Hays High recently had drug dogs visit the school. The Kansas Highway Patrol was involved and Public Information Officer Tod Hileman told Hays Post, “We will go on request of school administration. It’s just routine, to check that if there are any bad elements in the school, we want to let them know that the drug dogs are available.”
“Whenever we can get the drug dogs, we are interested and we want them to run,” Hays High School Principal Dr. Mike Hester told Hays Post.
“It takes at least 5 dogs to run. It’s not a single dog. They have to coordinate sheriffs and other counties or departments that have a dog. We tell them if they can coordinate one a year if not two or more anytime they can put us on a schedule. We want to be vigilant and let people know this school is a drug free zone.
The dogs have a tendency to wear out due to the size of Hays High’s facility,” Hester said. “If the dogs tire they cannot complete a sweep of the entire building and the parking lot so they try to do a little bit of the building and a little bit of the parking lot. So we just try to coordinate with what is available and what they can get.” Hester said.
No drugs were found during this drug dog visit to Hays High.
“We are serious about being drug free. We love it, like last time we were drug free. Then we can say we are checking and on our last check we did not find any drugs we were drug free. We know that we are a cosmic piece of the community and we know it occurs outside of the school and we are trying to make sure it stays outside of our facility.
We are accountable to the community and we want them to know that we are serious, and we are trying to use the tax resources they paid for to make sure we are accountable to keep a drug free zone.
Dr. Hester explained what happens when the drug dog checks the building.
“Students put their book bags all down the middle of the hall. So everyone in the building will bring their book bags and jackets and put them in the middle of the hallway. You look down the hallway and you see one big row of book bags and jackets and hats anything they have with them. Then they go back and sit down with the teachers. The dogs do not sniff the people. One of the reasons we do that is because kids don’t use lockers anymore students just carry there book bags and carry their book bags all the time. We have lockers but students do not use them as much. So everyone lines there bags all up in the middle of the hall and the dogs run up and down each side. Multiple dogs will make the run just to make sure incase one dog may miss or if there is a hit it is verified. That is how the regular classrooms are checked. They also smell the PE locker rooms and have them smell those rooms but no dog smells an individual student.”
If we did have a hit (find drugs) we would check to make sure,” said Hester. “Lots of times kids have been around it either at home or in some other environment and maybe smoke has entered there jackets or maybe the granules have been in the carpet and that’s nothing we can find or work on but we can find where kids have been and it allows us to have conversations with kids or their families that we don’t know what’s going on but has happened, are you as a home aware of this and can you have conversations about it.
So it helps us in a lot of other ways even when we don’t find anything to help families become aware. Sometimes parents do not know, sometimes parents are the problem and the kid will tell us their folks are into drugs and I don’t do them but I live in that house and it just creates awareness. It is a way for us help people deal with these issues.”
“In the past, several principals in the area said they’d like to let bad elements in their community know they are not going to stand for drugs in or around the school,” said Hileman.