W-JCC SCHOOL BOARD HALTS VOTE ON RANDOM DRUG TESTS

The Initiative, Set for a March 7 Decision, Would Affect About 1,000
Students at Each High School.

WILLIAMSBURG -- Five of seven Williamsburg-James City County School
Board members objected when one urged the board to move ahead to vote
on approving the superintendent's random student drug testing
proposal Tuesday night.

School Superintendent Gary Mathews recommended last week that high
schools randomly drug test all students who participate in
extra-curricular activities or obtain permits to park their cars on
campus. That would equal approximately 1,000 students at each W-JCC
high school - about two-thirds of the student body, according to
Steve Chantry, W-JCC's director of student services.

Ron Vaught, the Stonehouse School Board member, called on the board
to swiftly vote on the drug testing policy Tuesday night, even though
the vote isn't scheduled until the March 7 meeting.

"None of this is new to us," Vaught said. "Once again, we've been
provided with the statistics about the need for this program. Most
importantly, we heard from our students that it is something they
would like to be a part of the W-JCC school system."

However, when students and parents were surveyed in the last year and
a half, no clear majority was reached. In a communitywide survey, 53
percent of responders favored testing, 30 percent were opposed and 17
percent were undecided.

In their pitch to the School Board, Chantry and Mathews stressed
anecdotal evidence that random drug testing is successful, admitting
"that empirical evidence that denotes the effectiveness of random
student drug testing is difficult to find." Chantry and Mathews
modeled their program after one in the Hunterdon, N.J., public
schools - which was suspended for two years but then upheld by the
New Jersey Supreme Court in 2003.

The four public school districts that currently use drug testing in
Virginia only target students involved in athletics or
extracurricular activities, which would make the W-JCC proposal the
most sweeping in the state. Board member John Alewynse worried that
with all the concerns surrounding the drug testing issue, it might
not solve the larger school drug problem and presented an invasion of privacy.

"It's not a black and white issue - it's not a question of whether we
care or don't," said Alewynse. "It's not an either/or issue and does
us no good to set this example for our kids or community-at-large, to
reduce our concerns to simplistic cliches. Just because something has
been declared legal doesn't mean that it is right."

Given Mathews' emphasis on data-driven research and decisions this
school year, Alewynse insisted that if random student drug testing is
approved but later fails valid benchmarks, it should be discontinued.

Board member Mary Ann Maimone worried about breaches in
confidentiality and equity issues for lower-income students who
couldn't pay for a new test if falsely tested positive.