EDITORIAL-Dogs off campus - San Francisoc Chronicle - March 23,2006

EDITORIAL
Dogs off campus

Thursday, March 23, 2006

THE 38 STUDENTS at Martin Luther King Jr. Academy in Marin City must be quite a reckless, rowdy bunch -- why else would the school board think it necessary to bring in drug-sniffing dogs?

In November, the trustees of the Sausalito-Marin City School District voted unanimously to authorize the use of the dogs through the Interquest Detection Canines of Houston.

The board may have been quick to make its decision, but it took its time getting the word out, waiting two months to notify parents of the new policy. By that time, it was just three days before the dogs would be brought to the school.

Confronted by an understandably outraged group of community leaders, civil-rights activists, parents and students at a public meeting on Tuesday, the board agreed to suspend the policy for two months, saying it would revisit the issue on May 18.

While the board's decision-making process highlights a serious lack of communication between its members and the community, the larger issue is the decision itself.

The trustees argue that the program will help assure the community that the school is drug-free, but admit they have no evidence of drug problems at the school.

They also argue that the program is used at other schools, such as Marin Catholic High School. That school, however, is made up of approximately 800 high-school students, not 38.

Given the fact that the school is made up of all African-American students, the board's decision only escalates the problem of perception in an area where racial tension runs high.

It doesn't take a dog to figure out that if the faculty can't detect a problem as big as drugs in a school as small as MLK, then they have real problems to focus on.

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