The vacant Wilmer-Hutchins High School hasn't been as empty as it appears. Dallas school police dismantled a suspected marijuana operation inside one of the school's classrooms Monday night.

The Dallas Independent School District owns the high school and plans to renovate it using money from a bond program that voters approved in May.

DISD police, acting on a tip, found about 240 pots in a classroom, with lights designed to help plants grow. Forty-nine pots had been seeded and a few plants had sprouted from the soil, said DISD spokesman Jon Dahlander.

        

MICHAEL AINSWORTH/Staff Photographer

The boarded up entrance of the abandoned Wilmer-Hutchins High School.     

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 Mr. Dahlander said police think the plants are marijuana but can't be certain until tests are run. No one has been arrested in connection with the operation but there are a few leads, he said.

Police also found buckets that they thought were probably used to bring in water, Mr. Dahlander said. He added that police thought the growers planned to move some seedlings to the empty pots so they'd have room to grow.

He said the high school has had a few break-ins, and that copper has been stolen. The school is boarded up but has electricity, he said.

The Wilmer-Hutchins school district, which was plagued by financial and management problems, was closed by the state in 2006 and absorbed into the Dallas district. DISD took in Wilmer-Hutchins students and acquired the defunct district's school buildings.

Dallas school officials plan to renovate the Wilmer-Hutchins High School building to use as a magnet school. DISD trustee Lew Blackburn, whose area includes the high school, had not heard of the suspected drug find Tuesday afternoon but said security would have to be beefed up once the remodeling begins.

Dr. Blackburn said it wouldn't be difficult to break in the school undetected because it's in a remote area.

"You have a whole lot of wooded area," he said. "You can break your way in because there's nobody out there."

Mr. Dahlander said the district has not provided a lot of security at the campus because it's vacant. But he said that would be reviewed in light of the suspected drug find.

"Obviously, we've got some issues out there if we've got copper being stolen and people trying to grow things inside classrooms," he said.

Several pot farms have been discovered in the Dallas area in the last year. Federal agents uncovered 10,451 marijuana plants worth up to $5 million near a Grand Prairie middle school last July.