PARKING POLICY DOESN'T DESERVE BAD REPUTATION, PRINCIPAL SAYS

If my Tuesday column had been a fish, Mike Beck would have thrown it back.

The Groveport Madison High School principal conceded to his boss that if I
had been handy after he read my take on his school's pee-to-park policy, he
would have punched me in the nose.

"It painted me out to be an untrusting, insensitive person," Beck
complained Thursday. "This district has been beat up on a lot of fronts.
The press has given us a bad rap. Anytime anything bad happens, the press
is here."

My commentary took Beck to task for launching a school policy requiring
students to submit to drug testing to get a parking spot in the school lot.
In truth, as I learned Thursday, Beck was not the lone architect of the
prerequisite.

The policy was an outgrowth of a four-way brainstorming session among Beck,
school district Superintendent Timm Mackley, Assistant Superintendent Rich
Playko, and Chris Franz, director of accounts for Sport Safe Testing
Service, the Powell company that was drug testing the school's athletes.

Franz recalled of that summer meeting: "They asked me, 'What other ways can
we strengthen our program?' "

If my company had been handed that sort of carte blanche invitation to
fatten an account, I'd have suggested testing all students, parents, stray
dogs and mail carriers.

"If you could (legally) test the entire student population, we might choose
to do so," Mackley has asserted.

"I wouldn't have any problem with it," Beck said.

"It doesn't do anything to stop drugs," complained Lisa Kimbler, a
Groveport Madison senior and varsity basketball standout, about the new
program. "You' ll have to ride the bus, but it doesn't do anything to stop
you from doing drugs.

"I was tested at least six times," Kimbler said of the urine samples she
was required to produce last school year to play basketball.

Kimbler's father, Ken Dustheimer, filed a complaint with the American Civil
Liberties Union of Ohio after his daughter was required to produce proof of
clean urine to park on school grounds.

"We're talking about totally innocent people," Dustheimer complained.
"Model students.

"Groveport Madison schools seem to want to act like a deadbeat parent. They
don't want to pay to help raise your child. They just want to tell you how
to do it."

Some girls who submitted urine samples to get parking permits were upset
because they said Sport Safe used a man, who was sitting in the bathroom,
to assist in collecting the samples.

Beck showed me where the monitoring desk had been, pointing out that it was
not actually in the women's restroom. However, from that vantage point, it
is possible to see the stalls.

Students uncomfortable with the process could have requested a woman
attendant, Beck said.

Dustheimer seems baffled that a school district battling overcrowding,
coping with split sessions and attempting to pass a bond issue would spend
money on such a program.

"Next time the school asks for operating money," he said, "you should know
that some of the money you'll be replacing is money that's being wasted on
this drug-testing program."

Beck said he did not know the annual cost of the new testing, which
includes weekly random sampling billed to the school district.

The first random testing on Monday yielded three positives for marijuana
out of 37 samples.

As Beck tried to shepherd several hundred students Thursday at a long line
of waiting buses, he seemed to be a man with greater challenges --
including juggling 1,800 students split into three shifts -- than the
controversy surrounding the policy.

"Seven minutes," he announced with pleasure after one shift of students had
been shooed onto departing buses.

At Groveport Madison High School, the buses run on time.

A besieged man might take affirmation from such an achievement.