LAKE STEVENS — The era of random drug testing at Lake Stevens High School is over.
The school board voted unanimously to end the controversial program this week. The school was one of just a few in the state to randomly test students who participated in sports and other extracurricular activities.
The school suspended drug testing in March when the Washington Supreme Court ruled that testing student athletes for drugs is unconstitutional.
Lake Stevens High School plans to continue offering drug testing to students who volunteer to be tested and whose parents agree, district spokeswoman Arlene Hulten said.
“We didn’t have any options,” school board member Janice Thompson said. “Because of the ruling that came down from the courts, we could not keep our policy the way it was.”
Many school administrators and board members believed that random drug testing motivated students to stay away from drugs.
Since drug testing was instituted at the school in October 2006, 10 of the 500 students to submit urine samples tested positive for drugs. Students who tested positive continued to attend classes, but faced a 23-day suspension from their extracurricular activity. They were required to seek assessment of their drug use and to enroll in a treatment program if that was recommended.
The day after the Washington Supreme Court ruled against drug testing in schools, some Lake Stevens students celebrated with a party that involved underage drinking, said Thompson, who has two children at Lake Stevens High School.
“I do believe it gives them the opportunity to say, ‘No, I’m not willing to risk either being taken out of a sports program or a music program,’” she said.
Around 4,100 schools across the country use random drug tests, said Stephen Schatz,* spokesman for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. The office is studying drug tests’ effectiveness at preventing teen drug use.
“If schools and communities feel this is a need and their schools and communities want to pursue local drug testing, they should,” he said.
In some schools with voluntary drug testing programs, 90 percent of the students agree to be tested, Schatz said. Some schools use a random system, but students can opt not to be tested if their names are selected. He hadn’t heard of members of entire school teams volunteering together for testing.
It’s unclear how the Lake Stevens program will work.
Incoming freshman Karlee Wilcox can’t imagine many students volunteering for drug tests.
She was glad the school board decided to stop random drug testing at the high school. Wilcox, who wants to participate in dance or cheerleading, doesn’t believe drug tests would keep most students from doing drugs.
“I’m for ‘Don’t do drugs,’ but I just don’t think people I know would really care” about testing, she said.
Senior Jessica Danielson has mixed feelings about the board’s decision. Without a movie theater or an arcade in town, many Lake Stevens students turn to drugs out of boredom, she said.
“For students who are participating in school sports, it would be a wise idea to continue drug testing if the parents agree to it because you don’t want to be competing against someone who’s on drugs or steroids when you’re not,” said Danielson, who hasn’t been tested. “But totally random testing is, in my opinion, stupid.”
The Washington lawsuit was filed by parents of three Wahkiakum High School athletes in southwest Washington. Their students were randomly selected for drug tests in school. The American Civil Liberties Union of Washington provided lawyers for the parents.
The court unanimously ruled that warrantless, random and suspicionless drug testing of student athletes violates the Washington State Constitution.
ACLU spokesman Doug Honig was glad to hear that Lake Stevens has abandoned random testing.
“It’s a sensible decision and it’s what we would have expected because the State Supreme Court’s ruling was very clear that testing students in a public school without suspicion violates their rights,” he said.
The Lake Stevens district plans to continue testing students at its alternative Prove High School for drug use as a condition of enrollment. Because testing is not random at Prove, it isn’t affected by the court decision, Hulten said.
Reporter Kaitlin Manry: 425-339-3292 or kmanry@heraldnet.com.
*Correction, July 14, 2008: This article originally used an incorrect name for Stephen Schatz.
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