Police Chief Gets Heat for Bus Searches : Schools: Orange mayor, council members demand to be informed before officers board with drug-sniffing dogs.

The mayor and several members of the Orange City Council criticized Police Chief John R. Robertson Saturday for failing to inform them that police officers were boarding school buses in the Orange Unified School District to search for drugs with a drug-sniffing dog.

“Elected officials don’t like being surprised on a front-page issue,” said Councilwoman Joanne Coontz, with more than a hint of anger in her voice. “We certainly should have been informed.”

The school district and the Orange Police Department have searched three school buses for drugs since Oct. 30, most recently Wednesday afternoon at Portola Middle School.

The program of randomly searching the buses was initiated by Orange Unified’s interim acting superintendent, Richard Donoghue, after several parents complained to the district about drugs being present on the buses.

According to Donoghue, the children themselves are not physically searched, since the searches take place after they are ordered off the buses, leaving their possessions behind. To date, the searches have found no drugs.

Although Donoghue said the buses are selected at random, a child from El Modena High School who was on a bus searched Oct. 30 said that several children had been caught smoking marijuana on the bus a few weeks before the search.

David Reichert, 14, said the students who had been caught smoking were not on the bus the day it was searched in front of Santiago Middle School.

“It wasn’t frightening for me because I didn’t have any drugs,” Reichert said. “But it kind of made me a little mad because we wouldn’t have had to go through this hassle if those guys hadn’t smoked on the bus.”

Mayor Gene Beyer said that he had spoken with the police chief and been told that city officials would be given advance notice of any future searches on school property in Orange.

“I told the chief I wanted to be notified if anything of that sort happened (again),” Beyer said.

Robertson refused to comment to The Times about his conversation with Beyer. However, he said he would be speaking with Donoghue this week about the possibility of sending a letter about the program to the parents of children attending Orange Unified schools.

“I like to do things as upfront as possible,” Robertson said.

Although Donoghue said the searches had been discussed by the school board in closed session, at least three board members have said they were unaware that the searches were taking place until contacted by The Times.

And one school board member said that the issue of drug searches will likely be raised during Donoghue’s evaluation, scheduled for closed session tonight.

But another board member said that the evaluation had been completed in November, and it would be improper to question Donoghue’s role in the school bus searches in the Sunday closed session.

“I want to discuss it in open session,” the board member said.

Donoghue promises that the controversial policy will be discussed in open session Jan. 14, with Robertson making a presentation to the board about how the searches are conducted.

But the newly elected president of the Orange chapter of the California State Employees Assn., the union representing the district’s bus drivers, says she plans to write a letter to Donoghue outlining her concerns about the program within the week.

“I’m going to demand that they give us advance warning,” said President-elect Becky Mayers. “The bus driver is ultimately responsible for the children’s safety. If something happens when the police come in and a kid gets hurt getting on or off the bus, it’s the driver’s responsibility.”

Moreover, a former school superintendent for the Orange Unified School District said the board under which he served had privately rejected the idea of using police dogs to sniff students’ lockers for drugs two years ago, and called the current searches “overreacting.”

Norman Guith, now superintendent for the the Palo Verde Unified School District in Blythe, said the board discussed the issue in 1990 and decided that having dogs sniffing lockers would be an unnecessary invasion of students’ right to privacy.

“I felt it went a little too far,” he said.

The Orange school district is responsible for educating almost 25,000 students from kindergarten through 12th grade in the cities of Orange and Villa Park, as well as parts of Anaheim, Santa Ana and Garden Grove.

Some district parents said Saturday they objected less to the searches than the fact they hadn’t been notified about them.

“The school and the district don’t keep people informed, they just spring things on you,” said Steve Hain, the father of a Portola student. “I would have wanted to be apprised of this situation.”

But Patricia Reichert, David’s mother, said she was happy that the bus her son takes to school each morning was searched for illegal drugs.

“Search (David), search them all,” she said.