TOWAMENCIN- The North Penn School District is implementing random drug dog searches as recently approved by the school board. North Penn High School Principal Dr. Todd Bauer said the searches are one way that the high school is responding to a rise in disciplinary situations that occurred last year.

“It’s no secret that we had a lot of challenging situations last year. There was an increase in the number of fights and serious discipline incidents, and we wanted to find a myriad of ways of addressing that- one of them was to incorporate drug searches,” said Bauer.

Previous experience with random searches in other districts led Bauer to consider its possibility at North Penn.

“I do have experience with [dog searches] because we did it in my last two districts. Souderton and Central Bucks both conduct searches,” said Bauer.

Once a school decides to pursue random searches, many things have to be done before it can actually take place.

“In order to do random searches in a high school, the precedent is set that you need to prove that there is an issue, and you need to notify people that they are subject to random searches,” Bauer noted, “That includes parents, kids, faculty, and staff.”

Now that North Penn has notified the right people, the searches could happen any day. In the meantime, Bauer wants students to know that the searches are not meant to invade privacy or get people in trouble.

“It’s a balance between our responsibility to maintain a safe school environment and a student’s right to privacy. The objective is not to catch someone, it’s to prevent [illegal substances] from coming in the door in the first place,” said Bauer, “If students know that classrooms are subject to random drug searches, they would be foolish to bring it into school. I would like to think that none of our students do that anyway, but I’m also a realist.”

The dogs are trained to sniff out narcotics, marijuana, explosives, alcohol, and other medicines. Bauer said one common question students have is whether or not the dogs can sniff pain medicine. His answer is that you are not allowed to carry medication during the school day anyway.

“Sometimes when a search is conducted, a student will say ‘Oh, it’s just Advil’. Well, you are not allowed to have any medicine on you during the school day- it doesn’t matter if it’s a vitamin. School administrators and teachers shouldn’t have to play ‘guess that pill’, it is all supposed to go through the nurse,” said Bauer.

Searches at the high school will include classrooms, students’ belongings, and the parking lot. For classroom searches, students will be asked to leave their belongings in the classroom and step outside. From there, the dog will survey the room sniffing desks and backpacks. As for the parking lot, one section will be randomly chosen to be searched.

“A dog has to hit on a spot twice for us to know it is probably not a false positive. We then escort the student to my office, explain the process, search the belongings, and if we find something, we would call the police,” Bauer explained.

Since the dogs are not directly searching students themselves, it is common for students to think that they if they keep substances in their pockets, they won’t be caught.

“A lot of students think that if they keep the substances with them when they walk outside, the dogs won’t know. That’s not true. I have had plenty of dogs hit on just the seat itself because a student with an illegal substance sat on the seat beforehand,” said Bauer.

“The dogs are unbelievably sensitive. The year before I came to North Penn, I was conducting a search in an AP class, and it was a student who had never been in any trouble whatsoever that was having his bag searched by the dog. He was so terribly nervous, and it turns out that he had a banana in his backpack that had been there for weeks. It was fermenting, so it smelled like alcohol,” said Bauer.

North Penn is planning to have six searches during the 2017-2018 school year.

“The hope is that kids won’t bring illegal substances into school, and that they will make smart choices outside of school as well,” added Bauer.