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I am one member of a five person board. The opinions I express on this forum are mine only, and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Escambia County Staff, Administrators, Employees, or anyone else associated with Escambia County Florida. I am interested in establishing this blog as a means of additional transparency to the public, outreach to the community, and information dissemination to all who choose to look. Feedback is welcome, but because public participation is equally encouraged, appropriate language and decorum is mandatory. Although this is not my campaign site for re-election--sometimes campaign related information will be discussed, therefore in an abundance of caution I add the following : Political Advertisement Paid for and Approved by Jeff Bergosh, Republican, for Escambia County Commissioner District 1








Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Updated Escambia School Drug Dog Search Results--Where the Drugs Are 2010-2011

The Superintendent's office today provided board members with the following documents.  This data is current as of Friday, February 11, 2011.


 
The first document, above,  lists which schools have been searched (and how many times each)and the number of times this school year drugs were found at each campus.

The next document, below,  lists additional information about what drugs were found and where at each campus drugs were found.

Interesting that out of 228 searches, 17 searches yielded drugs.  This equates to about a 7.5% hit rate, which assuming 2-3 campuses are searched daily, means on average the dogs are finding one location a week that has drugs.

I'm amazed that some schools have a much higher hit rate than one might expect-while others that many might expect to yield big finds-- have so far not had any significant findings.

I'm told the searches and the random nature in which they are being deployed is proving to be an effective deterrent to students bringing drugs to our schools;   Less drugs at schools equals safer schools.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interesting that with the small amount drug dog sweep "busts" you would still find it cost effective and beneficial to do random drug testing on a specific group of students rather than instituting a substance abuse counselor for the entire student body.

Craig said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

I agree with the first anonymous poster; these searches cannot be cost effective if there is only a 7.5% hit rate. In addition, only 10 out of the 17 searches actually found drugs, the rest only alerted to residue.

There also appear to be no drugs found other than OTC medication, "pills," and cannabis. Considering the relative harm of cannabis compared to other drugs, these results seem fairly inconsequential.

Jeff Bergosh said...

I believe that the drug dog sweeps, combined with the campus crime stopper program, the random testing, and student led anti-drug awareness campaign-I think all of these will combine to make our comprehensive program a success.

Anonymous said...

Just out of curiosity, what is the cost of this program? Please include your source.

Jeff Bergosh said...

$75,000 total for the year, including the drug dog searches, the testing, and the awareness campaign.

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