Student drug testing policies inconsistent across region

Testing students for drug use is tricky business, so while some local school systems recently have adopted policies, others have experimented and stopped testing altogether.

In December, Bradley County Schools began using a new policy that allows officials to test students if there is reasonable cause -- the student smells of alcohol or marijuana or if officials find evidence or hear reports of drug or alcohol use by teachers or other students.

"(Drug testing) is common, but it's certainly not something that every school system does," said Chris McCarty, the attorney for Bradley County Schools who helped draft the system's new policy. "It is a difficult area of the law, because you're going to run into Fourth Amendment search-and-seizure issues."

The issue of drug testing surfaced after police found drug paraphernalia earlier this month in a car in the parking lot of Calhoun High School in Georgia. Investigators said at the time they believed that students from several Northwest Georgia schools were involved in the use of the drugs.

When Chuck Rockholt was a principal in Cleveland City Schools, he always wished the system had a drug policy, he said, but the laws on what is allowed are "too vague."

"Depending on who you talk to, they'll interpret different things differently," said Mr. Rockholt, who now is the spokesman for the school system. "A school system is kind of sticking their neck out, setting themselves up for a lawsuit."

He said discussions still arise frequently over whether to implement a drug-testing policy.

"Obviously, we want to be sure that our students aren't using," he said. "At the same time, there is no doubt that some are. But how do we go about determining who is and who isn't?"

A 2007 Tennessee attorney general's opinion states that students who participate in voluntary extracurricular activities, such as sports, cannot be randomly drug tested unless there is reasonable cause to do so.

The opinion said Tennessee law gives students more protection than they have under a similar U.S. Supreme Court decision.

Marion County Schools officials are in the process of reviewing their drug testing policy, Superintendent Mark Griffith said. Over Christmas, a basketball coach drug tested some athletes himself, which is not allowed in the district's current policy.

Mr. Griffith said the school board likely would vote on a new policy sometime this month or next.

School systems in Hamilton and Sequatchie counties do not test students at all. Sequatchie County Superintendent Johnny Cordell said the district once tested athletes and cheerleaders, but the expense of the tests made it impossible to continue.

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