Antonin Scalia. "There's a world of difference 
between minors and adults." Scalia said school officials make the rules at 
school, and he derided the notion that students have privacy rights.

Justice Stephen Breyer compared drug testing to metal detectors at school 
doors -- a new but necessary means of keeping schools safe -- and Justice 
Anthony Kennedy joined in with a ringing denunciation of the "drug culture" 
and speculated that most parents support such policies screening kids for 
drug use.

We find their views heartening, not because we necessarily endorse the 
nostrums employed by the school in the case before the court, but because 
there is an underlying wisdom in reaffirming, as Scalia put it, the "world 
of difference between minors and adults.

Granted, there's much overkill and just plain silliness to be found in the 
host of "zero-tolerance" policies being embraced by school boards around 
the country. Though there are understandable worries about violence and 
drug use among teens and even pre-teens, many of the responses -- in which 
a bread knife in the back of a pickup earned a student a suspension -- are 
overwrought and unreasonable.

What the court seemed to be saying, though, is that the way to file the 
rough edges off of such overreaching policies is through parents 
interacting with their duly-elected school board members. Which is to say 
these debates aren't really constitutional fodder for the courts as much as 
they are policy matters for representative government to sort out.

When most of us entrust our minors to the daily oversight of public 
schools, we extend to those schools the authority to ensure those kids are 
safe, disciplined and of course educated. As a result, student newspapers 
can't publish anything they like; students don't get exclusive access to 
their lockers, and they may even be asked to file through metal detectors 
every morning and then provide a urine specimen just to join the football team.

Whether or not any of those policies makes sense under the circumstances in 
any given locale is for that community, not the courts, to figure out.
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