<p>No drug sniffing dogs. They do have substance abuse testing agreements with most students, you have to agree for sports or ec’s. lockdowns usually related to another police event going on in the community. Biggest scare when 3 hunters decided to turn around in the school parking lot with their three guns in a gun rack. Seriously who would enter a school parking lot like that?? Anyway they got the school locked down and most of the county police got to meet them! No metal detectors but they do backpack searches randomly.</p>
<p>cobrat, I think you are wrong about the former size of NYC high schools. My daughter’s school now has 5500 students and it’s the largest in the city. Some of the zoned schools in Queens, extremely overcrowded with staggered sessions and 34 students per class, have almost that many students. But I don’t think there’s a high school building in the city with space for anything close to 20,000 students.</p>
<p>My daughter’s school has had no lockdowns or drug-sniffing dogs or anything like that. A student started a fire in a boy’s room a few months ago, and the students went outside until the fire was extinguished. No metal detectors either.</p>
<p>There were never any at my middle school or high school. And I went to one of those middle schools with metal detectors (political issue - the school wasn’t actually dangerous). At my high school weed was pretty open. As long as you weren’t going out of your way to show a teacher that you were selling weed no one bothered. Weed is effectively legal in the city so no one cares. </p>
<p>Romani went to PCEP which is officially 3 high schools but on the same campus with a high level of integration, if people are looking it up. I think if it was officially a single high school it would be the biggest one in the country.</p>
<p>Though my high school had a big drug problem (I personally knew three students who had OD’d on either heroin or prescription opiate pills), the district never brought in any drug dogs. I can’t remember ever going on lockdown.</p>
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<p>The zoned high schools with 20,000 were once commonplace in many areas of the city when I attended HS and before. I mentioned those large zoned high schools were later broken up. </p>
<p>Hence, why Brooklyn Tech is now the largest HS whereas back in the early-mid-'90s, Brooklyn Tech was considered one of the smaller NYC public high schools…even though its student population back then was around 7,000. </p>
<p>Most zoned “comprehensive high schools” were broken up sometime afterwards in the DOE’s orientation towards “smaller schools” which were limited in size and more specialized. The building which formerly housed my old neighborhood’s large zoned high school now houses around 4 separate smaller high schools in the same building.</p>
<p>It’s pretty easy to fact-check. Cobrat, what is the name of one of these 20,000+ high schools?</p>
<p>ETA: Yes, vlad is correct. It won’t come up on any lists but it functions as a single high school.</p>
<p>Cobrat, I don’t know what years you are talking about but I found this study of large vs small high schools in NYC in 1996 in which the largest school was described as having 4,957 students.
<a href=“Search | NYU Wagner”>Search | NYU Wagner;
<p>Yup and I’ve been going through here: [ELSI</a> - Elementary and Secondary Information System](<a href=“http://nces.ed.gov/ccd/elsi/quickFacts.aspx]ELSI”>ELSI - Elementary and Secondary Information System) without seeing a school over 5,000 (early-mid 90s).</p>
<p>I cant find anything either that indicates that NYC schools,had enrollment of over 5,000 in any building.</p>
<p>Im sure for a student however enrolled at a large school, it may have * seemed like* there were 20,000 students, especially in between classes!
;)</p>
<p>We had more K9 searches in our HS till the kids figured that beef jerky was a hit for the dogs… So, after a bunch of kids included beef jerky in their lockers as a prank of sorts and awaited the doggies, it did not work very well. They still do them a few times a year tho. </p>
<p>Lockdowns not as often, usually for imminent security threats. The school has established processes for checking in and it’s not like anyone can stroll out or in easily to begin with.</p>
<p>I do find the drug testing consent form invasive but it’s in a pack of papers that the parents get when we go to registration every July for school. If I didn’t sign it they would probably be very skeptical as to why and then my son would probably be focused on lol. I am not really worried about it but it’s a very small town (less than 6000 in the entire town) and I wouldn’t want people talking. The entire school district is less than 1500 kids and that includes our neighboring town too.</p>
<p>Our youngest son graduated last year. They had 2 lockdowns during his 4 years- one from a bomb threat and one from a shooting near the school. This is a mid-sized school (2500) in an upper-middle class suburban of LA. They also randomly used drug dogs only 1-2 X per year.</p>
<p>Our oldest D teaches at a continuation school in the next district over. It is the school that takes in kids from the entire district who are having trouble graduating from school. It includes many kids who are in gangs, those who have substance abuse issues, and some who just don’t do well in school. It is small (250), in a lower income district, and has several security guards as well as a full time police officer assigned there. They also have a permanent metal detector at the entrance. They have had several lockdowns mostly due to large fights. They routinely have drug sniffing dogs- heck, she has had a kid light up a joint in her classroom. She also has kids who are obviously under the influence in her classroom routinely. BTW, she loves her school and her kids and would choose her job over working at a regular school any day. She did part of her student teaching at a continuation school that is in a very upper income area closer to LA. She said the drug problem was much worse there as many of the kids had almost unlimited money at their fingertips.</p>
<p>Emeraldkity4, my daughter’s school has just about 5500 students this year. Every year, more students are sent by the Dept. of Education–10 years ago, there were fewer than 4000 students. Its auditorium is the largest in NYC after Radio City Music Hall, but last year graduation was in a recently completed pro basketball arena in the same neighborhood in Brooklyn.</p>
<p>The building has 9 stories of classrooms, cafeterias, gyms, labs, etc. Elevators too but most students just hoof it up and down the stairs.</p>
<p>Twice a year…
I have no opinion on the matter
It sort of seem kind of useless
Who really cares that you brought it to school?
Or actually, the better question is why don’t you just keep it at home?</p>
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<p>'cause then your parents might find it 
(and take it for themselves)</p>
<p>Not that I know of. They kind of turn a blind eye unless someone makes a specific complaint and then they make an effort to figure out what’s going on. But my son’s school is a pretty good school with good kids in general. Yes they get into the normal stuff, but they don’t have dogs or metal detectors or anything.</p>
<p>This is a little off topic, but has to do with schools overstepping their boundaries. Last year there was a junior boy that got into trouble for something he said offensive (not threatening) on Twitter, I think it was to a girl and went on and on … not a single tweet. The school regularly monitors Twitter and occasionally calls kids to the office for their behavior or words. Well This boy was put into alternative school for the remainder of the year and his entire senior year for whatever it was that he said. </p>
<p>Of course the protested the punishment and tried to get it reversed, but the principal stood firm. I heard through the grapevine that the boy said he would just drop out before he would spend his senior year in alternative and the principal said ok, thats your choice you do not have to return. So now this kid dropped out of school and is working offshore on an oil rig! Not that he wouldnt have ended up there in a year but I am shocked that this happened over offensive words on Twitter. </p>
<p>What are your thoughts on the punishment?</p>
<p>Sounds like a cyberbully who finally got busted to me.</p>
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<p>That’s news to me!</p>
<p>When did they start doing that?</p>
<p>tlc, you might want to start your own thread about this, but I agree with Consolation’s assessment.</p>
<p>I have zero problem with schools monitoring social media activity that is public (don’t be stupid enough to keep it public). If it is private and bullying, I believe the school has a right to take action to protect the safety of the student getting bullied (if needed) cyberbullying is no different from any other kind of bullying. I do not believe students should be forced to “friend” a school’s account or anything so that private activity can be monitored.</p>