Legal Question Of The Week - 3/13/13
By Attorney Thomas B. Mooney, Neag School of Education, University of Connecticut
The "Legal Question of the Week" is a regular feature of the CAS Weekly NewsBlast. We invite readers to submit short, law-related questions of practical concern to school administrators. Each week, we will select a question and publish an answer. While these answers cannot be considered formal legal advice, they may be of help to you and your colleagues. We may edit your questions, and we will not identify the authors. Please submit your questions to:legalmailbag@casciac.org .
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Dear Legal Mailbag:
According to students and faculty, I have a drug problem in my school. I receive tips from different people, and at times, a teacher will inform me that a student is behaving in ways that suggest some form of substance abuse. In these cases, I feel that I have reasonable suspicion, and I conduct searches of bags, lockers, and pockets of that student. Despite my efforts, I have not come up with any evidence of illegal substances or alcohol. Now the rumor is that students are eating marijuana-laced baked goods during the school day, which would be why I haven’t discovered anything. According to the police, there is no way to “test” a sample of the food item to see if it is in fact laced with drugs. In addition, I can see no way to satisfy the reasonable suspicion requirement in the case of food, since erratic behavior would only be observed after ingestion, and thus there would be no food to test in the first place. Am I correct in concluding that the only way to stop this problem, assuming that it does in fact exist, is to bring in K-9 units to detect the drugs? If so, are the dogs allowed to sniff backpacks at random, without singling any student out? For example, would it be OK if students in a classroom were asked to leave their belongings and temporarily report to the auditorium and then have the trained dogs sniff all the bags in the empty classroom?
Signed,
Running to Keep Up
Dear Running:
Wow. Legal Mailbag feels as though I am taking the semester final. Let me start by answering a different question. The best source of information about student misconduct is the students themselves. Do whatever you can to promote cooperation between students and teachers and administrators as you work together to address this serious problem. If you have a tip from a student, you will have reasonable cause to search the student identified and, where appropriate, use drug-sniffing dogs to find the drugs. Without a tip, the situation is not as clear. Wholesale sniffing of backpacks by trained dogs might be defensible if there is indeed a significant drug problem that you cannot otherwise address. The minimal intrusion into student privacy interests would be arguably outweighed by the need to find the drug-laced food. But the parent response may be vehement. And the administrative burdens of disrupting the day to conduct such “sniffs” and of assuring that students’ backpacks are safe would be significant. Do what you need to do, but your plan sounds like a last resort.
The "Legal Question of the Week" is a regular feature of the CAS Weekly NewsBlast. We invite readers to submit short, law-related questions of practical concern to school administrators. Each week, we will select a question and publish an answer. While these answers cannot be considered formal legal advice, they may be of help to you and your colleagues. We may edit your questions, and we will not identify the authors. Please submit your questions to:
_____________________________________________________________________________
Dear Legal Mailbag:
According to students and faculty, I have a drug problem in my school. I receive tips from different people, and at times, a teacher will inform me that a student is behaving in ways that suggest some form of substance abuse. In these cases, I feel that I have reasonable suspicion, and I conduct searches of bags, lockers, and pockets of that student. Despite my efforts, I have not come up with any evidence of illegal substances or alcohol. Now the rumor is that students are eating marijuana-laced baked goods during the school day, which would be why I haven’t discovered anything. According to the police, there is no way to “test” a sample of the food item to see if it is in fact laced with drugs. In addition, I can see no way to satisfy the reasonable suspicion requirement in the case of food, since erratic behavior would only be observed after ingestion, and thus there would be no food to test in the first place. Am I correct in concluding that the only way to stop this problem, assuming that it does in fact exist, is to bring in K-9 units to detect the drugs? If so, are the dogs allowed to sniff backpacks at random, without singling any student out? For example, would it be OK if students in a classroom were asked to leave their belongings and temporarily report to the auditorium and then have the trained dogs sniff all the bags in the empty classroom?
Signed,
Running to Keep Up
Dear Running:
Wow. Legal Mailbag feels as though I am taking the semester final. Let me start by answering a different question. The best source of information about student misconduct is the students themselves. Do whatever you can to promote cooperation between students and teachers and administrators as you work together to address this serious problem. If you have a tip from a student, you will have reasonable cause to search the student identified and, where appropriate, use drug-sniffing dogs to find the drugs. Without a tip, the situation is not as clear. Wholesale sniffing of backpacks by trained dogs might be defensible if there is indeed a significant drug problem that you cannot otherwise address. The minimal intrusion into student privacy interests would be arguably outweighed by the need to find the drug-laced food. But the parent response may be vehement. And the administrative burdens of disrupting the day to conduct such “sniffs” and of assuring that students’ backpacks are safe would be significant. Do what you need to do, but your plan sounds like a last resort.