With Eye on Courts, School System OKs Student Drug Tests

Although drug abuse among U.S. teenagers remains a major concern, few big city school systems have dared flirt with the idea of random drug testing. Among the obvious obstacles are the cost, the constitutional issue of privacy and concerns over the rightful role of the public schools.

But in a move as divisive as it was unprecedented, the Dade County school board recently voted to begin a $200,000 pilot program under which about 5,000 of the county’s 82,000 high school students would be subjected to urinalysis for marijuana, cocaine and other illegal drugs.

“This is about parental empowerment,” said Renier Diaz de la Portilla, at 26 the youngest member of the nine-person school board and chief sponsor of the measure. “This is the first program of its kind in the U.S. We have an opportunity to set a national example.”

Other school systems are expected to monitor what happens here in the fourth-largest U.S. school district, which takes in Miami, Hialeah and more than 25 other municipalities. With more than 340,000 students, the Dade County system is exceeded in size only by those in Los Angeles, New York and Chicago.

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Parents here must enroll their children in the program, which begins in January, and even those who test positive for banned substances would not be forced into treatment. The urinalysis would be conducted off campus, and the results would be sent directly to the parents along with suggestions on where to get help.

School officials would not be given individual test results, but they would receive cumulative information--including the number of students who test positive and the drugs they are using.

In some private schools, including Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana, for example, and in all Catholic schools administered by the San Bernardino Diocese, student drug tests are mandatory. And in 1995, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that public schools could require student athletes to undergo random tests for drugs or alcohol.

But in April, the high court seemed to draw the line on the spreading popularity of mandatory tests when the justices ruled that a Georgia law requiring political candidates to prove they were drug-free went too far. Until that ruling, the court had upheld mandatory drug testing in cases involving railroad workers, customs agents, police and high school athletes.

The 6-3 Dade County vote broke down along ethnic lines, with its four Latino and two African American board members voting in favor of testing and the three non-Latino whites--all longtime board members--voting no.

“We are a more socially conservative board now,” said Diaz de la Portilla, who is Cuban American.

The Dade school board’s decision does not make drug testing mandatory, and that led opponents to call the decision a fulsome display of concern. “This is pure politics, one of those motherhood and apple pie things,” said veteran board member G. Holmes Braddock. “It makes people feel good, but there is nothing to be gained by it. And it costs the taxpayers.”

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Another dissenter, Betsy Kaplan, called the plan “invasive and reminiscent of a police state.” She added that $200,000 “doesn’t begin to scratch the surface of what this would cost if it became systemwide.” That cost has been estimated as high as $3.2 million.

The American Civil Liberties Union promised to look for ways to challenge the policy in court. “The potential problem appears to be that the people whose rights are violated have been left out of the equation,” said Andy Kayton, assistant legal director of the ACLU in Florida. “What happens when a student refuses to take a drug test? Are school administrators going to coerce a test or insist on disciplinary action?”

Teacher reaction to the drug testing plan has been mixed. South Miami High School principal Thomas Shaw said he welcomes a program that might help parents get troubled children into treatment. “But the fear I have as an educator,” added Shaw, “is that the schools take on too many traditional parental roles without funding for them. And we know parents don’t want to pay more taxes.

“As always, it’s a question of priorities.”

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Researcher Anna M. Virtue contributed to this story.