WHITESBORO COMMUNITY RAISES AWARENESS ABOUT DRUG PREVENTION

WHITESBORO -- The ratio of adults to children at Whitesboro's Community
Awareness Forum Tuesday night was 1-to-1, and that seemed to be encouraging
for the speakers.

Whitesboro's chapter of America's Promise held the community awareness
forum and invited counselors, a narcotics agent and local leaders to speak
at the meeting, which Lisa Barnet, advisor of Texoma's "Paw"sitive Promise,
said she hopes it will become an annual event.

"We have had many concerned parents talk about the drugs in the community,"
she said. "This is something that should be dealt with not only at the
school level, but also the community level."

A movement was recently started in Whitesboro after parents found out about
a student with a drug problem. The parents formed a group and spoke at the
January school board meeting. The group told the Board that it wanted the
school district to take a more aggressive stance on drugs in the district.
Since then, the Board has met with the group again and is working on taking
that more aggressive stance.

David Bertino, Whitesboro School Board president, said the Board took the
recommendations and at the March meeting will be presenting a full
proposal, and will approve the plan in April.

Penny Renfro, a member of the Texoma's "Paw"sitive Promise Board, said it's
important that people recognize the issues in the community in order to get
to the heart of what's behind them and come up with different solutions to
address them.

"No one organization can solve the problem. I think if one kid is using an
illegal drug then it's a problem, if one kid is cutting school it's a
problem," she said. "I don't think it (drug problem) is new. It's not worse
than two years ago and I don't think it is any better either. Whitesboro is
a community that wants more, we want better for our kids."

Speakers such as Karen Cabaniss from the Child Guidance Clinic of Texoma
and Lt. Mike Woodruff with the Durant Police Department informed the
100-plus crowd of the ideas to keep children from getting involved in drugs
and how to spot a drug addicted child.

On prevention, Cabaniss told the audience to:

Get to know your child's friends and their parents;

Don't give them large amounts of money; and

Talk, and more importantly listen, to your children.

What about students that are already doing drugs? Woodruff told the
audience to:

Listen to children for words like powder, ice, hard, ex and footballs; and

Watch to see if child is carrying large amounts of money, especially if
they don't have a job.

Bertino said in his opinion, the most important thing is to encourage
students to get involved in extracurricular activities.

"If kids are happy, they are less likely to get involved in elicit things,"
he said.

Other guest speakers included Jim Keller, Whitesboro City Council member
and Scott Taylor, Whitesboro Police Officer.

Keller informed the audience that the city has talked about adding a
narcotics officer but currently are limited by funds and the lack of
personnel. Taylor said that adding another officer wouldn't be the only
thing that needs to be done to stop the problem. Rather, the community
needs to come together to protect the community. One way to do that is
inform police and other parents when they hear about drugs.

"I thought it went great," said Ray Lea, Whitesboro ISD superintendent. "I
think our community is demonstrating compassion and caring about kids."