Friday, Jun. 27, 2008

7 GCISD Students Tested Positive for Marijuana

By Scott Price

Staff Writer

Grapevine-Colleyville school district released its annual report this month on the district’s random drug-testing program. Officials said they believe that the three-year-old program is deterring drug use among students.

Seven students tested positive for marijuana this past school year. Four of those were at Grapevine High, and three were at Colleyville Heritage.

That is up from the four students who tested positive for marijuana in 2006-2007. Eight students tested positive for marijuana in 2005-2006, the first year of the program.

There were no positives for cocaine. There were two positives for cocaine the previous year, and one positive for cocaine the first year.

There was also a positive last year for anti-anxiety drugs.

Steve Trachier, executive director of administration for GCISD, said there have been no positive tests for steroids in the three years of the program.

The GCISD program randomly tests students who participate in any extracurricular activities, from band to football. "We can’t go and hand-pick kids or it is not random," Trachier said.

"I think you know that the drug of choice in high school is alcohol, but that is difficult to test for," Trachier said.

"We still believe it is a worthy program," he said. "It still gives students another reason to say no. Our goal is to not catch kids. It is to get them to say no."

Trachier said his son was selected for drug testing, and he was happy his son was randomly selected.

GCISD board members Lisa Hall and Charlie Warner both said their children were randomly selected to be tested for drugs.

"My son got tested this year," Warner said. "I have to tell you, that blows through the high school. When the testing is done, they know who was tested."

There were 403 students tested the first year, 2005-2006. In 2006-2007, there were 561 students tested. And this past school year there were 419 students tested.

Trachier said the district planned to do more testing, but the testing contractors got caught in traffic on one of the testing days.

Trachier said students randomly selected for testing are isolated in a room on the day of the test and wait to be tested. On the day the testers got held up by a major accident, the district held the students as long as they could.

"We held the students for three hours, but then we just had to let them go," he said.

Five students refused the test the first year, 2005-2006. One student refused in 2006-07, and three students refused this past school year.

"If a student refuses to test, that is considered a positive," he said.

The drug-testing program was started after nine athletes, most of them football players, admitted using steroids.

The use of steroids was brought to the district officials’ attention by Colleyville resident Lori Lewis, who found a bottle of steroids and needles in her son’s bedroom in September 2004. Lewis was told by her son that most of the football players were using steroids, so Lewis reported it to district officials. But the district officials took no action.

That is when Lewis brought her story to the Courier, which was the first to report the steroid issue at CHHS.

Trachier sent an e-mail to school officials that September terming Lewis’ allegations "unfounded." Chris Cunningham, the football coach at the time, called Lewis a "liar" and "crazy" in a Dallas Morning News article. Cunnigham later apologized.

After the nine students at CHHS admitted using steroids, GCISD trustees approved the random drug-testing program.

The University Interscholastic League in Texas administers steroid testing mandated by the state Legislature that randomly selects high school for testing.

Trachier said the state has called GCISD to ask for tips about how to administer a drug-testing program. Trachier said this shows that GCISD must be doing something right.