SWEEP YIELDS NO DRUGS

GREAT BARRINGTON - State and local police found no drugs or evidence
of them during a surprise search yesterday at Monument Mountain
Regional High School, where officers did a sweep of lockers and
parked cars with a drug-sniffing dog. Assistant Principal Howard
Trombley said it was "excellent" that the dogs turned up no drugs,
paraphernalia or residue. Individuals were not searched. "It was
time," he said, as he watched a police officer leading a German
shepherd through the parking lot. "There has been a perception out
there. ... Some kids say there's dealing going on - we don't know if
it is at school or in the parking lot. It may be happening off campus."

"We're clean," said another school staffer yesterday. The search did
not result from a specific investigation, but the results of the
search should not leave the wrong impression, two sources said
yesterday. "Kids are being smarter, or using other ways of hiding
things, or they are not bringing it to school," said a local police
officer. "We know (the school community) isn't clean."

"I would not interpret this to mean there's no drug problem," said
Sheela Cleary, director of the South Berkshire Youth Coalition, which
surveyed local students about risky behaviors last spring.

"Having heard (the search turned up nothing), I don't think for an
instant that the problem has lessened or changed in the community,"
she said. "It's a community-wide issue, and this is what the
coalition is focusing on. ... It's no doubt there are drugs in
school; but at this day and time, there were not." Principal Marianne
R. Young could not be reached yesterday for comment, and Great
Barrington Police Chief William R. Walsh Jr. was also unavailable.
However, he was at the high school earlier with state police. A
student survey of middle and high school students at Berkshire Hills
and Southern Berkshire Regional School Districts, the results of
which were released last fall, pointed to drug activity on school
campuses. That survey and other factors spurred parents and students
to raise their concerns and comments, said Trombley.

A column written in the Berkshire Record in recent months,
purportedly authored by a student who wrote about drugs in school,
upset some students, parents, school staff and community members.

The column angered some students, who responded by making a mocking
poster, which extracted some of its most egregious accusations,
parents said. The school was "locked down" after classes began
yesterday, and parents who saw police cars outside while dropping off
their children were worried. One parent, who heard about the police
and dogs at the school, said he was distressed that an emergency was
under way inside.

"It was alarming," he said in a call to The Eagle. Another parent,
who asked not to be named, was unhappy with the "overkill" approach,
calling it a "military-like situation."

"I'm surprised that the school administration hasn't reached out to
parents to have a conversation, dialogue or something before turning
to these extreme measures," she said. "I think you should first try
to deal with it as a community."

Weekly e-mails about school activities and schedules, sent by the
principal to parents, have not made mention of concern about drugs at
school, the parent said. She said she dropped her son off late
yesterday, and he was locked out of the school until police left.

Hallway lockers were searched while school wings were "locked down."
Students were required to stay in their classrooms.

In the student survey, 25 percent of students reported being offered
drugs at school. Forty percent reported knowing of the two-year
mandatory jail term for dealing drugs on school property or within
1,000 feet of a school. The survey combined results from both school
districts and those results were made public. However, results for
the two individual schools were made available only to school administrators.

There has also been extensive publicity in the past year about
controversy sparked by a Great Barrington drug investigation that led
to the arrests of 18 young people, a number of them Monument Mountain
students or graduates. Most are facing the mandatory minimum jail
term if convicted; the charges against them stem from drug sales in
the Taconic parking lot in Great Barrington, which is within 1,000
feet of a preschool and the former Searles Middle School. Marijuana,
cocaine and illegal pills were allegedly being sold. The Monument
Mountain police sweep came about at the request of the school and the
local police department, he said. He did not rule out that some
students suspected a search at some point.

In the parking lot around 9:30 yesterday, a state police officer with
a German shepherd search dog circulated among the cars in the parking
lot where many students park for the school day.

State police who supervised yesterday's search could not be reached
to discuss the search.