SANTA BARBARA – The Santa Barbara Unified School District Board approved drug detection dogs to visit high school campuses as a deterrent.
The district has been discussing the preventative measure since July and decided on to approve the program at the board meeting on Tuesday.
"The goal is prevention obviously," said Marlin Sumpter, student services director. "We'd prefer not to have any drugs at all but we'd be remiss in sticking our head in the ground and say it's not an issue so we hopefully will be able to curb the issue more by having a program like this in place."
In the 2010-2011 school year, a survey was conducted to see how many students have used some type of controlled substance. More than 900 9th through 12th graders said they either drank alcohol, used marijuana or some other type of drug on school property at least once in the month prior to the survey.
The board decided on Interquest Detection Canines. More than 1,200 schools use their services. For $410 per visit, the dogs and their handlers will randomly go to classrooms, lockers and other parts of the school grounds.
"And the dogs are passive alert dogs which means they will sit on alert when they sniff something that they are trained to smell," said Sumpter.
Four freshmen boys at Santa Barbara High School told your Central Coast News that the drug detection dogs will be fair and it will help prevent drugs from coming on campus.
The program will start next school year and only the high schools in the district will be visited by the dogs.
For more information in Interquest Detection Canines, click here: http://www.interquestk9.com/index.htm
