By Bill Zeeble, KERA reporter
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kera/local-kera-619377.mp3
Dallas, TX – Bill Zeeble KERA reporter: Outside her Dallas townhome, Michelle Davis is polite - but cautious. She is expecting me. But when I arrive, she demands an ID, saying she needs to make sure. There are kids in the house. Davis takes child safety seriously. She's one of more than 15 thousand Dallas Independent School District parents who okayed random drug testing for her teenager.
Michelle Davis, mother of DISD students: I like it because you know kids do things you don't know they're doing. And so, you know, the drugs that are out there these days can kill them instantly.
Zeeble: Davis worries about everything from alcohol and pot to cheese, a heroin concoction linked to some 2 dozen teen deaths in Dallas. She likes DISD's random drug test policy launched last year. Parents of students in grades 6 through 12 are urged to sign the form permitting a random test that checks for marijuana, cocaine, amphetamines, opiates, pcp and other illegal substances. If both parent and student do NOT sign, no test gets done. But parents who approve are told if their child refuses a random test, and that alone could flag a problem. Davis and her daughter did sign, even though mom says she's taught her kids right from wrong.
Zeeble: Do you not trust your kids?
Davis: No, not always , no I don't . I was a kid once, and sometimes they prove they're not trustworthy by their actions.
Zeeble: Daughter Jessica's been tested, with no signs of usage.
Jessica Davis: I've never been tempted to try it, When I think of people doing drugs I think down on them and it doesn't make me feel any better.
Zeeble; DISD's Executive Director for Student Services, Linda Yater, runs the drug test program with a 2-hundred-8 thousand dollar federal grant..
Linda Yater, Executive Director for Student Services, DISD: There are a lot of things that could be going on in that students' life where if we don't address those issues, they're not going to be able to focus on those 3 Rs you mentioned.
Zeeble: Yater says random drug testing gives students under pressure to try drugs a ready excuse.
Yater: You can always say no I can't, I know my parents singed me up and I don' t know when I'm going to get tested.
Zeeble: Yater says of some 12 and a half thousand students tested, most - 97 percent - were clean. Positive results, she says, are double checked. Then student and parents are referred to drug counselors, There are no academic penalties. There won't be in Ennis, either, where Superintendent Eddie Dunn just accepted federal funds to launch a slightly different program. Following a 2002 Supreme Court ruling, students in extra curricular programs will be open to random drug testing.
Dunn: In a perfect world it wouldn't be necessary. I wished it weren't, but we don't live in a perfect world.
Zeeble: The American Civil Liberties Union has long questioned the randomness of school drug tests. Texas ACLU Legal Director Lisa Graybill says there should at least be a suspicion of use.
Lisa Graybill, Legal Director,ACLU Foundation of Texas: It represents an over-policing of the school environment. It is a needless intrusion into an area of privacy.
Zeeble: The DISD's Yater says it doesn't seem like an intrusion when parents and students agree to the program. So far, no one has legally challenged the district's policy. Bill Zeeble, KERA news.
Bzeeble@Kera.Org