TATES CREEK CLOSER TO DRUG TESTING

Board To Vote On High School's Proposal Monday

When 15-year-old Justin Taylor sees friends or teammates on Tates
Creek High School's basketball team tempted to smoke marijuana, he
tries to use humor to help them say no.

"It makes it easier for people if you cut jokes, like, 'Aw, you going
to be a pothead like him?"' said Taylor, a point guard on the
school's varsity basketball team. "I guess it doesn't matter to them
because they do it anyway."

If a proposed athletic drug testing policy at Tates Creek High School
is approved next week, Taylor says it will give him another piece of
ammunition to help his friends and teammates: the potential of not
being able to play.

"If that sinks into their heads, maybe, hopefully, it will make them
not do it," he said.

If approved, the policy would make Tates Creek the second high school
in Fayette County to drug-test its athletes. The Tates Creek policy
would require student athletes to take a drug test before the season
begins and submit to random tests during the season. Parents will pay
for the initial test, at a cost of about $20. The school will cover
the expense of random testing -- between $7,000 and $10,000 a year --
out of vending-machine receipts.

Students who test positive would be offered counseling and have to
pass weekly tests or leave the team. There are more severe
consequences for those who fail repeated tests, such as being removed
from the team for a season or more.

The Tates Creek school council has endorsed the plan. If the Fayette
County Board of Education approves the proposal Monday, student
athletes could begin testing as early as next month.

Board members have expressed support for drug testing at Tates Creek,
but have also encouraged school leaders to broaden it and include
students in all extracurricular activities.

"Why single out just the athletes?" asked school board member Larry
Moore. The specter of drug testing might give other students, such as
those in student government or speech club, an excuse to refuse drugs,
he added.

Tates Creek principal Bob Gardner said he has resisted expanding the
policy beyond athletes because he doesn't want to entangle the school
in a lengthy legal challenge.

"We want to go ahead and put in place a policy we know will meet the
test of case law so we can start helping our kids now," Gardner said.

Although the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1995 that drug-testing
athletes is constitutional, cases challenging the legality of testing
students in other after-school activities are still being litigated
around the country.

Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review an appeals court
ruling that a rural Oklahoma district violated the Constitution's ban
on unreasonable searches by requiring random tests of students
involved in extracurricular activities, such as the chorus.

That case turns on whether schools have to prove narcotics problems
before testing children and if testing is appropriate only for
students who are involved in potentially dangerous activities, such as
sports.

The American Civil Liberties Union has opposed all such testing, said
Jeff Vessels, executive director with the Kentucky ACLU.

"Drug testing can have the contrary effect to what the policy was
intended to accomplish," he said. "The more students are involved in
extracurricular activities, the less likely they are to be using drugs."

Vessels said that drug testing might discourage participation from the
very students who would benefit most from after-school activities.

The impetus for the drug policy at Tates Creek was a desire to help
students, said athletics director Joe Ruddell, who began lobbying for
a testing program when he applied to become athletics director three
years ago.

"Being a teen-ager is the toughest time of your life," he said.
"This is just a way for us to try to help them out. I want them to
have another reason to say no."

A committee of parents, coaches and educators has been working to
develop a policy for three years. No specific drug problem prompted
the policy, he said.

"I think we've got recreational drug users here like anywhere else,
and that's what we want to stop," Ruddell said.

The only concerns raised over the Tates Creek policy have been from
those who, like the school board, believe the policy should affect
more students, Gardner said. One student announced this fall that he
would not play football because the potential drug testing requirement
singled out athletes, he said.

Other than that, students said the issue hasn't really been a hot
topic of discussion on campus.

"A lot of people were worried about it in the beginning of the
year," said 16-year-old Marc Frank, a goalie on the boys' soccer
team. "But it didn't go through (this fall), so they kind of quit
worrying about it." At Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, where a drug
testing policy for athletes was implemented in 1996, drug testing has
become second nature, said athletics director Frank Watson. Some
parents have even said they chose to move into the Dunbar school
district because the school tests its athletes.

Over the years, he said, only three students have tested positive for
illegal drug use, and each has gotten help.

"That's proof to me that it's working," he said. "We don't want
anyone to test positive."

Surveys from some students at the school indicate that they are
choosing not to play sports because of the policy, but Watson said his
focus is on the good it's doing for the athletes they have.

Some Tates Creek athletes are skeptical about how successful testing
will be as a deterrent.

"If they care about the sport that much, they're not going to do
it," Frank said. "But there may be other people who think they can
get around it. No matter what you do, there are going to be people who
do drugs."

Personal contact from a coach might have more effect on a student
athlete's choices, he said.

"It would mean more if the coach pulled me aside and talked to me,"
he said. "More so than failing a drug test, because it shows that he
actually cares."