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A lawsuit challenging searches by drugsniffing dogs at
Galt High School won't for the time being affect the
program or similar ones in the Sacramento region, officials
said.

Galt Superintendent Ron Huebert says he intends to
continue to use dogs "to provide a safe and drugfree
environment." And officials in Elk Grove, El Dorado County
and San Juan school districts say their earlystage
programs already are deterring students from bringing drugs
on campus. "The students have a right to expect that and so
do the parents," said Huebert, noting that under California
law there is zero tolerance for drugs on campus.

A lawsuit filed Wednesday by the American Civil
Liberties Union and associated attorneys on behalf of two
Galt High students and a teacher alleges the random
searches by drugsniffing dogs violate students'
constitutional protections from unreasonable search and
seizure.

None of the other school districts has faced a legal
challenge over the use of dogs. Officials said such visits
by the specially trained dogs are random and relatively
infrequent. The programs take a similar approach, allowing
dogs to sniff out only locker areas, or in some cases,
empty classrooms or restrooms.

In the Elk Grove Unified School District, the program
started a year and a half ago at Florin High and is being
studied for expansion to other high schools, according to
Superintendent David Gordon.

"Our conclusion was that it seems to be a deterrent,"
Gordon said.

At Florin High, the random sniffing of locker areas
every two or three months without students present
has netted no drugs. As in other places, Florin High
officials ran a long parent education program before
bringing the drugsniffing dogs on campus, Gordon noted.

Attorneys in the Galt action contend that the use of
dogs on campus against "suspicionless" students leaps
beyond constitutional boundaries and wouldn't be tolerated
in the adult community. But in other communities, parents
and students have told school officials, in effect, that
they won't tolerate drugs on campus.

"We do believe that our policy is legally sound, and
that it's getting overwhelming support of parents, staff
and students," said Vicki Barber, superintendent of El
Dorado County schools, where the drugdog plan for middle
and high schools in the western part of the county was
announced last fall. The middle and high schools at the
south shore of Lake Tahoe also in El Dorado County
have had the program for nine years.

"Some of our student leaders have told us that many
students are no longer bringing drugs to school, and I do
believe we've had a significant change on our campuses. But
to be fair we are in the infancy of this program and we
don't have the kind of track record that we'd like," she
said.

The dogs are taken to El Dorado County middle schools at
least once a month and to high schools at least twice
monthly. The dogs sniff locker areas, unoccupied classrooms
and empty restrooms.

Ammunition for the campus war on drugs has come from
many sources, but among the most explosive was a 1996
federal study showing drug use among 12 to 17yearolds
had doubled.

The San Juan Unified School District program is just
starting and only one campus, Pasteur Middle School, has
been visited by a drugsniffing dog. No drugs were found,
according to district spokeswoman Christine Olson.

"It's been popular, and the parents like our commitment
to keeping the schools drugfree," Olson said.
Demonstrations for students and parents have shown just how
sensitive the dogs' sensory powers are, she noted.

"We can smell a cake baking," Olson said. "The dog can
smell the individual ingredients.

"Dogs don't search. They sniff the air. The way I
understand it, there's no right of privacy to the air. Dogs
have been used in airports for a long time."

At Galt High, Huebert noted, "We're not trying to
violate anybody's civil rights and we don't intentionally
hurt anybody." The dogs are only used to inspect inanimate
objects such as jackets, hats, bags, lockers, purses and
cars, he said.

The federal court suit against the district's board,
Huebert and the top three administrators of the high school
claims the two students who are plaintiffs were forced in
February to submit to physical searches by the principal
and a vice principal. One of the students had refused to
allow his personal belongings to be sniffed and the other
owned a jacket that a dog had alerted on, according to the
suit.

The searches turned up no contraband.