<p>I received an email today, as I do 1-2 times per year, about a lockdown drill/drug search. Just wondering if it is the norm at most schools? My own HS never did anything like it.</p>
<p>This is a small portion of the email, with identifying info removed:</p>
<p>
[quote]
During todays lockdown, we also brought in K-9 units from the ______ Sheriffs Office and _____ Police Department to check all lockers and grounds at <strong><em>. These K-9 units are trained to passively detect a variety of illegal substances. The search was conducted to ensure we are providing a safe environment, and was planned weeks in advance. There was no event that precipitated this sweep. We will continue these searches in cooperation with the Sheriffs Office and the _</em></strong> Police Department at various points throughout this and future school years. I am appreciative of their willingness to assist our efforts. </p>
<p>I cannot release specific information about students involved, but I can share that while the canines did alert to several vehicles and lockers, no illegal substances were found. I am thankful and proud that the students at ____ have made the conscious choice today to keep illegal substances out of our school.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>It goes on to say this is an opportunity to talk to your kids about drugs, etc etc.</p>
<p>I have mixed feelings about it. I guess I am mostly positive - if my own kids brought drugs to school I'd want to know, as I expect them not to. </p>
<p>But there's something a little Orwellian to me about drug dog teams checking lockers and cars while kids are locked down in classrooms...</p>
<p>No lockdowns but yes to drug dogs for about a decade. They have for the past decade brought the drug sniffing dogs through the parking lot and past the lockers. A funny thing occurred around 2005 or so when my oldest was in high school and the students in his class “protested” and went to the school board because they didn’t bring the drug dogs through the high school faculty parking lot. Kids won. Now once a year unannounced they do all the parking lots and the lockers including the teacher and administration lots.</p>
<p>Never heard of such a drill when I was in high school (back when crime was higher than it is today, although fear of crime may be higher today). Also, when I read about such things, it is usually because there may be armed and dangerous criminal suspects in the area, not because of a drug search.</p>
<p>My kids schools never did this, but we do have to sign a consent to random drug testing during the school year. I have always signed it, I am not sure what would happen if you refused it. But there has never been lock downs or dogs brought into the school. I am sure there have been drugs in the school, but I suppose they dont think its such an overwhelming problem that they need to bring the police into the school. Well above the one safety officer that is there all day long.</p>
<p>Happened at my high school school about once to twice a year (K9 sweeps both in lockers, between buildings, and around cars which necessitated a lockdown while it was being conducted). AFAIK though there was no email to parents. Generally, it was from someone calling in a tip or something. We had over 6,000 students though so lots of chances for tips to come in.</p>
<p>My hs was a very, very safe school in a middle to upper middle class city. (With the exception of one of our students participating in a thrill kill, there wasn’t really a need for the searches… I think it made the parents feel like our obnoxious amount of security guards were worth the price)</p>
<p>They’ve had lockdowns, but only when something was amiss, such as a major fight or a student bringing a gun to school. I don’t think they’ve ever had K-9s or locker searches, though.</p>
<p>6000 students??? WOW! That is a mind boggling number to me! My oldest daughter went to an all girls school 7-12th grade with about 300 kids and my other 2 go/went to a coed school with less than 600 kids (9-12th grade). I have not decided yet where my youngest will go - she is only in 2nd grade, but I am leaning towards the all girls school again, but she may not want to go! My 18 year old chose the public school for the dance team and my son chose the public school after only 1 year in the all boys school lol It was not for him :)</p>
<p>We had these in my high school over ten years ago. Best story was when the dogs were able to detect a backpack stowed by a student in the ceiling of the bathroom. Turns out he left his student ID in the bag, too.</p>
<p>Our HS presents it as a practice lockdown first - “in case of medical emergency and halls need to be clear” or “a dangerous person loose nearby”, and then sort of presents the K9 searches as a “why not since we’re in lockdown anyway”.</p>
<p>My kids say the real reason for the lockdown is the drug search.</p>
<p>There was one locker search at my son’s private school. There had been a tip. The school has a zero tolerance policy and drugs and/or alcohol found is cause for immediate expulsion. </p>
<p>That feels really invasive to me. I might have to object to that if our school did it. Not because I think D would ever test positive but just…yuck.</p>
<p>I agree with OH. I wouldn’t have even given that form to my parents, and if I did, they wouldn’t have signed it. Not because I did drugs, but because that’s way above the school’s role IMO.</p>
<p>While we had school security guards and metal detectors(NYC), there were never K9 searches and the only lockdowns we had were due to events like the '93 terrorist attack at the World Trade Center as my HS is located a few blocks away. </p>
<p>Heard there have been more lockdowns since due to 9-11 and concerns over more terrorist attacks. </p>
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<p>That would have been considered on the small side for an average NYC high school back when I attended during the early-mid '90s. Many neighborhood high schools had as many as 20,000 students before they started breaking them up or closing them down. </p>
<p>Incidentally, my HS was around 3000 when I attended which was considered tiny by NYC public school standards back then.</p>
<p>The public high school my daughter first attended did have the drug-sniffing dogs on occasion. </p>
<p>At the private school where she graduated and where my son now attends, there haven’t been any dogs, but they’ve had a couple of lock-down drills and two real lockdowns. The first was when a dude robbed a bank at gunpoint and then came running through the woods bordering the school; the second was when the Marathon bombers were on the loose. They canceled senior off-campus privileges and all outdoor sports, then kept all the kids indoors every day from drop-off to pick-up until the dude was caught.</p>
<p>Our HS does do lockdown drills beyond this type - mainly, it seems to me, for a school shooter scenario, or as happened in a nearby district last year, an escapee from a jail who was seen in the area.</p>
<p>I’m guessing these drills mainly became prevalent after Columbine. I believe that was the case in our schools anyway.</p>
<p>However, that’s a different thing than the drug dogs. I believe the schools can search a student car if a dog alerts…I wonder what would happen if a dog alerted on a parent, teacher or other visitor’s car?</p>
<p>That happened at my high school, OHmom. We had a search once my senior year and a large amount of marijuana was found in the car of a construction worker who was working on remodeling one of the buildings. I don’t recall ever hearing what happened to him but the principal came over the PA at the end of the day saying that we had done well and said something about how the construction worker “was probably still running in the woods.” I believe a hunting knife or something was found in a teacher’s car and there was some drama about it that was ultimately resolved… I don’t remember the whole story anymore. But, it happens and is handled in about the way you would expect.</p>
<p>I graduated HS in 2007 and I had a handful of lockdown drills in my day… I remember almost one every year if not every year in high school. I was a senior when the Virginia Tech massacre occurred. I might remember some lockdowns in earlier school years as a result of Columbine, but I was so little then I think we did those drills without them really telling us what they were for…</p>
<p>Drug dogs are on our high school campus periodically. We have campus cops that are there all the time. I only remember the one major search, and they did search cars in both the student and faculty lots.</p>
<p>Ema, were you there when the physics teacher walked between buildings with a “rifle” (that, IIRC, ended up being something completely different)?</p>
<p>I dont remember notifications, I seem to remember a lockdown during the WTO protests when my oldest was in high school & my youngest who attended an inner city high school experienced lockdowns when a gunman was in the area-( & as students have been assaulted/killed in close proximity to the school- lockdowns are prudent) but not as far as I know for drug searches.
The public school is about 1600 students, the private about 200.( now)</p>
<p>Ever since we got a new principal there have been 4-5 lock downs a year during which they bring in dogs. I live in a rural area with about 300 kids at my hs. I remember that during the first one a ton of people got caught. Evidently not many people learned their lesson and got caught again later in the year. The only problem I have with it is when a dog signals they’ve found something in the parking lot everyone parked in that vicinity gets pulled out of class and made to open their car to be searched (of its unlocked they go ahead and do it without telling you)… if I were to be ever called out I would make sure to have a parent present while they search. However since I am not involved in such activities I don’t worry much about it:)</p>