DRUG TESTS CONSIDERED AT SCHOOLS; STUDENT ATHLETES TARGETED.

Byline: Jim Skeen Daily News Staff Writer

High school athletes are subjected to bone-jarring tackles on the football field, collisions at home plate and battles under the basketball goal.

With all that physical stress already placed on growing bodies, what happens if illicit drugs are added to the mix? Should athletes be tested to ensure that drugs - including marijuana, cocaine or steroids - are not part of high school sports?

That's the question the Antelope Valley Union High School District's board will discuss tonight, when it considers a plan by Superintendent Robert Girolamo to start a mandatory testing program for athletes and a voluntary program for other students.

``It's a mechanism for keeping people clean,'' said board member Steve Landaker.

Landaker supports the concept of drug testing, but wants to see particulars on costs and how the program would be implemented before committing to a program for the high school district.

Noting the recent deaths of three Southern California high school athletes - none of them linked to drugs - Landaker said schools need to screen their athletes to ensure that drug-using athletes don't put others at risk.

``If you want to participate, you need to be drug-free,'' Landaker said.

The district looked at the issue nearly two years ago after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in an Oregon case that testing athletes for drugs is permissible. At that time, it was deemed too costly with the price tag estimated at $40 per student for each test, Girolamo said.

``At this point it might be feasible. I believe the costs have gone down, but I have no concrete numbers,'' Girolamo said. ``If the board is interested, we'll follow through and get quotes.''

In the 1995 Oregon case, the Supreme Court said in a 6-3 decision that traditional privacy concerns built into the Constitution are overridden by a school district's responsibility for protecting the well-being of young athletes, as well as schoolchildren in general.

``School sports are not for the bashful,'' Justice Antonin Scalia wrote. ``Students who voluntarily participate in school athletics have reason to expect intrusions upon normal rights and privileges, including privacy.''

Several Southern California high schools used voluntary drug-testing programs before the ruling, but none has instituted mandatory tests, a sports official said.

``As far as I know no one has mandatory testing,'' said Margaret Davis, associate executive director for the California Interscholastic Federation, the sanctioning body for high school sports in the state.

Girolamo is proposing that testing of athletes be conducted at the beginning of the season and then randomly during the season. The tests would look for mind-altering drugs such as marijuana and LSD and body-altering substances such as steroids, officials said.

For the first offense, the student would be given the choice of entering an assistance program with follow-up testing for each of the following six weeks or being suspended from athletics.

For the next offense, the student would be suspended from athletics for the remainder of the season. The athlete would have to be retested before the beginning of the following sports season before being readmitted to a sports program.

The proposal also suggests a voluntary program for nonathletes. Students who have their parents' permission could be randomly tested during the year. The results of the testing would be made available only to the student and the student's parents.

If a student fails a test, the parents would be notified and referred to a counselor.

Board member Sue Stokka supports the idea of testing athletes for the same reasons as Landaker. However, Stokka said the voluntary program for other students would be ``useless'' since only nondrug-using students would be likely to volunteer.

``The ones you want to find won't be volunteering,'' Stokka said.