DISTRICT DUMPS DRUG DOGS

In an about-face, Sausalito Marin City School District trustees
killed a drug-sniffing dog program that critics had assailed as
ill-conceived, clumsily implemented and an assault on students'
rights. District trustees ended the controversial proposal Thursday
night in the same fashion they approved it last November: by a unanimous vote.

"You are never to have these dogs come back for any reason,"
mathematics teacher David Wetzel admonished the board. Wetzel
teaches at Tamalpais High School and at Martin Luther King Jr.
Academy middle school in Marin City, where the dogs were slated for
monthly visits.

His remarks were tinged with emotion, as were those of other
speakers, many of whom since early this year have demanded the board
reverse its decision that would have had Interquest Detection
Canines of Houston perform monthly inspections at a cost of $2,500.

District spokesman Martin Brown said the money, under terms of the
contract, already has been paid to the Houston firm.

Wetzel said the board would have been better served had the district
employed community members "who could use the money" to inspect the
campus for signs of drug use, such as a syringe Trustee Tom Clark
said he found on the outskirts of the six-acre campus.

"If a child had fallen on the syringe," said Clark prior to Wetzel's
remarks, "(the child) could have died of AIDS."

Because of this, Clark's motion to end the dog program was coupled
with another to encourage local law enforcement agencies to more
aggressively enforce state laws and prosecute anyone caught using
drugs within 1,000 feet of a school.

Trustee Whitney Hoyt summed up the sentiment of many, saying she
agreed with comments during the meeting that "sniffing doesn't educate."

The program was suspended in March after only one visit to the
campus in January by the dogs to introduce the animals to the
students. No inspection was performed.

Trustees directed staffers to study the use of dogs along with other
possible ways to prevent drug use at a campus where all trustees
agreed there was no evidence of drug use.

Trustees maintained the dogs were simply a "tool" to prove they were
right and to mollify any concerns in the community that there was
anything afoot in the school - such as drug use - that could prevent
students from succeeding.

Mary Buttler, who until recently was the interim superintendent of
the district, headed the study and formed several focus groups
representing parents, community members, students and staff. Each,
meeting separately, came back with the same No. 1 recommendation:
"no drug dogs."

Parents and community leaders protested the program after officials
announced in January that dogs would be visiting the middle school
just a couple of days before the actual visit - they said that was
the first they had heard of the program. The controversy grew after
the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People demanded the program be ended.

ACLU leaders said the program violated students' constitutional
protections against unreasonable search and seizure, based largely
on the trustees' contention that there was no evidence of drug use at MLK.

Some trustees said Thursday the program was not without its merits.
It prompted parents and community members to become involved with
the district, something they claim has not been the norm. "If
anything came out of this dog issue it was to stimulate more
parental and community involvement," said Trustee Robert Fisher.
"It has helped to bring the community to us."