COEUR d’ALENE — Kootenai County commissioners appear split on a proposal to give the sheriff’s office discretion to conduct random searches with drug-sniffing dogs in schools that contract with the county for school resource officer services.

Bruce Mattare presented the idea during a Tuesday morning meeting. 

“What we really want to do is ultimately discourage those who are involved with drugs to bring them to school to try to distribute them to kids who are not involved with drugs,” he told the board. 

School districts in Kootenai County contract with different area law enforcement agencies — including Coeur d’Alene, Post Falls, Rathdrum and the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office — to provide SRO services. Districts work with these agencies to arrange and conduct drug searches in schools several times per year. 

Mattare suggested that future contracts for SROs who come from the sheriff’s office give that agency the power to conduct up to nine random searches per school year. 

“My proposal is the SRO, at their discretion, can have a dog come through onto the school property,” he said. “That could be on the parking lot, in the hall, in a classroom.” 

Commissioner Marc Eberlein expressed support.

“I think that’s a good idea,” he said.

Juvenile probation director Bryan Alexander presented commissioners with data on the number of students who were charged with drug-related offenses that allegedly occurred on school grounds in the Coeur d’Alene, Post Falls and Lakeland school districts. 

In the 2024-25 school year, according to juvenile probation data, a total of 41 high school students and 17 middle school students faced charges, mostly for alleged possession of a controlled substance or drug paraphernalia. 

A total of 14 charges were for frequenting. In cases where a student is charged with possessing illegal drugs on campus, Alexander said a friend or classmate who was present and knew the student had the illegal substance can be charged with frequenting. 

Of the offenses, 26 were alleged to have occurred in the Post Falls School District and 27 allegedly occurred in the Coeur d’Alene School District. Just five of the alleged offenses took place in the Lakeland Joint School District.

Alexander noted that the sheriff’s office does not contract with schools in Coeur d’Alene or Post Falls for SRO services but does provide those services at Timberlake High School. 

“Their numbers are actually the lowest,” he said. 

Jake Massey, interim superintendent for the Lakeland Joint School District, said no problems exist that would justify random drug searches at the discretion of the sheriff’s office. 

“We do not have a drug problem in Lakeland schools,” Massey told The Press. “There are isolated incidents, without a doubt, and we deal with those professionally and with an aim toward student support and getting students the help they need.” 

SROs who come from the sheriff’s office work at Twin Lakes Elementary, Garwood Elementary and Timberlake High School. Though Massey said those SROs are great partners to the district, he called Mattare’s proposal “problematic.” 

“We need to be very, very careful about our school environment,” he said. “We take the safety of our kids very seriously.” 

He said that includes the physical security of the building, as well as minimizing disruptions of the learning environment and carefully considering who and what is allowed to enter schools. 

“We do not believe in blanket discretion for drug searches in the building,” Massey said. “That’s something our board hasn’t stood for. I don’t think that’s common practice for there to be random searches at the discretion of law enforcement only.” 

During Tuesday’s meeting, Commissioner Leslie Duncan shared a similar sentiment. 

“I don’t believe we should be forcing school districts with this mandate,” she said. “If the school boards are on board with it and want it, then it’s already happening and they can already take advantage of that.” 

Duncan said the board will “overstep” if it requires random searches with dogs as part of SRO contracts. 

“I’m not going to step on other people’s toes,” she said. “The school board is directly responsible to the parents. We are not. I’d rather the school boards make these decisions.” 

Kootenai County Sheriff Bob Norris also expressed reservations about the idea. He said he’s never seen a municipality institute such a requirement of a school district and he believes it’s best for school administrators to work directly with law enforcement to plan searches. 

“I’m a little concerned we want to put a number or a quota on X amount of searches,” Norris said. “I’m not so sure that a city council or a BOCC should be involved in what the principal and the law enforcement entity think is best for that school.” 

Norris said he communicated with the undersheriff and the deputy who leads the SRO program about his idea. 

“I did not hear a no or any pushback,” he said. 

Massey said Mattare didn’t reach out to Lakeland before publicly floating the proposal. 

“We’re catching up at this point, because there wasn’t any explanation or collaboration on this,” he said. 

The same appeared to be true in the Coeur d’Alene School District, where SROs from the sheriff’s office work in Atlas, Dalton and Hayden Meadows Elementary Schools. 

“We are open to ideas that will help us maintain a drug-free and safe learning environment for our students and staff,” Stefany Bales, the Coeur d’Alene School District’s director of community relations, told The Press in an email. “We have not been made aware of any plans to conduct searches more frequently or to increase the number of searches in our schools.” 

Bales said drug searches are conducted randomly throughout the school year, based on need and request. The last time a drug dog alert resulted in a student being charged with a crime was 2008, according to the district. 

Mattare said his proposal, if implemented, shouldn’t place an additional cost burden on the school districts, which pay 70% of the salary for the SROs who work in their schools. The county pays the remaining 30% because those deputies conduct law enforcement activities elsewhere when school is not in session. 

“If the dog is not busy and a deputy is not far away, then there’s is no additional expense,” Mattare said. “It’s just an activity that they’re already on payroll.” 

If there’s no appetite for the proposal among the school districts, Mattare said he’s willing to approve SRO contracts without it. 

“But I would like to see the school districts have a meaningful conversation about this and address it with their parents because I believe the parents should have some say,” he said. “As a parent of a kid in our public schools who also happens to be a county commissioner, this is my way of getting that dialogue started.” 

Whatever the outcome of that conversation, Alexander said his department will continue to collaborate with law enforcement and school districts and work toward drug-free schools. 

“We all have the same goal,” he said. “These numbers that I presented — in a perfect world, they would all be zero. How we get there is the trick. I think that’s the conversation.” 

    Duncan
  

    Massey