The legislation would require school boards to establish a policy allowing full-time teachers and school officials, acting on reasonable suspicion, to search any student they wish in order to ensure that the school remains free from weapons, drugs or other dangerous materials. Districts that fail to enact the guidelines would become ineligible for federal funds through the Safe and Drug Free School program, from which New York state received more than $7 million in the 2006-07 academic year.

Supporters of the Student and Teacher Safety Act argue that the measure would increase safety in schools while alleviating apprehension about liability for teachers and other school officials. Opponents, although they echo the need to improve safety, question the bill’s potential to violate students’ constitutional rights as well as the appropriateness of expanding the role of educators.

In defining student searches, the Student and Teacher Act fails to describe the scope of permissible searches, said Jesselyn McCurdy, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, which opposes the legislation because of its broad language. This ambiguity leaves wiggle room for school officials to construe the bill as allowing for random, wide-scale searches of all students, even those for whom there is no suspicion of wrongdoing.

“What we encourage school administrators to do is to have a reasonable suspicion that an individual student or group of students are participating in a violation of school rules or criminal law and base their search on that,” McCurdy said, offering an alternative to broad searching policies.

Absent such a clause limiting the scope of searches to those students for whom there is individualized suspicion, the ACLU has stated that the Student and Teacher Safety Act may not stand up to constitutional scrutiny.

Students in public schools are protected by the Fourth Amendment, which guarantees against unreasonable search and seizure, the United States Supreme Court ruled in 1985. While affirming students’ rights against unreasonable searches, the court’s decision in New Jersey v. T.L.O. acknowledged that certain limits on this right are legitimate because students are minors and in the temporary custody of the state. Student searches, therefore, can be conducted without a warrant and need only be based on “probable cause.”

The text of the Student and Teacher Safety Act points to the 1985 decision as justification for the bill’s legitimacy. However, that decision is silent on the question of the constitutionality of conducting random searches without suspicion. In another student-search case from 2002, the Supreme Court that ruled random drug testing of students who participate in extracurricular activities was reasonable but again did not clarify whether schoolwide searches constitute a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

Even though the Supreme Court has not handed down a definitive answer, ACLU representatives argue there’s enough evidence to conclude that searches without individualized suspicion infringe upon students’ Fourth Amendment rights. They point to court decisions, including language from New Jersey v. T.L.O., which indicate that exceptions to the requirement of individualized suspicion are acceptable only when the privacy interests at stake are minimal and protections are in place to ensure the student’s privacy.

Individualized suspicion also is simply good public policy, McCurdy and ACLU director Caroline Fredrickson wrote last week in a letter to the House of Representatives urging opposition to the bill.

Constitutional issues aside, the Student and Teacher Safety Act is getting mixed reviews among education associations. The largest teacher union, the National Education Association, has expressed its support, while other teachers unions, including the American Teachers Federation, have objected to the measure.

Many organizations critical of the legislation point to the increased demand the legislation would put on teachers as the primary source of their concern.

“We do not support putting teachers in that position,” said Richard Iannuzzi, president of New York State United Teachers, the state’s largest teachers union. “It’s a role that really requires a well-trained expert, who understands both the interaction with the students and understands the law and the rights of the students.”

Involving teachers in the bill would help keep drugs and violence out of schools while affirming their control of the classroom, said Rep. Geoff Davis (R-Ky.) in a press release from his congressional office.

“The teacher’s role is as an educator, and the value of a good teacher-student relationship is not going to be enhanced by students viewing the teacher as a safety officer with respect to something as significant as searches,” said Iannuzzi in response to this argument. “Teachers should clearly be part of making a parent and students feel that a school is a safe place to be, but taking it to what I consider to be the extreme by putting teachers in charge of searches would not be an appropriate step.”

Instead, Iannuzzi proposed addressing the root social causes that compromise school safety. The bill is little more than a “diversion” from real issues, Iannuzzi suggested, churned out by mid-election-cycle politicians.

Davis, for example, is in the midst of a fight to retain his seat in Congress. Pollsters show a nearly dead-even competition with his Democratic challenger.

Election-time politics also may have motivated members of the House when they opted for a voice vote on the measure as opposed to the standard roll-call vote, which enables constituents to know how each representative voted.

“I look at it as something that’s going to make its mark prior to the election process and is unlikely to follow the flow after that,” Iannuzzi said of the chances this bill would also pass the Senate and eventually become law.

The bill now moves to the Senate, which has referred it to committee. The Senate did not have similar legislation on the table prior to passage in the House.

Although it abides by case law from the Supreme Court and the New York State Court of Appeals, New York’s Department of Education has no state-mandated policy about student searches. Local districts are free to develop their own policies as long as they satisfy criteria established by the courts.