Junction City schools scale back breath test idea.

Byline: Karen McCowan The Register-Guard

JUNCTION CITY - High school students here can breathe a sigh of relief - and they won't have to do so into a machine.

The Junction City School Board on Monday night considered a new alcohol policy that stops far short of an earlier proposal that all students take and pass a Breathalyzer test in order to enter school dances and other activities.

Instead, board members will vote next month on more moderate policy language recommended by the Oregon School Boards Association.

It authorizes such breath screenings only when school administrators have "reasonable suspicion" of alcohol use based on a student's behavior, the odor of alcohol or other indicators.

District Superintendent Kathleen Rodden-Nord proposed the language after deciding she could not support Junction City High School Principal Kathryn Hedrick's request for permission to test all students entering dances and events.

In a preliminary discussion of that idea in December, board members said many district parents had questioned why the district would subject all students to the breath tests, rather than just those behaving suspiciously.

And a local representative of the American Civil Liberties Union charged that such a dragnet would most likely be unconstitutional for lack of probable cause or individualized suspicion because it would force students to prove their innocence.

Dori Brattain, general counsel for the Oregon School Boards Association, said her organization recommends such testing only in cases involving reasonable suspicion. And she said she knew of no other districts breath-testing all students as a condition of admission to school activities.

Rodden-Nord said Junction City generally follows OSBA policy recommendations, and she ultimately decided not to depart from that practice with the alcohol policy.

"We generally don't create many policies from the ground up," she said.

Board members appeared to support the more moderate approach in their discussion Monday night, she added.

The only revision they suggested was amending language that said students found to have used alcohol "may be suspended or expelled," she said.

The policy they vote on next month instead will say such students "shall be suspended and may be expelled."

Both she and Hedrick said the proposed policy essentially codifies the high school's long-standing practice of administering Breathalyzer tests to students who show signs of alcohol use.

Hedrick said she'd proposed testing all students because she believed it would make them less likely to drink before attending school functions. Students have complained in the past that some of their classmates get away with the practice, she said.

"I didn't make this proposal in a frivolous way," she said.

"But obviously I can live with the parameters the board sets."