Practice Spreads : New Kind of School Test--for Drugs

The note came in the middle of a U.S. history class. Chad Ponegalek, a left fielder on his varsity baseball team, a defensive back on the varsity football team, was summoned to the Edison High School nurse’s office and handed a plastic vial.

It was his turn for drug testing, but the Huntington Beach youth was nonplussed.

“Negative, it’s always negative,” Ponegalek said later as some fellow baseball players teased him about signing up for the school’s pioneering urine testing program.

Have No Choice

In Lafayette, Ind., over the protests of the Indiana Civil Liberties Union, high school athletes will undergo random urinalysis for drugs beginning in August, but they will have no choice in the matter. A federal appeals court recently upheld the school district’s mandatory plan, and, discouraged by recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions, the ICLU will not appeal.

And in Indianola, Miss., at the insistence of parents, random drug testing soon will be mandated for all students in the 7th through 12th grades of a private school--a sweeping plan that has been thrown out in the courts when a similar program was tried at a public school.

For a growing number of students, the specimen bottle has become part of their scholastic paraphernalia, and it has nothing to do with biology class. Slowly but increasingly, schools are joining the ranks of institutions trying to detect and prevent drug use by testing.

Leading the Way

In Southern California, Edison High and Simi Valley’s school district are leading the way with their much-imitated programs that offer confidential urinalyses to students, and then send the results to parents. Students can volunteer to participate in the programs and then are tested at random. In southeastern Alaska, the vice principal of Ketchikan High School shines a light in the eyes of athletes and other students who travel on behalf of the school, performing a random test designed to demonstrate that officials are monitoring students’ health and safety away from home.

While no statistics exist on how many schools are testing students for drugs, school administrators who have embarked on programs report that they receive calls from colleagues in other districts, other states, asking how they did it.

At Wilson High School in Long Beach a voluntary testing program for athletes, like Edison’s, was begun this school year. If Wilson’s program is considered a success, other high schools in the district are expected to follow suit, a Wilson official said.

North Carolina’s top education officials are studying a proposal for a pilot drug testing program at several high schools that would involve checking student athletes’ eyes for signs of drug use. And in Tennessee, the state Legislature last year adopted a bill permitting school officials to test students suspected of being under the influence of alcohol and other drugs, although only a dozen school districts have signed up for the required training.

“More and more, the No. 1 question I get asked is about drugs and drug testing,” said August Steinhilber, general counsel to the National School Boards Assn., which has put out a thick manual on the subject. A few years ago, his group offered a seminar on drugs in the school, including the issue of testing for drugs. “The room was overflowing. . . . We got letters upon letters. I dare say it is a burning issue.”

But drug testing of students is treading on still uncertain legal ground.

School officials should be aware that drug testing is considered a search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, and that the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 1985 case, ruled that searches by school officials must be based on “reasonable suspicion,” Steinhilber said.

“If you have reasonable suspicion, which is individualized, you can test,” he said. That reasonable suspicion could be the observation of a student who appears to be under the influence of drugs, or information from a reputable source that a person was seen sniffing white powder, he said.

“That’s not, ‘We’ve got a drug problem and therefore you will be tested.’ That’s not reasonable,” Steinhilber said. “You’ve got to have a valid reason and the reason has to be individualized.”

In Arkansas, a urine test was declared unconstitutional in 1985 by a federal district court. The test violated a student’s right to due process, as well as unreasonable search and seizure guarantees, because an adult watched as the student provided the urine sample, the court said.

Court Rejects Plan

That same year, a New Jersey court threw out a plan at Becton Regional High School in East Rutherford to test every student for drugs annually during a comprehensive physical examination. The court said it violated constitutional protections against invasion of privacy and illegal search and seizure.

But drug testing attempts at other schools have overcome legal hurdles, or stepped around them.

The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals this year affirmed the plan of a school district known as the Tippecanoe School Corp. in Lafayette, Ind., to randomly test athletes and cheerleaders. It is the highest ranking court case to date in the nation to challenge school drug testing and was watched by school officials throughout the nation.

Because Tippecanoe’s test is mandated only for students in an extracurricular activity--a privilege, not a required activity--it sidesteps the legal objection to across-the-board testing without reasonable suspicion, said the district’s attorney, James McGlone.

“We hope that it will help the athletes say no to drugs, and we also hope that it will have an effect on the younger kids coming up, who want to be athletes and who will recognize they cannot be if they’re going to be on drugs,” McGlone said. “They’ll learn to say, ‘I want to play football, so I can’t use drugs.’ If they learn that’s the way life is, it will help keep them off. No one thing will cure the whole situation, but it (testing) will help.”

The Indiana Civil Liberties Union finds the school testing plan “profoundly flawed.”

“Individual suspicion is not considered,” said Michael L. Gradison, executive director. “They just chose this bunch (of athletes) arbitrarily.”

Instead of appealing, he said, the ICLU will attempt to sponsor a law in the state Legislature next year barring drug testing programs like Tippecanoe’s.

“Random testing is offensive and obnoxious to the standard of probable cause, and that concerns us very much, but that’s the way the courts are going,” Gradison said. “We can’t depend on the courts any longer to be our trump card. . . . We fear a proliferation of tests like this across the country.”

A similar drug testing plan at a school in the small, southeastern town of Winnie, Tex., is now before a federal trial court judge. At the urging of parents, the East Chambers County Consolidated Independent School District adopted a plan last year requiring all students involved in extracurricular activities to submit to an initial urinalysis and then, throughout the year, random testing, said Roy Tulley, assistant superintendent. He estimated that about 90% of the student body will be affected.

But a lawsuit by high school senior Brent Brooks, a member of Future Farmers of America and a baseball team hopeful, put the plan on hold, except on a voluntary basis. According to the American Civil Liberties Union in Houston, which is challenging the plan, the testing policy is an unreasonable search and seizure under the U.S. and state constitutions and invades privacy.

Although Future Farmers of America is an extracurricular activity, it is an integral part of Brooks’ education because the student plans to pursue agriculture as a career, said Helen Gros, ACLU executive director. The school cannot require students to submit to drug tests as a condition of their education, she said.

Gros challenges the district’s argument that an extracurricular activity is a privilege, not a right. “The mere designation of extracurricular does not put it out of bounds, especially when a constitutional right is involved. It is not nearly as clear-cut as they would like it to believe.”

In contrast to the ACLU’s alarm, the people of Winnie were not upset, said Sandy Rabinowitz, associate director of the ACLU chapter.

No Public Outcry

“I was absolutely stunned. This is a very small town. We made it known that we were available . . . but there was no big hue and cry. There were stories on TV, and people would say, ‘I don’t got any problem with the policy,’ ” Rabinowitz said. Of Brooks, she said, “He’s a brave boy.”

In California, the drug test of choice appears to be a voluntary one, carefully crafted first in Huntington Beach, to avoid legal pitfalls.

“We took six court cases (involving other schools’ programs), dissected them, and then tailored ours, like crossing a mine field, to avoid those problems,” said Robert Belanger, Edison High School’s team physician.

True, students with drug problems are not likely to sign up for testing, say administrators of the voluntary test, but this type of program is not designed for them. Instead, it is a crutch for students to help them resist peer pressure to use drugs, they said.

“If they’re at a party, it’s a good tool to use. They can say, ‘I’d like to, but my name may come up. I can’t take the chance,’ said Jean Sullivan, principal of Brea-Olinda High School, where voluntary testing began in February. “I think a lot of kids do these things when really they don’t want to, but they’d rather do something risky rather than not look ‘in.’ ”

“We’re not out to catch anybody. That’s not the issue,” said Al Jacobs, associate superintendent with the Simi Valley Unified School District, which has received national attention for its voluntary testing program. The test is offered to students in extracurricular activities at the district’s two high schools.

“We don’t do anything with the information. But what it does is develop a state of awareness with a large number of students who are leaders on campus,” Jacobs said. “And it carries over. If you’re at a party and somebody else says no, then another person thinks, ‘I can say no and get away with it, too.’ Unfortunately, peer pressure at this age is tremendous, when it comes to drugs and alcohol.”

According to a recent survey by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, more than half of all high school seniors use an illegal drug at least once before graduating, although usage dropped to its lowest level last year since 1975. The survey of 16,000 seniors in 135 public and private high schools throughout the country reflected that cocaine use dropped for the second straight year. Still, school officials were warned not to become too sanguine.

School drug tests appear to fall into two categories--those aimed at detecting drug use by students suspected of being under the influence, and those designed to randomly test a certain group of students to deter them from using drugs in the first place.

Officials at a high school in rural Arkadelphia, Ark., in 1982 were among the first to begin testing students suspected of being under the influence on campus. Although the school’s use of urinalysis was thrown out three years later, school officials still use a Breathalyzer to test for alcohol, a blood test to screen for other drugs and a polygraph test for possession of the substances--all violations of school rules that can lead to being booted out.

James Ford, superintendent of the Arkadelphia School District, insists that no student is ever required to take the test. However, by the time officials ask the student to take the test, they are convinced by other evidence that the student has broken the rules, he said. The test, then, is the student’s opportunity to show his innocence, Ford said. “The test is used to protect the student, it is not used to show guilt,” he said.

If the student refuses, he is expelled, unless he can produce other evidence. If he takes the test and passes, the district pays the cost and nothing more is said, according to Ford. If the student takes the test and fails, “You pay and you’re out of school the rest of the semester,” Ford said. “We’re tough.”

Conversely, voluntary and other random testing programs appear to be aimed not at suspected chronic users but at other students--athletes and club members--who stereotypically are the least likely users of drugs.

When Edison High School officials introduced their drug testing program for football players in the early 1980s, they had to fight the opposition of district officials worrying about infringing on rights, former football coach Bill Workman said. “But while they were philosophically worrying about that, we had 16-, 17-, 18-year-olds going down the tubes.”

And there was resistance from the athletes at first. “They felt we were muscling in on their deal,” Workman said. “But basically the kids didn’t want their parents to know and so they stopped doing what they were doing, and we got 99.99% clean tests.”

The test turned into a source of pride, team doctor Belanger said. Although they were confidential “the students would post their letters on the bulletin board.” Athletes at Edison, where the school colors are green and gold, wore T-shirts proclaiming they were “mean, green and clean.”

Belanger admits that voluntary testing is “very weak. We’re toothless. We put mom and dad in charge. But that’s the only way it can be done. We’re still flying after four years.” Further, he said, unless it is paired with drug education programs, drug testing “is worse than nothing.”

Today, Edison baseball players say the push for drug testing is still limited mainly to the football team.

Saying no to drugs is no problem, said Shawn Cotter, a senior who plays first base. He also did not sign up for testing. “I go to parties. I see alcohol a lot, but I don’t see (other) drugs. To be honest, I don’t know what cocaine looks like.”

At Orange County’s Brea-Olinda High School, the new testing policy apparently was not an immediate hit with students. The student newspaper, the Wildcat, conducted a poll of 100 students who were given the option to be tested and found that 62% had not signed up and 64% doubted that the testing program would help students. (Principal Sullivan disputed the figure, saying that about 70% of the eligible students signed up.)

Further, similar programs have been disbanded in the Southland. Two schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District--Granada Hills High School and Banning High School in Wilmington--folded their voluntary programs because of lack of funding, a district spokesman said. Anne Falotico, Granada Hills High School principal, said the school had a good program for two years, but when the participants graduated, the incoming students didn’t share the same enthusiasm. The dwindling participants “were forever being tested because the pool was so small,” she said.

“I’d like to see it revived,” she said of testing, which was abandoned this year. “I think it was good then, and I don’t have any reason to believe it wouldn’t be good now.”

The same dwindling participation also has more or less terminated testing in San Diego, where seven of 16 high schools had been offering the test to all students.

“We’re going to rethink it and talk to our colleagues at Edison,” said Ed Fletcher, director of health services for the San Diego Unified School District. “I think schools need to do everything they can. Youngsters use this program to keep from being forced into using drugs, so there’s a likelihood we may revive it.”

And while it appears that drug testing is increasing, Brea-Olinda’s Sullivan warns that there is no panacea.

Described as Controversial

“It’s not a real bandwagon,” the principal said. “It’s a very controversial thing and takes an enormous amount of work to set up. I’m not sure a lot of high schools will want to do this.”

Further, the responsibility does not end with testing, warns Dr. Mark De Antonio, director of an adolescent unit at UCLA’s Neuro Psychiatric Institute.

“What do you do with a positive result? You have to think of the consequences,” he said. “My concern is I wouldn’t want families and kids to rest on the idea that testing is fixing the problem. . . . I have parents coming in waving test results and saying, ‘Fix him,’ and it’s not an easy fix. . . .

“If the test is positive, is the father going to beat the kid to a pulp? Is the kid going to be kicked out of the house? Is the kid going to commit suicide because he can’t deal with it? These questions have to be thought out, because I’ve seen the disasters. . . . I know teen-agers and these things come out.”