Board OKs Plan for High School to Test for Drugs

The Los Angeles Board of Education on Monday gave preliminary approval to a voluntary drug-testing program for athletes at Granada Hills High School, the first such program in the San Fernando Valley and only the second in the school district.

The board members--acting at the request of the school’s coaches, administrators and parents--placed the proposal on the consent agenda for their meeting next week, which puts it in line for quick approval.

Drug screening will be done confidentially and without charge by Granada Hills Community Hospital.

Athletes at Granada Hills High immediately pledged to sign up for the screening.

“It’s going to be a good thing,” said Ken Lowry, 18, a senior and catcher on the baseball team, which will be the first team affected. “It will give people a chance to help themselves if they are using drugs, and it will give them a good excuse to keep off them if they aren’t.”

‘Identical’ to Banning Program

The plan was set up by parents and campus administrators who said they based it on the only such program now in effect in the Los Angeles Unified School District, at Banning High School.

Board member Jackie Goldberg, who heads the Educational Development Committee that reviewed the proposal, said she had been “assured that it is an identical program, with an identical confidentiality policy, as in the Banning program.”

In that program, student athletes decide on their own whether to sign up, without the knowledge of their coaches, and must have parental approval to do so. Each week, five students are picked at random from the pool of volunteers and asked to submit urine specimens to the campus health office. Before they do, parents are asked by telephone for final approval.

Officials said a Granada Hills Community Hospital physician will notify parents if a test is positive for use of alcohol, marijuana, cocaine or other drugs. Those who test positive are not removed from teams or otherwise disciplined by the school.

Principal Anne L. Falotico of Granada Hills High said student participation will be both voluntary and private.

“The school will not know who’s declined to be tested or who has tested positive,” Falotico said. “The school will never know and the coaches will never know.”

Falotico said the tests will give teen-agers a chance to seek help if they are drug or alcohol abusers. “Many times, students want somebody to pay attention to them,” she said. “We sometimes become inured to the adolescent cry for help.”

School officials said the tests were proposed last fall by Darryl Stroh, head football coach at Granada Hills High, and organized by the booster club, which is made up of parents.

“I suppose the hard-core user won’t volunteer, but it will provide kids with an opportunity to take a stand, a reason to say ‘no’ to peer pressure. It will get them off the hook,” Stroh said.

“What good is the educational process for a kid who’s destroying himself with drugs? We hope this has an impact on more than just athletes,” he said.

Stroh said he was surprised “at the eagerness” with which students responded to the plan.

“I’m sure most everyone on our team will do it,” said Mark Christie, 17, a senior and catcher on the baseball team. “We won’t know who does or doesn’t, though.”

Chris Murphy, a 16-year-old junior and a second baseman, said he favors the tests because “athletes have to set an example for other people.”

Booster club leader Alan Ewalt, whose 16-year-old son is a pitcher on the team, said the anti-drug move could spread at the campus because athletes often are looked upon as role models.

“There’s no doubt that interest on the part of parents is going to be there,” said Ewalt, a business executive from Northridge who helped set up the program with the hospital.

The hospital will donate the $28 cost of the initial test and the $42 fee for secondary screenings of urine samples that test positive, Ewalt said. After that, therapy for the teen-ager will be up to the parents, he said.

The proposal is also similar to a program launched last fall for football players at Westlake High School in Westlake Village. Similar testing is done at Edison High School in Huntington Beach, Colton and Fontana high schools and St. Bernard High School in Playa Del Rey.

Times Staff Writer John Lynch also contributed to this story.