LOCAL SCHOOLS PART OF DRUG-TESTING PILOT PROGRAM

They thought they were going about their business unnoticed, but now their
secret is out: For the past year, two local high schools have been part of
a federal drug-testing pilot program.

The revelation in several newspapers that Hightstown High School and Thomas
J. Rubino Academy in West Windsor are part of the confidential study has
prompted public discussion about the merits of the drug-testing kits that
use special wipes and a spray to detect traces of drugs on surfaces.

At the same time, the news has spurred debate about who broke the silence
about the pilot program that also includes the Toms River Regional and
Southern Regional school districts.

Mistral Security, the Bethesda, Md. company that makes the drug-testing
system, is recommending the kits be used to check bathrooms and other
public areas - but not students or their belongings - for traces of drugs.

Administrators use the system by rubbing the wipes across surfaces in their
schools and then hitting the wipes with the spray. The wipes change color
if they have picked up traces of drugs. Each of the drugs that can be
detected by the system is represented by a separate color.

"There's a lot a school can do with that information," said Mistral Vice
President Robert Schlegel. "Let's say there's a spot where there's an
increased or high level of drug activity. They could monitor that spot,
maybe put some controls on it. The benefits of the technology is to deter
the use of drugs in a school environment, to lessen the use of drugs."

Hightstown High School Principal William Roesch said he and his colleagues
saw some value in the idea when the district joined the program halfway
through last school year.

The previous May, eight students had been arrested on marijuana possession
and distribution charges at the school after four months of undercover
investigation into alleged drug activity there.

"It helps us identify if students are using in the building, and what the
drug of choice may be," Roesch said of the drug-testing program, although
he would not discuss the results of the tests.

Rubino Director Steve Pagano took the opposite approach, telling his
students about the pilot program as a scare tactic. He skipped a few
details, though, letting students believe that evidence of drugs on desks
or computer keyboards could be linked specifically to them.

"We thought it would be a good deterrent if we let kids and parents know
that we had it," said Pagano, who found evidence of marijuana in the
school's bathroom once since joining the program. "It would be one more
tool in the arsenal to discourage drug use."

But if you ask Graham Boyd of the American Civil Liberties Union, the
results of drug tests like Mistral's should not be trusted unless they are
confirmed by sophisticated laboratory tests.

"Many benign substances like chocolate or Tylenol can register as drugs,
even though they are not," said Boyd, an attorney who directs the ACLU's
Drug Policy Litigation Project.

The tests are also a bad idea because school officials - unlike law
enforcement personnel - may lack the training and time necessary to
administer and read them properly, Boyd said.

"When you put a tool like that in the hands of a school principal, there is
a much greater risk of misuse and really even abuse - not because the
principal's a bad guy but because he's got a lot to do," Boyd said. "His
main job is not understanding the finer points of drug detection. He's got
to run a school."

Boyd described a South Dakota case he's litigating as a perfect example of
a school's abuse of a drug-testing method. The case involves a principal
who brought a drug-sniffing German shepherd into a kindergarten classroom.

"It resulted in the kids screaming, crying, wetting their pants and being
afraid of the dog getting loose," he said. "It was a fiasco, a disaster,
and now it's a federal lawsuit."

Likewise, Mistral's test kits could be abused if principals began using
them on students and their personal belongings, Boyd said.

"Taking a sample from a student's jacket, or maybe inside a purse, is
pretty clearly an unconstitutional search and invasion of privacy," he
said. "I don't want to see that technology in schools, especially when
there's no compelling reason for it."

David Evans, an attorney and executive director of the Drug Free Schools
Coalition, agreed that administrators could abuse the test kits.

"The danger of doing this with property and then blaming it on a particular
kid is that the drug residue could have come from anywhere," he said.

The test would be more useful, Evans said, as one piece of evidence among
many - for instance, if it were used to test a student's backpack for
cocaine residue after traces of the substance had already been found in his
locker.

Evans added that, by proving that drugs are present in schools, the tests
could help shatter parent and administrator denial and also pinpoint
locations that need additional surveillance.

A mix of students at Hightstown made many of the same arguments the experts
did.

Laura Boyce, a 16-year-old junior, said the test kits would be a good tool
for the school.

"It's a good idea. Hopefully it will stop more (students from using drugs
in school)," she said. "They're asking for it by even bringing it into the
school, so I don't know what they're expecting."

But Claire Baumann, a 17-year-old senior, saw the program as more insidious.

"The more power you give schools to invade your privacy, the more they will
be able to do," she said. "They're already searching lockers without
warrants and searching bags."

The study - which Schlegel said is also checking the effectiveness of the
drug-testing kits in prisons and jails - is being funded by the National
Institute of Justice (NIJ).

The Commerce Justice State Appropriations Act earmarked $300,000 for "a
grant to study nontoxic drug detection and identification aerosol
technology" in fiscal year 2000, $400,000 in 2001 and $450,000 in 2002,
said NIJ spokesman David Hess.

Neither Hess nor Schlegel could say whose idea it was to appropriate money
for that purpose or whether the line item was specifically designed to get
the government working with Mistral.

The grant funds are being spent on drug-testing supplies for study
participants, legal analysis and training of school staff in the use of the
system. Money is also being spent on the travel expenses of Mistral
employees and an independent evaluator charged with analyzing whether the
system can be used effectively in schools, jails or other entities that
Schlegel refused to name.

While the technology would be new to those environments, Mistral, known for
its work in explosives detection, has been producing the drug-testing
swipes and spray for 10 years for use by narcotics officers, police
departments and the U.S. Coast Guard, Schlegel said.

But if the system is approved for use in schools, Pagano isn't sure whether
districts will use it. The kits, he says, may be too expensive to use in
educational settings.

One wipe, which can be used to test a single area such as a bathroom
counter or a door - along with the amount of spray needed to cover it -
costs $1, Schlegel said. However, he said, schools buying the tests in bulk
would get a better price.

"If it's $1 a wipe, then God forbid - I hope nobody does this," said
Pagano, whose school is getting the equipment for free as part of the
study. "I'd be shocked if that cost a dollar."

Another school chief had a different problem with the tests, but Schlegel
says it has been resolved.

Craig Henry, principal of Southern Regional in Toms River, said chemicals
used to clean the school would sometimes react with Mistral's sprays,
creating false positives.

"It wasn't a false positive," Schlegel argued. "It was a matter of
interpreting the results. That's why we have training and are going to an
evaluation process and developing protocols and proper training techniques."

Roesch and Pagano have expressed other concerns about being part of the
study. Both pointed fingers at Mistral after the names of their schools
were mentioned in newspaper articles about the confidential program in
mid-September.

According to Roesch, a Mistral representative told him the company had
disclosed the school names to educators in North Carolina who were
considering joining the pilot program.

Roesch said he had kept students, parents and staff members in the dark
about the program because he wanted to get an accurate measure of drug use
at the school without causing the community to assume a significant problem
existed there. So the principal was jarred when he learned his school's
name had been revealed.

"I was surprised to get an e-mail from another school (asking for
information about the drug testing system), and surprised to see it in the
newspaper," he said.

But Roesch says he doesn't blame Mistral for giving out the names. Rather,
he is upset with North Carolina officials, whom he says must have leaked
information about the study to newspapers.

Pagano was more inclined to worry about the possibility that Mistral
released school names.

The director said his students were aware of the program and that he
wouldn't have expected parents to be upset to learn about drug testing in
the alternative school for problem students run by Mercer County. It was
the breaking of a trust, he said, that left him wondering whether his
school should keep working with Mistral.

"This was supposed to be confidential, and it's not," said Pagano, who is
nevertheless considering staying in the pilot program. "I felt that was
uncool."

Mistral insists it did not release the names of any of the schools. In
fact, Schlegel refused to confirm which New Jersey schools - or how many -
are involved in the study.

Schlegel suggested it might have been participants who leaked the
information. He pointed out that no schools have dropped out of the pilot
program, and that additional schools are "clamoring" to join the study that
will eventually grow to include states besides New Jersey.

"All the information we collect, including the names of schools, is kept
confidential," he said. "Maybe somebody on a school staff said something to
somebody and it got conveyed. But everyone who's involved in the program is
instructed not to do that."