Social Issues

With Eye on Courts, School System OKs Student Drug Tests

MIAMIAlthough drug abuse among U.S. teenagers remains a major concern,
few big city school systems have dared flirt with the idea of random drug
testing. Among the obvious obstacles are the cost, the constitutional issue
of privacy and concerns over the rightful role of the public schools. But
in a move as divisive as it was unprecedented, the Dade County school board
recently voted to begin a $200,000 pilot program under which about 5,000 of
the county's 82,000 high school students would be subjected to urinalysis
for marijuana, cocaine and other illegal drugs. "This is about parental
empowerment," said Renier Diaz de la Portilla, at 26 the youngest member of
the nineperson school board and chief sponsor of the measure. "This is the
first program of its kind in the U.S. We have an opportunity to set a
national example." Other school systems are expected to monitor what
happens here in the fourthlargest U.S. school district, which takes in
Miami, Hialeah and more than 25 other municipalities. With more than
340,000 students, the Dade County system is exceeded in size only by those
in Los Angeles, New York and Chicago.

Parents here must enroll their children in the program, which begins in
January, and even those who test positive for banned substances would not
be forced into treatment. The urinalysis would be conducted off campus, and
the results would be sent directly to the parents along with suggestions on
where to get help.

School officials would not be given individual test results, but they would
receive cumulative informationincluding the number of students who test
positive and the drugs they are using.

In some private schools, including Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana, for
example, and in all Catholic schools administered by the San Bernardino
Diocese, student drug tests are mandatory. And in 1995, the U.S. Supreme
Court ruled that public schools could require student athletes to undergo
random tests for drugs or alcohol.

But in April, the high court seemed to draw the line on the spreading
popularity of mandatory tests when the justices ruled that a Georgia law
requiring political candidates to prove they were drugfree went too far.
Until that ruling, the court had upheld mandatory drug testing in cases
involving railroad workers, customs agents, police and high school athletes.

The 63 Dade County vote broke down along ethnic lines, with its four
Latino and two African American board members voting in favor of testing
and the three nonLatino whitesall longtime board membersvoting no.

"We are a more socially conservative board now," said Diaz de la Portilla,
who is Cuban American.

The Dade school board's decision does not make drug testing mandatory, and
that led opponents to call the decision a fulsome display of concern. "This
is pure politics, one of those motherhood and apple pie things," said
veteran board member G. Holmes Braddock. "It makes people feel good, but
there is nothing to be gained by it. And it costs the taxpayers."

Another dissenter, Betsy Kaplan, called the plan "invasive and reminiscent
of a police state." She added that $200,000 "doesn't begin to scratch the
surface of what this would cost if it became systemwide." That cost has
been estimated as high as $3.2 million.

The American Civil Liberties Union promised to look for ways to challenge
the policy in court. "The potential problem appears to be that the people
whose rights are violated have been left out of the equation," said Andy
Kayton, assistant legal director of the ACLU in Florida. "What happens when
a student refuses to take a drug test? Are school administrators going to
coerce a test or insist on disciplinary action?"

Teacher reaction to the drug testing plan has been mixed. South Miami High
School principal Thomas Shaw said he welcomes a program that might help
parents get troubled children into treatment. "But the fear I have as an
educator," added Shaw, "is that the schools take on too many traditional
parental roles without funding for them. And we know parents don't want to
pay more taxes.

"As always, it's a question of priorities."

Copyright Los Angeles Times