No high school is insulated from the drugs that cloud some teenagers' lives. School districts can do their best to educate students about the dangers of drugs, but there will be some who still will bring drugs onto school grounds to use or sell.
For them, discipline and enforcement are necessary. Drug searches are part of that process.
Unfortunately, that element has been missing from Monroe High School for a while - for about six years, according to MHS Principal Mark Burandt; at most three years, according to a reader's comment on the Times' Web site. However long it's actually been, it's been enough time that parents have called the newspaper over the past few months to complain that the district doesn't do drug searches and is ignoring drug problems on its properties.
So it was somewhat surprising to receive news Tuesday that drug sweeps had just been conducted by law enforcement personnel using drug-sniffing dogs at both Monroe High School and the Monroe Alternative Charter School. It was an encouraging move for the district, albeit with a few steps to avoid or revise in the future.
First-year Superintendent Larry Brown deserves credit for this change. Apparently, discussions began this past fall about conducting searches, culminating in Tuesday's sweeps. One student was arrested after marijuana and paraphernalia were found in a vehicle in the school's parking lot.
Which leads to one of the most frequent criticisms of the district since the search - that the search included the parking lot at the charter school but not at the high school. Monroe Police Chief Fred Kelley said the district requested the parking lot search at the charter school, but not at the high school. He also said it's logistically difficult to do such a search with the dogs in the MHS parking lot. Brown said it's his understanding the dogs can only work so long before they get fatigued, so they requested only a search of lockers at the high school.
We don't believe the discrepancy brings into question issues of fairness between the two school searches, as some Times' readers have said. But it's fair to say the search at the high school was incomplete, and thus not as effective as it could have been. Future drug searches at the high school should include the parking lot - even if vehicle and locker searches are done on different days.
The other claim made by some readers is that students knew of the search before it took place. The drug search was conducted during an annual lockdown drill at the schools.
School administrators insist students shouldn't have known the time and date of either the drug sweeps or lockdown drills. "I don't know what the students knew," said Brown, who said even the school board wasn't aware of the exact time the searches would happen, though it knew they would be occurring.
School district administrators should look into whether students were tipped off, and if so try to find out by whom. They should report back to the school board, and the public, what they find.
Burandt said the district may begin holding drug searches more often. It should, with a goal of being "a little more diligent, a little more consistent," as Burandt said.
Diligence would include searching cars, and making sure students aren't tipped off.
For them, discipline and enforcement are necessary. Drug searches are part of that process.
Unfortunately, that element has been missing from Monroe High School for a while - for about six years, according to MHS Principal Mark Burandt; at most three years, according to a reader's comment on the Times' Web site. However long it's actually been, it's been enough time that parents have called the newspaper over the past few months to complain that the district doesn't do drug searches and is ignoring drug problems on its properties.
So it was somewhat surprising to receive news Tuesday that drug sweeps had just been conducted by law enforcement personnel using drug-sniffing dogs at both Monroe High School and the Monroe Alternative Charter School. It was an encouraging move for the district, albeit with a few steps to avoid or revise in the future.
First-year Superintendent Larry Brown deserves credit for this change. Apparently, discussions began this past fall about conducting searches, culminating in Tuesday's sweeps. One student was arrested after marijuana and paraphernalia were found in a vehicle in the school's parking lot.
Which leads to one of the most frequent criticisms of the district since the search - that the search included the parking lot at the charter school but not at the high school. Monroe Police Chief Fred Kelley said the district requested the parking lot search at the charter school, but not at the high school. He also said it's logistically difficult to do such a search with the dogs in the MHS parking lot. Brown said it's his understanding the dogs can only work so long before they get fatigued, so they requested only a search of lockers at the high school.
We don't believe the discrepancy brings into question issues of fairness between the two school searches, as some Times' readers have said. But it's fair to say the search at the high school was incomplete, and thus not as effective as it could have been. Future drug searches at the high school should include the parking lot - even if vehicle and locker searches are done on different days.
The other claim made by some readers is that students knew of the search before it took place. The drug search was conducted during an annual lockdown drill at the schools.
School administrators insist students shouldn't have known the time and date of either the drug sweeps or lockdown drills. "I don't know what the students knew," said Brown, who said even the school board wasn't aware of the exact time the searches would happen, though it knew they would be occurring.
School district administrators should look into whether students were tipped off, and if so try to find out by whom. They should report back to the school board, and the public, what they find.
Burandt said the district may begin holding drug searches more often. It should, with a goal of being "a little more diligent, a little more consistent," as Burandt said.
Diligence would include searching cars, and making sure students aren't tipped off.
