School district officials say they conducted a random, routine search of Meridian High School Tuesday.
Teachers and students were instructed to remain in place for the duration of the search.
"According to our goals of maintaining safe and orderly schools, we randomly, in cooperation with the Meridian Police Department, we randomly have searches of our schools for drugs, weapons," said superintendent, Dr. Alvin Taylor. "So this was just one of those situations where we're checking out our high school making sure our schools are free of drugs and weapons."
"This morning we performed one of our periodic drug searches up at Meridian High, going through the facility there looking for any weapons, narcotics or anything else that shouldn't be on the campus," said Capt. Dean Harper of the Meridian Police Department.
Harper says police can't talk about anything they might have found on campus during the search, but Taylor says discipline referrals are down over the last two years since the searches began.
"Whether it's weapons, drugs, or severe violent acts, all instances of misbehavior are down," said Taylor. "Not to say that we have a perfect situation, but we are better and getting better every day."
Officials say in conjunction with the police department, the DARE program is taken very seriously and the schools and students are contributing their efforts to the program.
