GRAPEVINE DISTRICT RATIFIES DRUG CONTRACT

GRAPEVINE -- Students at Colleyville Heritage and Grapevine high schools
will have to sign contracts stating that they will not use drugs or alcohol
or attend parties where alcohol and drugs are available if they want to
participate in extracurricular activities.

Those who break the pledge, which also must be signed by parents, will be
suspended from extracurricular activities for at least three weeks. Repeat
offenders will be prohibited from playing sports, cheerleading, debating or
participating in any other extracurricular activity for one calendar year.
To be reinstated in an activity, a student will have to submit to a drug
screening.

"Not only are we saying do we not want you to use it, we don't want you to
be around it," Trustee Hayden Chasteen told several residents at last
night's meeting.

Grapevine-Colleyville board members unanimously approved the policy after a
brief discussion. Trustee Georgia Scaife was absent from last night's
meeting.

The anti-drug pledge is a compromise from an earlier proposal to require
random drug testing of students. That proposal, which would have affected
the 80 percent of students who participate in extracurricular activities,
was abandoned months ago after parents and students complained that it
violated constitutional rights.

The new pledge, which will take effect in two weeks, has been more widely
accepted, some say. Drill team members and cheerleaders, for example,
already sign a similar document stating that they will not use drugs or
alcohol.

"The pledge gives students a chance to say to themselves, `I'm not going to
do this,' without intrusively forcing a drug test on them," said Abby
Dudziak, 16, a senior at Grapevine High School and a member of its substance
abuse policy committee. "They can trust me to be an adult."

Some are finding fault with the contract, saying that it implies that all
students who attend parties where alcohol is available are using drugs.
Under the pledge, students must promise to "not drink alcoholic beverages or
take illegal drugs or attend or remain at an activity where alcohol or drugs
are being consumed illegally."

"I go to parties with my friends all the time, but that doesn't mean I'm
going to do what they do," said Amanda Boyette, 18, a May graduate of
Grapevine High School who has friends at the school. "I can be there for
them to make sure they're safe."

Students will be punished if they or their parents acknowledge that the
students used drugs, or if they face criminal charges of using drugs or
alcohol.

School officials said the pledge is for students who participate in
extracurricular activities because other students look up to them. The
pledge states:

"As a participant in an extracurricular and cocurricular activity in the
Grapevine- Colleyville Independent School District, I realize that I am a
role model for others as well as a leader."

Checked-by: Rolf Ernst