“Our kids smoke pot.Some of them do, anyway. Some seem to enjoy boozing it up. Still others pack knives, probably as much to impress their friends as anything else.When one of them gets caught with such contraband on school grounds, how much attention does it deserve?That question lies at the heart of a recent spate of complaints directed at school district officials and board members. It’s an issue that was building up steam even before the Sakai bullet incident a month or so back; parents we’ve spoken to since that time have been keeping an informal list of student perfidies, including the theft of school equipment and petty drug incidents. Concern boiled over this week with the disclosure that a swastika found on a school wall was hastily painted over by school officials without a report to the police.Nobody should be naive here. School officials, in this district and elsewhere, have an institutional interest in downplaying problems on campus. Continued taxpayer support depends on the public perception that schools are safe, that kids aren’t being accosted in the hallways, that drugs aren’t rampant, and that the youngsters are actually learning something – in short, that all the dollars are being well spent.To be sure, we’re turning out some very well-educated students. But it’s a statistical certainty that in a given year, some youths are going to get caught smoking dope, or coming to school with knives and other no-no’s. Some school equipment is going to be vandalized, or disappear entirely. For all our faith in island idyll – upscale community, smart kids, overindulgent parents – we have about the same problems as other communities, just to a lesser degree. Perhaps that realization explains the recent anxiety, our idyllic facade might be cracking a bit.Does that mean there’s a crime wave in school hallways?We doubt it. Nor are we of a mind that every incident involving an illicit substance needs to be reported to parents via a school flier. But better communication between school officials and local law enforcement officers is probably in order, and certainly the proper investigation of alleged crimes.So we’ll weigh in in support of having a Bainbridge Police officer in the high school corridors. Whatever its dissuasive value for young miscreants, it’s hard to imagine that something as egregious as a white power slogan on a school wall wouldn’t get some official attention with an officer roaming about.Some students may not like the idea, but it’s increasingly clear that their parents do – and that it would be an effective way of keeping school and police officials in close contact over what’s going on. We can’t think of a better way to assuage the community’s concerns about safety in our schools.We doubt it will keep all the kids honest. But it might have an interesting effect on the administration.”