GOING TO THE DOGS

Rocklin Schools Send The Wrong Message

In their 3-2 vote last week to allow specially trained dogs to sniff for
drugs at two high schools, the trustees of the Rocklin Unified School
District have sent two wrongheaded messages.

The first, to the surrounding community, is that Rocklin and Victory high
schools must have drug problems. Why else would a school board go to the
trouble and expense of hiring police-style dogs to nose through students'
belongings? The second, to students, is that they are all objects of
suspicion, and that the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment protections
against unreasonable search and seizure don't apply to them.

Rocklin High and Victory Continuation High are not suffering from a drug
epidemic. Superintendent Kevin Brown, who explored the use of dogs at the
request of school board member Steve Paul, says the district suspends about
eight to 10 students a year, out of 2,500, for drug use or possession.
That's relatively modest for public high schools.

Never mind that the overwhelming majority of Rocklin high school students
don't use drugs, and have never done anything to arouse suspicion. Under
the district's proposed arrangement with Texas-based Interquest Canine
Detection, they will be treated as potential criminals.

Brown says the district hasn't yet decided on the exact search method to be
used. But it will probably play out in one of two ways: Students will
either be asked to exit their classroom, leaving behind all jackets,
binders and backpacks so the dogs can sniff them, or they will be asked to
stay in the classroom, simply stepping away from their belongings while the
dogs go to work.

While it is true these methods represent less of a privacy invasion than
the approach used by Galt schools in 1997, in which two students' pockets
and socks were searched by dogs (a tactic abandoned when the students sued
the district), they still amount to a seizure of private property without
cause.

The U.S. Supreme Court has issued a series of rulings suggesting that
school officials do not have to obtain a warrant or possess probable cause
before they search students or seize their property on campus. But those
rulings, according to a 2000 opinion by California Attorney General Bill
Lockyer, also emphasize that officials must be sure "that their actions are
based on reasonable suspicion of proscribed activity, and the actions taken
in response thereto are reasonable in light of the needs and interests of
the school administrators and the justifiable privacy expectations of the
students."

Lockyer's opinion is not binding, only advisory. But it ought to have given
Rocklin school board members Paul, Mark Klang and Nate Harrison greater
pause before they embraced blanket searches of students' property with
drug-sniffing dogs. Tonight the board is scheduled to ratify its contract
with Interquest. It ought to take this chance to think better of a bad
decision.