SCHOOL DRUG TESTING: PUNITIVE VS. REFORM

While the Madison County School District currently has no specific drug
testing policy in place, the U.S. Supreme Court recently upheld a ruling
that allows for random drug tests in schools and expanded an earlier ruling
that endorsed drug testing for student athletes.

Superintendent of Education Michael D. Kent says that while the district
has yet to adopt a policy for drug testing students, it has been discussed
numerous times in the last few years.

Individual school districts have the right to adopt specific policies when
it comes to drug testing, and while these policies have been challenged in
the past on more than one occasion, the Supreme Court has upheld rulings in
favor of random testing policies.

The 5-4 decision by the Supreme Court late last month centered on a program
in a rural Oklahoma district that required students who participated in
extracurricular activities to submit to random drug testing. The policy
includes students in programs like cheerleading, choir and band, not simply
sports.

Kent feels schools need a policy to fall back on in such situations, giving
clearly defined guidelines to not only students and parents, but also
school administrators. Deciding how a school should react to a positive
drug test has been cause for debate by school officials, however.

Two schools of thought rule the drug-policy debate in Madison County. One,
a more lenient rehabilitative policy hopes to help students overcome a drug
problem and the other is a punitive policy which threatens expulsion or
suspension pending a positive test.

Kent says county school board officials have been torn between the two
distinctive styles, but hope a compromise can be made leaving the district
somewhere in the middle.

"It's not as simple as it sounds," Kent said. "There has been some real
lengthy debate on the subject, but there are some real pitfalls with either
route you choose."

The board has gone as far as inviting principals from other school
districts to come and discuss their drug policies and any problems or
successes they have seen.

Kent points to two programs - one in Tupelo and another in Clinton - that
seem to be on the opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to drug
testing, yet each seems to be effective in its own way.

Tupelo Public School District has a mandatory drug testing policy for all
athletes who compete at the school and a separate policy on testing
students after probable cause has been established by a teacher and
specified administrators.

Overall the policy is strictly rehabilitative in nature. It demands
anonymity for students and requires them to seek counseling, but allows
them to continue in school and any activities in which they might be
participating at the time.

Tupelo High School Principal Mac Curlee says it's not intended to be a
"gotcha policy" and he feels one of its better aspects is giving the
school's athletes a good reason not to do drugs when pressured by their peers.

"These policies are aimed to assist the student and their parents," Curlee
said. "The parents are made aware of their condition and it helps involve
them as the school tries to help the student make better decisions."

In Clinton, officials sought a more strict approach to drug testing,
relying on punishment to deter students.

While there is not a mandatory policy in place at the school system,
Clinton principal Dr. Phil Burchfield says under their policy any teacher
or administrator can call for a student to take a drug test if there is
"reasonable suspicion."

At that point, parents are informed, and it is left up to the student to
get the drug test.

"If they refuse it (the test) they are expelled from school," Burchfield
said. "In a sense they have to prove their innocence."

Curlee has spoken to the Madison County School Board in the past, detailing
the policy in Tupelo, but no decision has been made.

In the recent Supreme Court ruling, the majority opinion by Justice
Clarence Thomas appeared to encompass random drug testing of an entire
student population.

One member of the majority, Justice Stephen G. Breyer, who wrote a
concurring opinion while also signing Thomas', said it was significant that
the program in the Tecumseh, Okla., school district "preserves an option
for a conscientious objector" by limiting the scope to students in
extracurricular activities. A student "can refuse testing while paying a
price (non-participation) that is serious, but less severe than expulsion,"
Breyer said.

Students who are found to be using drugs at Tecumseh High School are barred
from their activities and referred for counseling, but are not otherwise
disciplined or reported to the police. The policy was challenged by Lindsay
Earls, an honor student active in several activities now attending
Dartmouth College.

Earls lost her case in U.S. District Court in Oklahoma City, Okla., but won
last year in the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, that court
examined the Supreme Court's 1995 ruling in Vernonia School District vs.
Acton and said that the athletes-only precedent did not validate the
broader Tecumseh policy.

The Tecumseh program violated the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against
unreasonable searches, the appeals court ruled.

In the opinion overturning that decision last month, Thomas said the
Tecumseh program was "entirely reasonable" in light of the "nationwide
epidemic of drug use" among school-age teenagers. While the Tecumseh
district did not now appear to have a serious problem, he said, "it would
make little sense to require a school district to wait for a substantial
portion of its students to begin using drugs before it was allowed to
institute a drug-testing program designed to deter drug use."

The decision, Board of Education vs. Earls, was joined by Chief Justice
William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Anthony M. Kennedy as
well as Breyer.

The dissenters were Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, John Paul Stevens and
David H. Souter, all of whom were in the minority in the court's
athletes-only ruling in 1995, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who had concurred in
the earlier decision.