HAND OVER THE CELL

Principals in at least three suburban schools have searched students'
cellphone text messages when they suspected the students of cheating,
drug abuse or other school violations.

Officials in the Douglas and Jefferson school districts say policies
that allow them to search lockers, backpacks and cars parked on
school grounds also authorize searches of cellphones when there is a
"reasonable suspicion" of wrongdoing.

"We have found instances of texts that revealed both drug
transactions . as well as pornographic material stored in pictures,"
said John Stanek, an attorney for Douglas County schools. That
includes phones with "downloaded material as well as pictures of
other unsuspecting students," he said.

But an American Civil Liberties Union attorney said the practice is a
"dramatic and unprecedented invasion of students' privacy."

"It goes far beyond anything the (U.S.) Supreme Court has
authorized," said Mark Silverstein, legal director of the ACLU of Colorado.

He said the court approved a search of a student's purse based on
"reasonable suspicion" when school authorities found her cigarettes.
"It didn't authorize a search of a student's diary to see if the
student wrote anything about violating the school's no-smoking
policy," he said.

"A new frontier"

With the popularity of multifunctional cellphones, districts across
the country are grappling with where to draw the line on searches.

"It's really a new frontier," said Edwin C. Darden, an attorney and
education policy director for Appleseed, a Washington, D.C.-based
network of law centers. "Just as we're dealing with cellphones, here
comes text messaging and here comes the pictures."

At Framingham High School in Massachusetts, administrators
experienced a public backlash last year when they proposed a policy
of searching students' text messages, said Frank Rothwell, vice principal.

"The unpopular-ness of it was clear. We received calls from the
ACLU," Rothwell said. In the end, the district ditched the plan,
deciding that information gained from cellphones was not worth the
loss of students' privacy, he said.

Allen Taggart, counsel for the Jefferson County School District, said
officials must have "reasonable suspicion" that a cellphone search
will lead to evidence that a law or policy has been violated.

"If you have some indication that they're texting somebody else in
class during an exam, in violation of the testing policy ... then you
can look," Taggart said. "If you look over a kid's shoulder and he's
playing a game, maybe you wouldn't do that."

Douglas County's Stanek likens it to a more dated practice - a
teacher intercepting notes between classmates.

A text message is like "a very complex digitized handwritten note,
and it tells a lot or it can tell very little," Stanek said.

Silverstein said he is concerned that there is no way to limit the
scope of the search. Officials could stumble across "all kinds of
text messages that have nothing to do with the suspicions," he said.

Drug activity, cheating

Principals say searches are rare but useful.

"We had an incident just within the last couple of weeks, and it did
have to do with drugs, and we did read the cellphone text messages,"
said Edna Doherty, principal of Douglas County High School in Castle
Rock. An assistant principal was able to verify that a drug sale was
attempted, she said.

"The student admitted what he had been doing," Doherty said.

Jerry Goings, principal at Highlands Ranch High School, said a search
of text messages confirmed there had been cheating on a test. And at
Castle View High School in Castle Rock, principal Lisle Gates said
school officials were able to verify that text messages were being
used "for drug purposes."

Ryan Kargoll, 16, a junior at ThunderRidge High School in Douglas
County, said he thinks cell searches invade the privacy of the sender
as well as the person receiving the text message.

"They could be reading in on messages from that kid's parents or job
or something," he said.

Cherry Creek Schools does not have a policy about probing text
messages, spokeswoman Tustin Amole said. And in Denver Public
Schools, security chief Ed Ray said the issue has not come up.

Diane Kay is among several Douglas County parents interviewed who
approve of the policy.

"My feeling is you don't need to be text messaging in class," said
Kay, who has two daughters at Highlands Ranch High School. "If you're
taking a test, leave your phone alone and you're not going to have this issue."

However, she believes a parent should be present during a search. "I
don't think they have the right to go through the text without the
parents knowing," she said. "They're still our legal responsibility."

The simplest way to avoid having a cell searched is to keep it out of
sight, said Taggart, the Jefferson County district's lawyer.

"If you're using the phone in class, you're using it at your own
risk," he said. "The principal may end up seeing stuff that you
didn't want him to see."

Staff writer Manny Gonzales and 9News contributed to this report.