ANTI-DRUG FOCUS GOES ONE-ON-ONE

The Eyes Of The Country Are On Lake Middle School.

There, and at 17 other sites in the United States, school leaders are
testing a drug-prevention program for the most challenging kids that
works by "killing them with kindness." The program is called CASASTART
for short, standing for Striving Together to Achieve Rewarding
Tomorrows, a program of the National Center on Addiction and Substance
Abuse (CASA).

While the program is still experimental, supporters say they have seen
some remarkable results.

Destiny Gonzales, 13, said that turmoil in her family last year led to
truancy. "The reason I wasn't coming to school is my grandma died, and
she was like my mom. I lived with her and my grandpa since I was a
little girl.

"Shelley, my (CASASTART) lady, she talked to my grandpa. She's the one
who encouraged me to come to school." Like the better-known DARE
program, which has largely fallen out of favor, CASASTART's goal is to
keep kids away from drugs. But instead of focusing on sending a broad
anti-drug message to an entire student body, CASASTART workers focus
on individual students. The goal is to find out what problems confront
a student and then try to eliminate them - whether that means getting
a crack house off the block, tutoring, or drug rehab for Mom. When a
CASASTART kid has to go to court, an advocate goes along.

"It works one-on-one to lead them in a different direction, as opposed
to having a general (antidrug) education program," said Shirley
Farnsworth, director of community education with Denver Public Schools.

In the case of Destiny, she is back in school and looking forward to
high school and a career in nursing. She plans to attend John F.
Kennedy High School instead of her neighborhood school, West, because
"if I go to West, my mind won't be on school, it will be on my
friends." Teachers or administrators nominate students for Lake's
CASASTART program, where they are hooked up with one of three
advocates trained in social work and hired specially for CASASTART.
Advocates average 15 students each.

Lake counselor Richard Marin said he has seen the advocates take on
kids suspended for defiance of authority and suspended for ditching
school. The advocates, he said, "are turning them around." Larry
Murray, a fellow of the National Center on Addiction and Substance
Abuse at Columbia University who oversees all CASASTART programs, said
interest has been keen nationally, especially as it shows results.

"This program is designed to wrap around a kid's life," he said. The
idea is, "to be there when the child needs help, not only when we have
something to tell them." Though CASASTART is still experimental,
researchers at the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C., and at the
Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at the University of
Colorado-Boulder say there are signs it works.

After two years in CASASTART pilots launched in 1993 in Austin, Texas,
Savannah, Ga., and Bridgeport, Conn., researchers found students were
using and selling less drugs, participating in less violent crime,
making better friends and were more likely to pass to the next grade
level, compared with youth outside the program.

And though results aren't supposed to kick in until the students'
second year of participation, measures of student achievement at Lake
started climbing sooner than that, said Alana James, Colorado
CASASTART consultant.

Three-fourths of the CASASTART kids at Lake improved attendance and
their grades, CASASTART advocate Brigid McRaith said.

James is in the midst of launching a second program in Commerce City
using money from the Colorado Trust, the Rose Community Foundation,
the state's Colorado Kids Ignore Drugs substanceabuse prevention
program and the Annie Casey Foundation.

CASASTART will only go into schools that already have strong
after-school and summer programs. Lake's after-school program is part
of the Beacon Neighborhood Center and the school already had a
community policing program, which also is crucial to CASASTART.

"As a neighborhood-based program, we don't think you can change people
outside the context in which they live," Murray said. "Young people
living in a crime ridden, drug hot spots feel unsafe. If they don't
view police as helpers in their lives, it's not likely they'll change
behaviors." With Dennis Staff, the only Denver police officer assigned
fulltime to a DPS middle school, the kids at Lake "know at least one
cool cop," McRaith said.

And the CASASTART counselors have quick access to an officer when they
spot a problem that police can help with, like a new crack house on a
student's block or walk to school.

"If we identify a problem house, I will find out about the house, see
if the police have been called," Staff said. Sometimes, if the house
is on a corridor children use to and from school, "we reroute kids."

Staff was on patrol for 21 years before he asked for a full-time
assignment at Lake, where he's worked nine years.

"We were getting a call (from Lake) every 15 minutes," he said. The
move made sense and he doesn't regret it.

"This is the greatest job I've ever had, bar none. I enjoy the
freedom, I enjoy the fact I started this program. I like the kids.
Every day is a different day." Staff is also part of team that works
with the school's employees to make sure they know what is going on in
a student's life. In some cases students seen as the biggest
troublemakers are quite bright, Murray said.

Fourteen-year-old Gladys Corpus was on an academic slide. "Then Brigid
started helping me with my homework - I was in sixth grade at the
time." Gladys repeated the sixth grade. She started seventh grade this
fall, but soon moved to the eighth grade and caught up with her peers.
"Seventh grade was too easy for me," she said. "My seventh-grade test
scores were high and the (eighth grade) is better because it's, like,
harder." CASASTART staff use Gladys' bilingual skills to translate the
program to Spanish speakers. Now she wants to be a professional
translator; Italian will be her third language.

Parent Marlene Garcia said her daughter started with CASASTART at the
beginning of the school year when "she didn't care about anything, she
was real closed up. She has a couple of sisters and they fight. Her
self-esteem was real low, her grades were failing.

"I have really seen a change in her attitude."