COMMUNITIES SHOULD DECIDE SCHOOL POLICY

The Point -- Children Have Limited Rights In Controlled Situations.

It should go without saying, but in this era of hypersensitivity, we
probably have to say it anyway: The fact that children cannot vote, drive,
drink, etc., doesn't mean they have no rights at all.

Certainly, adults cannot abuse them physically or otherwise. And children
are of course have a right to expect their parents' love and all that goes
with it, including food, shelter, guidance, moral nurturing and so forth.

That disclaimer having been stated, we must say we found ourselves
reassured by the overall good sense on the subject of children's rights
that seemed to emanate from the nation's highest court this week.

As noted in coverage of a case argued before the Supreme Court Tuesday over
drug tests for students, several justices strongly suggested they don't
have a problem with broad intrusions into students' personal lives --
whether by testing for drugs or screening for weapons -- even absent
specific suspicions about individuals.

The case at hand involved a sophomore choir singer at a rural Oklahoma high
school who had objected to the mandatory urine tests that came with
participation in extracurricular activities, whether or not any student was
believed to be using drugs.

Sweeping aside the student's lawyers' concerns about the need for precisely
such "individualized suspicion" -- some evidence the student to be tested
is under the influence or uses controlled substances -- before a school can
test for drugs, several justices made clear the Fourth Amendment's bar on
unreasonable searches and seizures simply doesn't apply to those in the
custody of the school system.

"You are dealing with minors here. You can keep them in prison in effect,
and say, 'You have to stay after school because you haven't done your
homework,' " said Justice Antonin Scalia. "There's a world of difference
between minors and adults." Scalia said school officials make the rules at
school, and he derided the notion that students have privacy rights.

Justice Stephen Breyer compared drug testing to metal detectors at school
doors -- a new but necessary means of keeping schools safe -- and Justice
Anthony Kennedy joined in with a ringing denunciation of the "drug culture"
and speculated that most parents support such policies screening kids for
drug use.

We find their views heartening, not because we necessarily endorse the
nostrums employed by the school in the case before the court, but because
there is an underlying wisdom in reaffirming, as Scalia put it, the "world
of difference between minors and adults.

Granted, there's much overkill and just plain silliness to be found in the
host of "zero-tolerance" policies being embraced by school boards around
the country. Though there are understandable worries about violence and
drug use among teens and even pre-teens, many of the responses -- in which
a bread knife in the back of a pickup earned a student a suspension -- are
overwrought and unreasonable.

What the court seemed to be saying, though, is that the way to file the
rough edges off of such overreaching policies is through parents
interacting with their duly-elected school board members. Which is to say
these debates aren't really constitutional fodder for the courts as much as
they are policy matters for representative government to sort out.

When most of us entrust our minors to the daily oversight of public
schools, we extend to those schools the authority to ensure those kids are
safe, disciplined and of course educated. As a result, student newspapers
can't publish anything they like; students don't get exclusive access to
their lockers, and they may even be asked to file through metal detectors
every morning and then provide a urine specimen just to join the football team.

Whether or not any of those policies makes sense under the circumstances in
any given locale is for that community, not the courts, to figure out.