On Tuesday, January 14, we held a routine campus safety check. These safety checks are completed in conjunction with our partners from K9 Proactive along with their trained search dogs and consist of a sweep of classrooms, locker rooms, offices, and the parking lot. The K9 Proactive dogs are trained to detect explosives, alcohol, gunpowder, prescription drugs that can be abused, illicit drugs, and other substances that are banned from school property. It should be noted that an “alert” on a particular backpack or car does not mean that a banned substance was present because the dogs are also able to detect a latent odor of these substances for a significant time after they have been removed from a backpack, car, or other location. In fact, our experience has been that most “alerts” do not produce any illicit or banned substances currently in a student’s possession. The parents of any student the dogs identify as possibly having come in contact with a banned substance will always be contacted for further follow-up as necessary.

The purpose of these safety sweeps is to be proactive in doing our best to keep our campus free of any banned substances. We will continue to conduct these sweeps throughout the year so students are able to come to school feeling safe and confident that we are being proactive in our attempts to provide a learning environment that is being monitored for the presence of banned substances on campus.

These safety checks are one of several mechanisms that make-up our overall campus safety plan.  Our dress code is another important safety mechanism that helps us to clearly identify our students.  The volume of students that are out of dress code has increased in recent weeks.  As a result, we have and will continue to have dress code checks periodically throughout the school day.  Those checks are a simple visual check to ensure students are indeed easily identifiable and are in compliance with the dress code policy as outlined in the student-parent handbook.  Please see the Student Parent Handbook (pages 44-45) for more specific detail regarding the dress code policy.

We greatly appreciate our students’ commitment to helping us ensure a safe campus for all.