Students Won’t Be Informed of Locker Searches
No drugs were found in student lockers during the lockdown drill yesterday, during which a K-9 unit was tasked with checking the school for contraband. However the police dogs barked at 28 lockers and 84 were searched.
“We would only talk to a student if the student broke any school rules,” Principal Michael Griffith said. “The schools owns the lockers and if we have probable cause, we can search lockers without any notification.”
Griffith also said that no parents had complained about the searches “so far” and that there would be another unannounced lockdown drill this year. The district decided last year that there would be two lockdown drills this school year.
Griffith does not have an issue with the lack of future notification to parents about lockdown drills. “We do not notify parents of tornado or fire drills [either],” he said.
District Treasurer Bryan Christman wrote via email that under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, the district is not allowed to release the 84 unique locker numbers searched during Wednesday’s drill.
Print Editor in Chief Shane McKeon contributed reporting to this story.
