EASTERN SHORE PRIVATE SCHOOL ADOPTS RANDOM DRUG TESTS

Bayside Academy will begin screening students in August

DAPHNE - A Baldwin County private school has joined two Mobile schools
in adopting random drug tests of students, according to officials from
the school.

Bayside Academy in Daphne, which has about 500 students, will begin
the testing in August.

Officials at McGill-Toolen High School and the Alabama School of
Mathematics and Science gave final approval in recent weeks to their
own drug-testing programs.

Administrators at all three schools, who worked together to form a
drug-testing policy, said they are taking the unusual and costly step
in order to provide a stiff deterrent to drug use.

They said, however, that the new policies are not a response to any
problem in their hallways.

"We want to be proactive in the community," said Tom Johnson, the
headmaster at Bayside. "We want to be proactive in the school. We
think we are demonstrating leadership."

Some critics said the schools are demonstrating nothing more than
intrusiveness.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which harshly criticized the
Mobile schools when they announced earlier this year that they were
considering drug testing, called such tests unfair.

"Nobody should be treated as a criminal suspect unless they have done
something to warrant it," said Martin McCaffery, president of the
Alabama chapter of the ACLU.

School administrators said they are trying to deal with a societal
problem and their first response will be to give students counseling,
not the boot.

"This is different from zero tolerance," said Rodney Pilot, president
of the Bayside Academy board of directors. "Drug testing has been a
positive influence in the workplace, and we feel it will have a
positive influence on the school."

All three schools will use a less-common form of drug testing that
analyzes hair samples.

Although more costly, administrators said they are convinced the hair
analysis is more accurate, less intrusive and harder to cheat on than
urine testing. It also has the benefit of picking up drug use from a
much longer period - within the previous 90 days.

Bayside Academy will test its 200 high school students, faculty and
staff members on Aug. 21. Even members of the board of di rectors will
be screened, Johnson said.

After the initial test, the school will randomly select about a
quarter of the students throughout the year for drug tests.

Critics also have contended that hair testing produces a
disproportionately high number of false positives for blacks.

But officials from Psychemedics, the Boston firm that will analyze the
tests from all three of the area schools, said the company has not
reported a false positive since it was founded in 1987.