SURVEY AIMED AT AIDING FIGHT AGAINST DRUGS

19% In City's Grades 2-5 Say They've Been Offered Alcohol

Among second-through fifth-graders, nearly one in five has been asked to
drink alcohol, the Springfield School District found in a recent survey of
elementary schools.

Half the children said they wished a family member or friend would stop
drinking alcohol, and 80 percent wished that a family member or friend
would stop smoking cigarettes.

The district's Student Assistance Program, which stresses prevention of
alcohol and cigarette use, surveyed 1,983 children in 15 schools last fall.

The results were reported to the Springfield School Board in January.

Nineteen percent of the pupils surveyed said they had been asked to drink
alcohol, and 18 percent said they had been asked to smoke cig arettes. Ten
percent said they had been asked to use drugs.

The findings help SAP teachers prepare lessons on the prevention of
alcohol, tobacco or other drug use, said the program's acting director,
Shari Hibbert.

SAP operates in 15 of the city's 23 public elementary schools. Smoking
prevention is a priority.

"The younger you can get them to smoke, the faster they become addicted to
the product," Hibbert said. "There's a great likelihood they will go on and
try some other drugs later in life."

SAP's specially trained teachers - not counselors - also help children cope
with divorce, grief and other problems.

Surveys were distributed to all children in grades 2-5 at the 15
participating schools during an orientation at the beginning of the school
year. The children had the option of signing the surveys if they wanted to
meet with a student-assistance teacher.

The children also were quizzed about their feelings of safety.
Seventy-three percent said they feel safe at school, while 10 percent
reported not feeling safe.

Seventy-three percent of children reported feeling safe at home, while 11
percent felt unsafe. Those numbers probably reflect children's perceptions
of a series of school shootings throughout the country in recent years,
Hibbert said.

"These kids just starting school, they've lived their entire life fearing
schools," she said. "We have a higher percentage of kids not feeling safe
in school, not because of District 186, but because of what's happening
nationally."

Forty-three percent of children responded "yes" to the question: "Have you
ever been scared because adults were hurting you or people you care about?"

The number of children responding to each question does not always add up
to 100 percent because some children failed to answer all the questions,
Hibbert said.

Some of the respondents are so young that they may have misunderstood
certain questions, she acknowledged. Young children have been known to
confuse a parent's use of prescription medicine with illicit drug use.

The scarcity of studies on exposure to alcohol or cigarettes among young
children makes national trends difficult to track.

A national survey of eighth-graders last year, however, found that 40.5
percent had smoked cigarettes at least once in their lives. The finding was
reported in the Monitoring the Future Survey released in December by the
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The survey found that 43.1 percent of eighth-grade students had used
alcohol in the past year.

The Springfield School District is planning to release results soon from a
survey of exposure to alcohol, cigarettes and drugs among local
middle-school students.