TINLEY PARK PARENTS RALLY TO SAVE DARE

Whenever Tinley Park fifth-grader Danelle Paulsen spots a police car,
she checks to see if officer Bob Shervino is inside.

The Tinley Park DARE officer has become Paulsen's newest friend. When
she found out at school recently that the drug-awareness program could
be no more, she was bummed, her father said.

"To have it canceled is just a shame," said Ed Paulsen, whose daughter
attends Keller Elementary School.

Paulsen was among several parents who rallied Tuesday at a village
board meeting to try to spare the Drug Abuse Resistance Education
program from the chopping block. The DARE program uses two full-time
officers and another working half time to regularly visit Tinley Park
grade schools throughout the school year.

Faced with trimming the village's 2008-09 budget, which received
preliminary approval Tuesday night, Tinley Park trustees plan to shift
the two full-time DARE officers to the streets after school lets out
this year.

The program costs about $40,000 in administrative overtime and another
$30,000 in overtime for officers who fill in for the DARE officers
when necessary, a preliminary budget shows.

Paulsen saved his comments for after the village board meeting.
Dorothy Pavlick, whose twin girls go to Central Middle School, made
her voice known. She told trustees her daughters have fond memories of
Shervino.

"He was like a god in our house," Pavlick said. "What he said was the
word. .. It's little programs like (DARE) that make an impact."

Shannon Wodka worries her daughter Marleh, a fourth-grader at Memorial
Elementary School, won't receive the same interaction with police
officers. DARE is mostly for fifth-graders.

"This is a way for the police department to come in and gain the trust
of our children," said Wodka, adding that local moms have started a
mass e-mail about the DARE program's possible demise.

Wodka noted that she grew up in Sauk Village, where the school
district was too broke to offer art, music and extracurricular programs.

Tinley Park trustees don't want to scrap DARE, but they want a cheaper
program. They plan to try to develop an alternative drug-awareness
program. Tinley Park also has a DARE commission of about 15 volunteers
who distribute safety kits and conduct events to fight crime, Trustee
Brian Maher has said.

"This was not an easy decision to put the officers back on the
street," said Maher, chairman of the village board's public safety
committee. "But (DARE) is an ongoing expense and commitment. The task
for us is going to be how to maintain (DARE) and do it more
efficiently and more cost-effectively."