NCJ Number
104368
Journal
Dickins on Law Review Volume: 90 Issue: 4 Dated: (Summer 1986) Pages: 803-831
Date Published
1986
Length
29 pages
Annotation
Pennsylvania school boards should enact comprehensive personal search policies that include strip search guidelines, and a search warrant issued upon probable cause should precede the strip search of a student except in special cases.
Abstract
The strip search of a student by a school official involves competing interests. The school official is obliged to protect the health, safety, and welfare of all the students, and it is the student's constitutional right to be secure from unreasonable searches. To ensure that a reasonable balance is maintained between these competing interests, school boards should enact comprehensive written search policies for school officials. The search policies recently implemented in Ephrata, Pa., are responsible and reasonable. The policy allows strip searches only when there are 'reasonable grounds' (defined in the policy) to believe the student possesses drugs or a weapon. Only designated administrators may conduct strip searches. School officials must inform students of their right to contact their parents or other appropriate adults, and, if possible, that adult should be present during the search. Under no circumstances may underpants be removed. The school official must file a written report describing the search. In the absence of a stricter legal standard from the courts, this is an exemplary policy. The preferred policy should be to have a strip search only after obtaining a search warrant based on probable cause except in such circumstances as real and imminent peril. 198 footnotes and appended Ephrata school district search policy.