DRUG POLICY STILL A WORK IN PROGRESS

Work will continue on Abbotsford school district's new illegal drugs policy
in the fall, after the chairman of the policy committee felt the policy was
not quite ready to send out for public input.

"We were very rushed in preparing it," Don Szostak said. "I'd prefer not to
send it out at this point . . . (and) give it the proper time it needs."

Earlier, the school board had requested that the policy be ready to be sent
out for stakeholder input by the last meeting of the school year.

The policy will now come back to the board on Oct. 4.

Szostak also noted there are some legal considerations with the policy.

In a letter to the school board, the office of the information and privacy
commissioner urged the board to find solutions to the drug issue that have
the "least possible impact on privacy.

"From a privacy perspective, the use of drug detection dogs qualifies as a
surveillance tool. Much in the same way as video surveillance, these
searches are directed at all students, innocent as well as guilty," wrote
information and privacy commissioner David Loukidelis.

"Surveillance tools of any kind should be a very last resort and should
only be adopted where all alternatives have been tried and found to fail."

He noted that the policy should cover issues such as proper notice,
security for data collected and rules for retention of personal information.

The B.C. Civil Liberties Association wrote the school board this month to
register its concern.

"We are concerned about the proposed drug policy due to the role that it
would create for school administrators in criminalizing drug use and acting
as law enforcers rather than educators," president John Russell wrote.

He also raised questions about whether dogs would be brought into schools
without reasonable grounds for suspecting a breach of school rules, wanted
justificatio n for the "extreme" measure, and worried about creating an
unsettling "high security" atmosphere in schools.

"The well-being of students and staff traumatized by previous encounters
with dogs should be seriously considered before adopting such a policy,"
Russell wrote.

He also highlighted the 98 per cent accuracy of dog/handler teams, which
would produce an "unreasonable" amount of false alerts.

Earlier this year, the school board voted to establish a policy to allow
regular, random drug searches by drug sniffing dogs, and signed a
memorandum of understanding to establish drug free zones.