When the U.S. Supreme Court ruling approving the drug testing of student athletes was handed down Monday, the news caused scarcely a ripple in the south suburban communities of Homewood and Flossmoor.
That’s because Homewood-Flossmoor High School began random drug testing five years ago, the first high school in Illinois to do so.
“We’ve always been pro-active,” said Jayne Matthews, a spokeswoman for the school, which has 2,100 students. “The policy was intended to be preventative, not punitive.”
At the time, the school took some heat for its decision. Now, it feels validated by the Supreme Court’s decision on a similar drug policy in an Oregon school district, while other high schools-once leery of legal challenges-will consider implementing similar policies.
“We have talked about it in the past and figured because of the legal ramifications, it was not in our best interests,” said Libertyville High School Supt. Donald Gossett. “Now that the Supreme Court has ruled, who knows what the future will bring?”
Back in 1990, when Homewood-Flossmoor initiated random testing, the school believed it was on more solid legal ground if it confined the testing to athletes, because an Indiana high school already had survived court challenges to the testing of student athletes.
A few months later, 15 randomly selected male and female athletes reported to the locker room for urine samples that were tested for a dozen substances, including cocaine, steroids and alcohol.
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No tax dollars have ever been used for the testing, officials say. Initially the $18,000 to $20,000 tab was picked up by an anonymous donor. Now gate receipts from athletic events underwrite the medical costs.
Since the program’s inception, hundreds of athletes have been tested, but no statistics on the number of students testing positive are available, because the results are distributed no further than the school’s student assistance coordinator, the athletic director and parents.
“Confidentiality is one of the keys to its success,” Matthews said.
If the student tests positive, he or she meets with the school’s chemical dependency counselor. If determined to be chemically dependent and in need of treatment, the athlete will not be permitted to compete for 30 days. A student who refuses treatment will be suspended from the team for a year.
The policy is not used for suspension or expulsion from school.
Some parents and educators felt that the policy violated student rights, unfairly singled out athletes and should have been limited to students suspected of drug use rather than random testing. At New Trier High School in Wilmette, for example, athletic director Bob Naughton called random testing “a classic case of overkill.”
The critics saw little to change their minds in Monday’s Supreme Court decision.
“We all have less freedom today than we did before this decision came down,” said Barry Bayer, an attorney in Homewood and an outspoken opponent at public meetings five years ago, when Bayer’s son was a sophomore at the school. He believes the testing gives parents a false sense of security.
“You have to make sure your kids have the proper values . . . and if they don’t, nothing the school or the Supreme Court do are going to be able to protect them.”
Another parent, Joel Schwab, has no problem with the policy- his son has already been tested-but he feels its effectiveness is limited and it should not be restricted to athletes.
“This will work for the borderline kid who really cares about sports, but it will do nothing for the hard-core kid. But why isn’t it done for (mathmatics) or chess club members, too? That is something that is still not clear to me.”
Other parents wonder why privacy issues stop at the schoolhouse door, but do not extend to the locker room. “These are the very students we should be praising, not harassing,” said Emma Williams of Chicago.
The answer, said school officials, is that athletes are seen as role models and that playing sports for a school is seen as a privilege.
At Zion-Benton High School, the testing policy is limited to athletes, but implemented only when there is “a reasonable suspicion” that the student is using alcohol or illegal drugs, officials said. DuPage Community High School in Villa Park uses similar language in its policy.
Some schools, like Highland Park and Deerfield, prefer an “athletic code,” which essentially is a pledge from students to refrain from using drugs, tobacco or alcohol. It must be signed by parents and students.
But one student at Highland Park High School, who asked for anonymity, called the code “a joke. . . . Kids will sign anything and parents are generally clueless about drug use.”
Even in the wake of Monday’s decision, some schools said they prefer to channel their energies into drug education, not drug testing.
At Consolidated District 230, which operates three high schools in Tinley Park, Orland Park and Palos Hills, spokesman Jim Sibley said, “We didn’t see the need to single out athletes in the past, so it’s doubtful that we will do it in the future.”
Instead, along with signing pledges, District 230 opts for awareness seminars for athletes and a summer retreat that zeroes in on the dangers of drugs and alcohol.