GRANTS GO TO SEE WHETHER SCHOOL DRUG TESTS WORK

WASHINGTON -- More California schools, including some in the Central
Valley, may begin random drug testing of students in order to answer
one fundamental question:

Does it really work?

The Bush administration thinks it does, which is why the White House
wants a record $15 million to fund random drug tests next year.

Already, federal funding has boosted drug testing this year in the
California towns of El Centro, Oceanside, Paradise and Vista.

"The school that has started testing is very satisfied with it,"
Rita Brogan, director of well-being programs with the Imperial
County Office of Education, said Friday. "The community is very supportive.

"Of course, there are always one or two who will raise concerns."

The concerns, in fact, range from principled to pragmatic. Some
question the privacy precedent of requiring urine specimens from
cheerleaders and student-body officers. Some doubt random testing
cuts drug use. Some worry about costs that can run upward of $60 per test.

Still, even without federal support like the $300,000 grant provided
the Imperial County schools, drug testing has proliferated.

Schools in Valley and Mother Lode towns including Angels Camp,
Clovis, Kingsburg and Fowler have initiated voluntary student drug
testing. In Fresno, the idea has sparked a running debate.

"I think if there were additional funding, more schools would do
it," said Tuolumne County Superintendent of Schools Joe Silva.

Silva noted that drug testing of student athletes in Nevada County
- -- where he was living when his children were in high school --
provoked considerable controversy. So far, he said, "there have been
no discussions" of initiating drug tests in Tuolumne County schools.

Nationwide, an estimated 13% of high schools had established
drug-testing policies as of 2003 despite some persistent skepticism.

In Modoc County, for instance, educators considered and then
rejected a mandatory drug-testing plan.

"The privacy interest in one's urine is significant," the
libertarian-minded Cato Institute averred in a 2002
friend-of-the-court brief. "The students here are required to
urinate into a cup while a teacher listens outside the stall [girls]
or behind them [boys] for sounds of tampering. When it is produced,
the teacher feels the cup for temperature of the urine and holds
it up to the light to examine it ... this is all still
a significant intrusion."

Nonetheless, random drug testing of students involved in
extracurricular activities earned a legal green light in a closely
divided 2002 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that underscored one crucial
uncertainty.

"I do not know whether the school's drug testing program will work,"
Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in the case arising out of Oklahoma.
"But in my view, the Constitution does not prohibit the effort."

In hopes of answering Breyer's first point, the Education
Department's Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools has lit the fuse
on a new plan.

More money is part of it. From $2 million in 2003, federal grants
for random school drug testing jumped to more than $7 million this year.

The testing increases come even as Office of Management and Budget
auditors branded the federal Safe and Drug-Free Schools grant
program as "ineffective." Citing the bad review, the Bush
administration has proposed cutting the Safe and Drug-Free School
grants, which are different from the drug-testing grants.

Now, the Education Department has initiated what it calls the "first
large-scale national evaluation" of mandatory random drug testing.
In its latest offer of federal grants, the department says top
priority will go to schools that agree to participate in the evaluation.

First, up to 200 students will be surveyed next year in each school
that obtains federal drug-testing funds. The schools will then be
randomly divided: half will start random drug testing, and half will
hold off for a year. After a year, follow-up surveys will compare
drug usage in the different schools. Then, drug testing would be
undertaken at all the schools.

Few can predict what the tests will show. In Imperial County, for
instance, Brogan said the testing program initiated with $300,000 in
federal funds so far has found one student who tested positive.

"You don't want to do just student testing," Brogan said.

"Although it's somewhat of a deterrent, it's really a deterrent when
combined with other education programs."