ARCHBALD, LACKAWANNA COUNTY (WBRE/WYOU) — A heightened sense of safety and accountability at a local high school today after K-9 units conducted a surprise sweep through the halls.
School officials say the goal isn’t just to find prohibited items, but to prevent them from ever entering the building. That’s why Friday's unannounced K-9 sweep sent a strong message about safety, deterrence, and school culture.
It was anything but an ordinary school day. Trained police dogs moved locker to locker, sniffing for drugs, weapons, and even vape pens.
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"Schools conduct canine sweeps primarily for safety and security reasons. They also do it for deterrence. The knowledge that canine teams may conduct unannounced sweeps can deter students from bringing prohibited items such as drugs or weapons into the school," explained Superintendent of Valley View School District Brian Durkin.
In partnership with local police and the district attorney’s office, the district says this is part of their effort to ensure a safe learning environment, and it may happen even more frequently moving forward.
"They go upstairs, downstairs to every student's locker. That way, if the dog hits on something, what we do is we'll call the student out, and we'll have the students search the locker with us. And the majority of the time, there's nothing in there. But at least like I said, it's a deterrence," said Durkin.
These K-9s aren’t just sniffing for marijuana.
"Vapes also any type of drug, narcotic, or anything like that. And they also have dogs that could bomb detection, dogs that they bring in that could sniff out any type of ammunition or anything like that if they have a weapon in the locker," explained Durkin.
Officials say while the K-9s didn’t find anything Friday, that’s a win and a sign the strategy is working.
"The kids know that they're going to be unannounced, they don't know when they're going to be. There's the beginning of the school year, middle of the school year, end of the school year. Majority of the time that value has ever done any type of sweep that we've never found anything," said Durkin.
Although parents weren’t notified beforehand, since the sweep was unannounced, the district quickly shared an update afterward to ease any concerns about the visible police presence at the school.
