HOW TO SEARCH IN SENSITIVE SCHOOLS

Kids are owed safety in the schools, even if it costs a little privacy

Forget about that Rough Trade song of the early 1980s. High School
Confidential, the Supreme Court of Canada says, is a legal fiction.

A new ruling by the court has given schools wide but appropriate power to
conduct spot searches of students. "A reasonable expectation of privacy,"
Mr. Justice Peter Cory wrote in the 8-1 majority decision, "is lower for a
student attending school than it would be in other circumstances, because
students know that teachers and school authorities are responsible for
maintaining order and discipline in the school."

Students are individuals, yes, but they are also minors, and schools guard
their interests as much as they serve them. The key phrase here is
"reasonable expectation." That should be a guide for schools as they try to
devise a policy on when and how to conduct these searches.

Students have a right to know the purpose of the searches -- notably, what
items or substances the schools are seeking if they ever look through
lockers and pockets.

At the beginning of the academic year, students could be told that school
officials are liable to exercise their right to search for drugs, weapons
and other items specifically designated as threats.

Students are thus made aware of the risks of carrying these items into the
school in the first place.

And students are protected from searches in which school officials say
they're looking for bombs, but really are trying to hunt down overdue
library books.

Schools should also establish fairly solid criteria to determine the
grounds for conducting a search.

This is where the obligation to be "reasonable" will be tested.

Luckily, there are still not many schools in Canada where drugs and weapons
are a major problem.

But at these troubled institutions, the breadth of permissible searches
will necessarily be more sweeping.

In the majority of schools, the threshold will have to be set higher.

In many if not most schools, there may be no need for any searches whatsoever.

All schools thinking of instituting a policy on searches should remember:
the process always goes more smoothly when neither the searcher nor the
person being searched has anything to hide.

Checked-by: Pat Dolan