The canine, a white and brown pit bull named Athena, will focus largely on middle schools, Harris says. "That's an adolescent age and that's a time when they're really persuaded by different events," she says. "It's a middle school. It's that funny period."

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At a meeting in Oak Cliff held last week in the wake of the suicide of Julio Ortiz, a parent told school officials and police that kids are being bullied into selling drugs. Sophia Rodriguez told the Observer that her 12-year-old son, a friend of Ortiz, said students threatened other students into illegal business.

Harris says there is no indication that the suicide was prompted by pressure to sell drugs. "From what we're able to tell, because the student was a pretty jovial kid and participated in a number of activities — even on that day was extremely active from what folks can tell — there was nothing to believe that those type of allegations that are being made were happening," she tells the Observer.

She says drugs are as big an issue in DISD schools as they are anywhere else. "This is a school district. I know that our police department and our law enforcement agency here would say, too, that there's not a campus, I'm sure, that doesn't have some sort of drug incident throughout a school year," she says. "I just think it's a reality of where we are in this day and age."