http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/041700texas-edu.html
April 17, 2000
Family in Texas Challenges Mandatory School Drug Test
By JIM YARDLEY
OCKNEY, Tex. -- For three years, people in this tiny farming town fretted
that stopping the local drug problem was like trying to lasso the winds that
blow day and night off the flat Texas plains. Teachers complained of
students getting stoned at lunch. Parents worried about peer pressure at
school to get high.
Eventually, after an emotional public meeting and demands that something be
done, the school board here enacted what is considered the toughest school
drug testing policy in the nation. It requires that all junior and senior
high school students take a mandatory drug test. There is no choice; refusal
by a parent or student draws the same punishment as failure to pass the
test, an in-school suspension for first offenders.
Now, as many other school districts across the country institute drug tests,
Lockney, with only 2,200 residents, has become an unlikely constitutional
battleground. A parent, aided by the American Civil Liberties Union, filed a
lawsuit in March asserting that the policy violated his and his son's Fourth
Amendment rights prohibiting unreasonable searches. Arguments in the case
could be heard as soon as this summer by a federal judge.
"They cannot tell me how I'm supposed to believe," said the parent, Larry
Tannahill, 35, whose 12-year-old son, Brady, attends the junior high. "I
believe in the Constitution. And because I believe in our Constitution and
our rights, you're going to punish my son? I don't think so."
Since 1995, when the United States Supreme Court opened the door to drug
testing in schools by permitting the testing of athletes, the unanswered
question has been where would schools, and ultimately the court, draw the
line.
Until now, school districts had been tentative in pushing the boundaries,
particularly because legal challenges to wider testing are pending in
Oklahoma, New Jersey and other states. But Lockney's policy of testing every
student has shattered any boundaries.
"If the policy has no teeth, there's no use having it," said Donald G.
Henslee, the lawyer representing the Lockney Independent School District.
Mr. Henslee said at least a dozen other Texas districts had inquired about
instituting a similar policy.
For Mr. Tannahill, the controversy has made clear the tensions that can
arise when an individual challenges the will of the majority, particularly
in a small town. He and his wife, Traci, are the only parents who are
fighting the policy. He was dismissed from his job as a farm worker, though
his former employer says the firing was unrelated to the lawsuit, and he has
found a threatening note outside his home. Some people have invited the
Tannahills to leave town.
Up and down Main Street, people say they do not wish Mr. Tannahill any harm,
but they cannot believe one person should stop them from doing what they
believe is in the best interests of their children. To many parents, the
drug test is a "tool" to provide students a reason to resist peer pressure
to drink or do drugs. The debate over constitutional rights seems secondary
to many people.
"I don't feel like it's violating my rights for my kid to be tested," said
Kelly Prayor, 35, who has two children and is a teller at the local bank.
"As far as my kids' rights, they're not responsible. What rights do they
have? They don't have a right to drink or do drugs."
Lockney, which is between Lubbock and Amarillo, is a tiny spot in the
agricultural sea of the Texas plains, which stretch to the horizon,
interrupted only by telephone poles and windmills and, occasionally, a tree.
The local schools are the biggest employer, and the red logo of the Lockney
Longhorns, the high school, is painted on the two water towers and displayed
in the rear windshields of many of the trucks rumbling through town.
People in Lockney do not believe that drugs are any worse here than in other
small towns, but the issue has generated attention for several years. In
1997, nearly 300 people attended a public meeting to discuss drugs. A year
later, 12 people were charged with selling cocaine, an event that stunned
the town.
By then, school officials were studying drug testing policies, including
those in several surrounding towns. Most of the policies involved testing
students for extracurricular activities. One nearby town with such a policy,
Tulia, is continuing the testing even as it is under challenge in federal
court.
But Lockney officials were intrigued by another town, Sundown, which
instituted a mandatory testing policy for all students in 1998 that has yet
to be challenged. Last December, the Lockney school board approved its own
mandatory policy and notified parents that testing would begin in February.
Under the plan, all junior and senior high students would take a urine test
and submit to random follow-up tests. Employees of the district also undergo
the tests.
Today, all 388 students in junior and senior high schools in Lockney have
taken the text except Brady. School officials would not say how many tested
positive other than to describe the number as a "Texas handful." The
in-school suspensions given to first-time offenders last three days and
require students to complete their class work in a separate room. They also
undergo drug counseling and are suspended from all school activities for
three weeks. Repeat offenders face longer suspensions, though not expulsion.
Julie Underwood, general counsel for the National School Boards Association
in Washington, called the Lockney policy "about as broad as it could ever
be," saying it resulted from the "slippery slope" created by the Supreme
Court's ruling allowing testing of athletes. Since then, Ms. Underwood said,
the court has resisted clarifying the parameters for testing and has sent
mixed signals.
In October 1998, the court let stand a lower court ruling enabling an
Indiana school district to require a drug test for students participating in
after-school activities. But last March, the court dealt a blow to another
Indiana school by leaving intact a lower court ruling that prohibited the
school from requiring suspended students to take a drug test before resuming
classes.
"School districts don't know exactly how far they can take this," Ms.
Underwood said. "There hasn't been a definitive ruling by the Supreme Court
on mandatory testing or random drug testing by school districts."
Eric E. Sterling, president of the nonprofit Criminal Justice Policy
Foundation in Washington, predicted that more districts would emulate
Lockney as more parents felt helpless to prevent their children from using
drugs. Mr. Sterling said the policy could be a deterrent for some students
but he cautioned that it could further alienate students at risk of taking
drugs. He said the "presumption of guilt" created by the policy flies in the
face of the Pledge of Allegiance that students recite every morning.
"Their sense of liberty and what liberty means will be offended every time
they're asked to provide a urine specimen without any cause that they're
using drugs," he said.
A lanky, laconic man, Mr. Tannahill says he is hardly a rebel, but he fears
his neighbors are too eager to give up their rights. He said that he had not
used drugs and that he did not oppose some sort of drug testing policy,
though not mandatory. His stance seems far more libertarian than liberal: he
also says that growing gun control efforts violate the constitutional right
to bear arms.
His family has lived in Lockney for four generations, and he calls the town
"a good little community." Yet he was incensed that under the school testing
policy his refusal to sign a parental consent form meant that Brady was
considered guilty.
"I'm tired of letting our rights just be taken away," said Mr. Tannahill,
whose younger son, Coby, 11, attends the town's elementary school. "They are
taking my rights away as a parent, telling me I had to do this or my son
would be punished. That's what really got to me."
Mr. Tannahill, who graduated from Lockney High, added, "The teacher taught
me that if you give up your rights, and you're not going to fight for them,
you'll lose them."
Mr. Henslee, the school district's lawyer, said the board was reconsidering
its stance on parents who refuse to give consent. He said the board remained
committed to mandatory testing but was considering alternatives to
punishments attached to cases like the Tannahills. Brady has been allowed to
continue his normal classes and activities, pending the result of the
lawsuit.
Mr. Tannahill, meanwhile, is struggling with life as a pariah. He said he
had gotten friendly phone calls or quiet nods from some people, but few
support him publicly.
His wife works as a clerk at a nearby prison. Unemployed, he builds
miniature barns and windmills at home that he hopes to sell on the Internet.
He said his sons had been treated well at school, as if nothing had
happened, but he remained wary.
Several weeks ago, the family's pet boxer was sprayed with orange paint from
a paint gun. Mr. Tannahill said he found a note outside his house that read,
"You're messing with our children, and next time maybe this won't be a paint
gun."
At a school board meeting in March, Mr. Tannahill and his lawyer
unsuccessfully asked the board to change its policy. Hundreds of people
packed into the Lockney Independent School District's high school gymnasium
for the meeting, many of them wearing T-shirts that read: "We asked for it.
L.I.S.D. delivered it. We appreciate it." Speaker after speaker extolled the
policy to loud applause until Mr. Tannahill's lawyer was greeted with stony
silence.
"If looks could kill, me and my family would have been dead a long time
ago," Mr. Tannahill said.
Graham Boyd, a civil liberties union lawyer who is representing Mr.
Tannahill, asserted that the policy had many failings, including that a
urine test does not detect all drugs. But beyond the legal questions, Mr.
Boyd said he was surprised at the tensions that had arisen.
"This isn't about race or religion or one of the things you would expect to
inflame a community," he said. "This is about drug testing a 12-year-old
boy."
People in Lockney say Mr. Tannahill is not in any danger, though a few
concede they would not mind if he left. Residents described the drug policy
as a common-sense solution to help children resist drugs. A few people
expressed doubts about the policy, but an overwhelming majority of parents
and students agreed with Jordan Lambert, a senior and the quarterback of the
football team.
"I think it's great," Jordan said. "I don't see how we're being forced to
when we're more than willing. Ninety-eight percent of the student body is
more than willing. Nobody is being forced to."
Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company
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