TULIA ISD RESUMES DRUG TESTS

TULIA - Tulia Independent School District board members Thursday chose
to allow the district to resume drug testing of its students.

"They expressed a desire to continue it as it had been since the judge
did not order it stopped," Superintendent Mike Vinyard said Friday.

The school board is appealing two rulings by U.S. District Judge Mary
Lou Robinson. On Nov. 30, Robinson ruled in favor of Hollister Gardner
and his cousins, Molly and Colby Gardner, who filed lawsuits in
January 1997 to protest the school district's "mandatory,
suspicionless" drug-testing policy. Hollister Gardner has since
graduated from Tulia High School and is a college student.

On Dec. 8, Robinson ordered that the school district not test Molly
Gardner, a senior, and Colby Gardner, a sophomore.

The entire drug testing was halted temporarily after Robinson's Dec. 8
ruling. Under the program, anyone in junior high school or high school
desiring to participate in extracurricular activities must submit to
random drug testing.

The school district performs the tests about every two weeks to 2{
weeks on average, Vinyard said.

Parents can submit a written request to remove their children from the
program, Vinyard said. Six students have been removed from the
program, he said.

"In effect, everyone who has stayed in has stayed in voluntarily,"
Vinyard said.

Attorneys for the district mailed an appeal to the 5th U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals in New Orleans on Tuesday.