SCHOOL OFFICIALS DEFEND CALL TO REMOVE DEPUTIES

LUMBERTON - Robeson County school officials are defending their
decision to remove sheriff's deputies and drug-sniffing dogs from
Magnolia Elementary School on Feb. 25, saying that "informal protocol"
was not followed by the principal. They also say they were never told
that a 13-year-old student was allegedly drugged at the school.

Superintendent Johnny Hunt said that Principal Robert Locklear failed
to inform the central office that he had invited detectives to the
school after marijuana was found in a school bathroom five weeks ago.

"It is known that we at central office should be involved in a
decision like this," Hunt said Friday after inviting a reporter for
The Robesonian to meet with school officials to discuss an article
that appeared in the newspaper on Thursday. "It's possible that Mr.
Locklear wasn't aware of the protocol."

Hunt said there is no written policy.

Locklear said he assumed that his assistant principal contacted the
central office.

"We scheduled the Sheriff's Office to come out after we found a
marijuana cigarette in a boy's bathroom about five weeks ago," said
Locklear, the school's principal for four months. "I invited the
Sheriff's Office to come with the dogs to the school. We want to make
sure our school is safe."

Hunt rejected any notion that the school is "drug infested."

On Friday, Lt. Kathy Torre of the Sheriff's Office Juvenile Division
said that the school does have "issues" with drugs, gang activity and
fights. She said she recently spent half a day talking to Magnolia
students about those issues as a guest speaker.

She said she hopes that deputies and drug-sniffing dogs are allowed to
return to the school in the future.

Hunt said that he became aware of the deputies and the drug-sniffing
dogs being on campus when a parent called the central office. He then
asked Walter Jackson, assistant superintendent of Administration and
Technology, to call Locklear and tell him to have the dogs removed.

"And it was a really cold day that day," said Linda Emanuel, assistant
superintendent of Instruction and Curriculum. The temperature reached
about 53 degrees that day, according to weather reports.

Locklear said the deputies were not on the campus because of
allegations that a seventh-grade student was slipped Ecstasy on Feb.
13 during a Valentine's Day event.

"The detectives were invited to the school after the marijuana
incident five weeks ago," Locklear said. "They didn't come until
nearly two weeks after the 13-year-old went to the hospital."

Hunt said he only became aware of the alleged incident concerning
Ecstasy when he read about it in The Robesonian.

"We never heard anything about this Ecstasy thing," Hunt said. "We
were shocked. The truth is we don't even know if this child was really
drugged."

Torre was in the emergency room with doctors when the student was
examined.

"The doctor said that the pill that was described by the student and
the symptoms that the child had led him to believe that it was
Ecstasy," Torre said.

A toxicology report, which was obtained by The Robesonian, found no
evidence of alcohol, cold medicine, cocaine, marijuana or prescription
pills. It did not mention Ecstasy.

The child's mother, Lisa Locklear, said: "My son described pills that
he had seen around the school that some students were passing out."
She said the doctor said the pills sounded like they were Ecstasy.

Locklear said that she gave the six-page toxicology report to the
school. Locklear, the principal, said he didn't know anything about
the document.

The principal said that the boy's behavior became a concern during the
Valentine's Day party. After school officials contacted the child's
mother, she took him to Southeastern Regional Medical Center. Mr.
Locklear said that the school did not call 911 because the nurse did
not report any abnormalities with the student's vital signs.