CABINWINDOW: JUST WAIT

Legal Issue Of Drug Tests

"We have to look at the legalities, or we would not be performing our duty
correctly," Conway School Board member Lena Hancock said last week shortly
before the board voted to delay implementation of the district's
drug-testing policy for students participating in extracurricular activities.

She was right and the board was right for making the decision to delay. The
board is concerned about the possibility of the Supreme Court hearing a
case out of Oklahoma involving a school district with a drug-testing policy
similar to Conway's. If the justices decide to hear the case, their ruling
is expected to set the benchmark for the legality of this particular type
of testing policy.

If Conway went ahead with the testing -- which was scheduled to begin at
the start of the school year -- and the court struck down the policy at the
Oklahoma school as unconstitutional, you can bet it would be only a matter
of time before a lawsuit is filed here. With the school district's recent
funding crunch, fighting a court battle is the last thing it needs. The
Conway district was fortunate in its timing. Greenbrier and Vilonia also
enacted similar drug-testing procedures, but they did it more than a year
ago, before the Oklahoma case became a Supreme Court issue. The case was
brought to the Conway board's attention after the policy was approved, but
before it could be put into practice, giving the board members a window to
consider their options.

This little bump in the road will also give board members time to revisit
some of the questions they must have asked themselves before approving the
policy. Questions like: Is the drug-testing policy really fair to all
students? Is it really the school district's responsibility to deal with
kids' drug use? Do Conway schools really have enough drug users to make
such a policy feasible? Will catching a few drug users participating in
extracurricular activities make those activities somehow safer and more
educational for other students?

The ultimate question, the question that has given the board pause,
remains: Is drug-testing students worth the potential legal wrangling?