STUDENT FIGHTS DRUG TEST RESULT

Nursing Home Refuses To Verify Earlier Results Despite Contrary Finding

RIPON -- There is one thing Kiana Crayton wants to tell the world:
She is not a drug user.

She has test results to prove it. More than one.

She got the first one 31/2 hours after testing positive for cocaine
and, on the spot, getting booted from a program to become a certified
nursing assistant. She took a test the next day that again proved clean.

No one listened.

She took the results to the nursing home here where she and other
students were tested and where she would have worked as part of the
program offered through Ripon Unified School District.

The nursing home's administration refused to look at results clearing her.

"It didn't matter what I said," said Crayton, 22. "She threw the
paper back at me and said she wasn't going to look at it because I
'tested positive for cocaine,' she said. I don't use cocaine, I don't
hang out with anyone who uses cocaine. I have never seen cocaine."

Drug policy experts say it is an example of how the system can go
awry in a world bent on testing requirements for everything from
staying on a job to participating in after-school sports.

Officials with the Ripon Unified School District say it wasn't their
test. They point to Bethany Home, the nursing home at which students
do practical work for the class, which required and conducted the
test. The test, new this year, was a surprise even to the district,
officials say.

Lisa Boje, the district's director of curriculum and instruction,
said Bethany Home told her about the drug test three days into the
course. So the district was stuck passing the information along to
students after class started.

One of the 15 students dropped out. Two, including Crayton, didn't
pass, Boje said.

"So for those who didn't pass, we refunded the money for the class
and let them go," Ripon Unified Superintendent Leo Zuber said.
Administering the test "wasn't our deal."

Nikos Leverenz, director of the Drug Policy Alliance's Sacramento
office, disagreed. He said everyone involved in drug tests needs to
make sure results are confirmed if they are going to use them.

The alliance opposes drug testing except for detecting impairment or
for treatment purposes.

"The bottom line in this context is the nursing home and Ripon
Unified School District are playing with fire and should at least do
their due diligence to offer a confirmation test," Leverenz said.
"We're talking about something that could end up in the loss of a
potential livelihood."

Home Doesn't Verify Tests

Bethany Home Administrator Barbara Camping acknowledged the nursing
home doesn't verify test results through an independent lab. She said
they performed the test again on students whose first results turned
up positive.

She wouldn't say what kind of test they used.

For Crayton, a single mother, it was the end of what she had hoped
would be a career.

She saw a sign for the program shortly after moving to Ripon from
Modesto on Jan. 3 with her mother, sister, brother and 2-year-old son, Elijah.

The eight-week course is offered through the school district's adult
education program and operates out of the Community Day School on
West Main Street. It was close enough for Crayton to walk to from home.

She said she thought little of the announcement several days into
class that students would take drug tests; she had taken them at her
job as a caregiver at a Modesto assisted living home.

Students took the test one at a time during class Jan. 17 at the
nursing home across Main Street. Then Crayton was called into a room
where someone told her that she tested positive for cocaine, she said.

"I told her I don't use cocaine and she said maybe someone slipped it
to me," Crayton said. "Nobody slipped me cocaine."

And nobody gave her a written result, she said.

Bethany Home's Camping refused to confirm what Crayton tested
positive for. But she confirmed the test was given about 4:30p.m. Jan. 17.

Second Test Sought Immediately

While her classmates were back in their room taking written tests,
Crayton and her mother went to Doctors Medical Center in Modesto and
got the first of the two tests showing she didn't have drugs in her system.

Her records from Doctors Medical Center show she arrived about 6:40
p.m. and took the test about an hour later.

A nurse practitioner gave her a signed note stating she should return
to school immediately and to "please be aware that a drug test
performed today was negative for street drugs."

When Crayton returned that night to the nursing home, no one would
take the note. She went back the next morning -- same thing. The
school district told her they couldn't help her.

"Something like this isn't good for her future," said Janice Alford,
Crayton's mother. "She just wants to move out on her own and raise
her son. What do you do when you have something like this on your record?"

Andrew Lee, executive director of Bethany Home, acknowledged "she did
bring some paper back but how would we believe that (over our own test)?"

On Jan. 18 -- a day after the nursing home's finding -- Crayton got
the second test at her doctor's office. Those results came back from
Westcliff Medical Laboratories on Jan. 22, and that more
comprehensive screening cleared her again.

The lab's records released by Crayton's doctor's office show no
cocaine or any other drug in her system. It also shows she had a
normal PH balance.

An abnormal PH balance is one indicator that a person took a
substance meant to beat a drug test, said Sandra Lucas, who works
with drug tests as an administrator and mediator for the Stanislaus
County Superior Court.

In hindsight, Lee said, "We should have sat down with the school
district, the person and us, and that didn't happen."

Asked why not, he responded, "I don't know."

Zuber said the school district is arranging a meeting with the nursing home.

The district also will meet with its attorney to address issues
including how the test is administered, making sure it is fair, and
how the district will handle students who failed the drug test this
term and want to re-enroll, he said.

Zuber said he wants future students to know about the test before
enrolling in the course.

Camping said the nursing home always has tested employees. This year,
that extended to students.

Crayton and her mother also say the nursing home discriminated
against Crayton, who is African-American. She had applied for a job
at Bethany Home's assisted living facility on South Wilma Avenue
before the class started.

Crayton and Alford's account differs widely from Bethany Home's
account of what took place.

Crayton said she went to the facility and asked for an application
while an administrator was interviewing a job applicant. When she
walked into the office with the completed application, she said a
member of the staff rudely snapped the application out of her hand.

Kathie Callantine, administrator of the facility, said she was
interviewing a family of a resident -- not a job applicant -- and
Crayton demanded an on-the-spot interview.

Callantine speculated that the hard feelings might have stemmed from
a misunderstanding about the home's hiring process. It always makes a
few calls to references before an interview, she said.

Crayton said she was told she could re-enroll in the nursing program
next term, but "I'm not going to go back," she said. "It's going to
be the same thing. If they can pull the test thing again, what is
there to say that it would be different in the spring or
summer? I'm kind of thinking if this could happen to me now, why
won't it happen again?"