WE SEND SCHOOLS OUR PROBLEMS - THEN BAR SOLUTIONS

We Californians demand a lot of our public schools and are quick to
deem them failures over low test scores or high dropout rates.

But what do we do when a school district acts to fight one major
cause of low achievement, teenage drug use? We go to court and
complain the schools are intruding on parents' business.

The Shasta Union High School District's effort to expand its random
drug-testing program - which has long covered athletes but the
district tried stretch to students in bands, choirs, and other
extracurricular activities - has proven a fruitless waste of time and
energy after a court battle that lasted more than two years. It
finally ended with a quiet settlement after the district exhausted
its litigation insurance funds.

It's an embarrassment for the district to take up such a high-profile
fight and lose. At the same time, it's hard to fault the trustees for trying.

We share the qualms about suspicionless drug testing that led the
plaintiff students to court. It is intrusive and embarrassing, an
affront to dignity. Maybe the courts made the right call. (The U.S.
Supreme Court has upheld similar testing programs, but the ACLU
argued - successfully - that the California constitution's privacy
protections are more strict.)

But Shasta Superintendent Jim Cloney also points to persuasive
evidence that it works. In surveys, district student-athletes'
reported marijuana use plunges by nearly 80 percent in season, when
they're subject to drug testing, compared with out of season. No,
testing doesn't end all drug use, but it goes a long way. And less
illicit drug use is better - not just for individual students but for
their peers who will face fewer temptations.

Other research comes to contrary conclusions. Was Shasta's a perfect
policy even if the law allowed it? Maybe not.

But this much is certain: We send all of our family and social
problems - and in Shasta County, that includes a lot of drugs - to
school each morning. If, under the law, we're not willing to give the
schools the tools to address those problems as they think best, maybe
we should quit complaining so much about the results.