GETTING TOO TOUGH?

Schools are expanding their zero tolerance policies, disciplining and even
kicking out students who misbehave offcampus. Angry parents fight back in
court, saying their roles are being usurped.

Assuming a role usually assigned to parents or police, a growing number of
the nation's public schools are disciplining students for their misbehavior
off campus.

A student driving drunk on a weekend or a teen caught fighting at the mall
risks not only arrest and further consequences at home. Now, as the call
for safe schools intensifies, they also may be suspended or expelled from
the classroom.

Police stopped the car of a Newport Beach high school senior last February
for playing the Grateful Dead too loud. It was a Tuesday, after the
teenager's school day ended, and he was running some errands for his
mother. The officer found a trace of marijuana insufficient to issue Ryan
Huntsman a citation, but school officials decided it was enough for a
disciplinary transfer to another school 89 days before graduation.

Similar cases are cropping up across the nation. A middleschool boy near
Syracuse, N.Y., made an obscene phone call to a classmate. A Connecticut
teen was arrested for possessing two ounces of marijuana in the trunk of
his car. A Virginia student spraypainted homes and churches.

In every instance, the schools moved to bar the student from campus for
several months.

Zero tolerance policies already in place at many schools generally
prescribe suspension, transfer or expulsion when students are involved in
the use or possession of drugs, alcohol or weapons on campus.

Now, educators across the nation say they are expanding their authority off
campus and after hours to keep delinquent behavior from creeping onto
school grounds.

"We're seeing an increase in zero tolerance for misbehavior both inside and
outside school," said Loren Siegel, director of public education for the
American Civil Liberties Union.

Schools say it's necessary.

"We have a new breed of violence standards," said Ronald Stephens,
executive director of the National School Safety Center in Westlake
Village. "Parents, teachers and students are concerned about troublemakers.
The public is concerned about school safety." Testing the Policies in Court
No figures are available on how common such cases have become. But the
first ones already are reaching courtrooms, where they pose a new set of
legal questions: Do public schools have any business getting involved in a
student's behavior away from campus? What about when that behavior directly
affects the wellbeing of other students the schools are charged to protect?
"School districts believe that they can do whatever they feel like doing,"
said Veronica Norris, a Tustin attorney who specializes in education law.
She predicted that school boards will continue to expand the boundaries of
their authority "until the courts make them stop doing it." The outcome of
individual court challenges has been mixed so far, as the issue is debated
in a spate of cases across the country. Some judges have ordered districts
to allow students back to school; others have sided with school authorities.

In the Huntsman case, NewportMesa Unified School District officials said
the high school senior violated that district's zerotolerance policy and
transferred him from Corona del Mar High School to Newport Harbor High
School because of his brush with police.

But in court, Huntsman's lawyer, David Shores, argued that school
administrators transferred the teen without a hearing, denying his due
process rights. A Superior Court judge agreed, and Huntsman graduated from
Corona del Mar High School last June. He now attends Marymount College in
Rancho Palos Verdes.

The school district took the case to the Court of Appeal, which declared it
moot because Huntsman had already graduated.

He also filed a $10million civil rights lawsuit against the Newport Beach
Police Department, the city and the school district, said his mother,
Kathleen Huntsman. That suit is pending.

As a result of the Huntsman case, the school board revised its
zerotolerance policy to ensure that it holds a disciplinary hearing before
students are punished, said board member James P. Ferryman.

But the school board stands by the decision to transfer Huntsman because
"his next stop [after his brush with police] was to go into school,"
Ferryman said. Huntsman disputes that. He said he was running some errands
for his mother and was on his way back to her office when police stopped
his car.

Ferryman said the district's zerotolerance policy is ambiguous, and the
school board plans to reexamine it.

The concentrated crackdown on students originated in 1987 after Congress
passed the Safe and DrugFree Schools and Communities Act, educators said.
The law funnels an average of $500 million a year to school districts to
discourage drug use and violent behavior. As part of that movement, many
districts adopted zerotolerance policies to put teeth into their antidrug
efforts.

Before they began policing offcampus behavior, schools asserted their
authority over students in other ways, including testing student athletes
for drugs, allowing drugsniffing dogs on campus and introducing school
uniforms. From there, school officials began monitoring a student's
offcampus activities, the ACLU's Siegel said.

In addition, Siegel said that many school officials will claim authority to
discipline students because educators say parents are not doing the job at
home.

"But does that mean that schools should swoop in and usurp a parent's
role?" Siegel asked. "Students have rights." School officials, however, say
that policing the offcampus behavior of students is not new.

"It's been in place for a long time for athletes and student leaders, said
Dennis Meyers, assistant executive director of the Assn. of California
School Administrators. "But in order to ensure safety on campus, it's now
extended to all the students." Kyle P. Packer, then a Thomaston, Conn.,
high school senior with good grades, an athlete's poise and a penchant for
partying, was headed home with his younger brother from a drive at dusk in
September 1997 when Connecticut State Police troopers caught him with two
ounces of marijuana in the trunk of his car.

It wasn't the first time he had gotten into trouble.

The 19yearold drank beer at an offcampus party when he was a freshman and
was cut from a school team for the remainder of the season.

The school district wanted to suspend him for four months. But his parents
hired lawyers, who obtained a court injunction and, after three weeks,
Packer was back on campus. His criminal court case was dismissed.

"As a mother, I couldn't rest," Jane Packer said.

"Who are these people who can selectively persecute and prosecute whoever
they want?" The Connecticut Supreme Court agreed, ruling that students
could be expelled for their outofschool behavior only if it "markedly
interrupts or severely impedes the daytoday operations of the school." The
Thomaston school board's decision to suspend Packer did not meet that legal
threshold, the court ruled.

Protecting Other Students Although some cases involve victimless drug
offenses such as Packer's, others put school officials into legal
quandaries. They can be sued for failing to protect students not only from
violent behavior on campus, but also from various forms of harassment, from
sexual to racial. But they can also be sued for moving to discipline
students who are seen as harassers.

Ryan Kellogg, 13, was suspended for nine months from Liverpool Middle
School outside Syracuse, N.Y., for making a singlebut highly
repugnanttelephone call to a female classmate in November 1997.

The message, recorded on a Saturday afternoon in November 1997, included a
violent, sexually explicit threat. There was other sexual language, and
some nonsexual statements.

The girl never heard Ryan's messageher mother heard it insteadand Ryan was
not arrested. Nonetheless, the school board banished him for the remainder
of the school year.

Ryan was transferred to the district's alternative school, but his mother,
Ann Coghlan, balked. She sent the boy to his father's house in Syracuse,
where he could attend a regular middle school.

She admitted her son's wrongdoing but blamed his actions on "adolescent
behavior." Coghlan cut off Ryan's telephone privileges and banned him from
socializing with another boy who was with him when the phone call was made.

She is suing the school district but so far has lost in court.

"What do they think they're doing," Coghlan asked, "going out into the
community and telling parents how they should raise children when they're
not in school?"