About a dozen Perry-Lecompton High School students accused of entering the school without permission will be interviewed by the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office over their winter break.

Twice in late November, groups of students entered the school after hours, said Jefferson County Sheriff Jeffrey Herrig.The sheriff’s office was asked in mid-December to investigate the matter.

Unofficial minutes from the Perry-Lecompton School District’s Dec. 14 meeting show that the school board directed Superintendent Denis Yoder to contact the Jefferson County attorney for an investigation.

The investigation should be finished in the coming weeks, Herrig said. And all the information will be turned over to the county attorney, who will decide whether to bring any criminal charges against the students, all of whom are under 18.

So far the investigation has shown that on the evenings of Nov. 21 and Nov. 28 two groups of students entered the school after it was closed, Herrig said.

“I believe there was somewhere around 14 the first night and then maybe four to six the next night,” he said. “I believe the first night they just went in and played basketball. The second night some trivial stuff was taken from the school, but it was taken nonetheless.”

Among those trivial items were several chairs, a papier-mâché goose and several food items, Yoder said.

The missing items were brought to the attention of the school’s resource officer, who approached administration, Herrig said.

Soon, punishments from the district were doled out to the students involved, Yoder said.

“There were out-of-school suspensions for all the students identified in the incident. There were consequences for students involved in extracurricular activities,” he said. “There may have been some community service involved. There could have been, like if they were on the basketball team, a suspension from being able to play games for a certain period of time.”

With ongoing rumors of more activity taking place while the students were in the school — Yoder would not elaborate on the rumors — some high school teachers began to push for further action.

“I think they wondered whether it should be a criminal investigation and if we should let that run its course,” he said.

Herrig said the door the students entered through may have been left unlocked. Yoder insists whether the door was locked or not is irrelevant. Either way the students were trespassing on school property, which they knew they were not allowed to do, he said.

Criminal charges or no, Herrig said perhaps both the students and the school need to learn a lesson.

“I guess there has to be some accountability. I hope it doesn’t affect them for the rest of their lives, but they need to know what they did was wrong,” he said. “The kids know that they weren’t supposed to be in there at that point. Granted, the school district needs to do something about making sure the doors are locked.”

The incident at the high school is particularly unfortunate, Herrig said, because there are very few after-hours options for young people in the area.

“It’s a shame. We’re kind of a small farming community and we don’t really have anything for our kids to do per se,” he said. “It would be nice if we had a place where they could go and do some of the things like they were doing, like getting together and playing ball. But we just don’t have that in our community.”