SCHOOLS' ANTI-DRUG PROGRAMS TEAM UP, GAIN NEW FUND SOURCE

DARE Lessons Revamped, Paired With Life Skills

A plan to restructure the way fifth- and sixth-graders learn about drug
prevention and life decisions is calming the fears some parents and school
leaders had when city and county governments merged early this year.

They worried that Jefferson County Public Schools would lose the officers
who teach classroom programs such as DARE and Life Skills. But under a new
plan, partially funded this year by community groups, students will begin a
four-year program about drugs and alcohol, peer pressure and self-image.

"My first thought is after the merger, we wouldn't get anything," said
Bowen Elementary principal Steve Tyra, whose students in eastern Jefferson
County had been in the Life Skills Training Program, an alternative to the
controversial Drug Awareness Resistance Education, or DARE, program.

Throughout metro Louisville, fifth-graders will begin with DARE and then
move on to three years of Life Skills courses which teach students how to
deal with their decisions. School and police officials say the increased
education will make better-rounded students who are more equipped to fight
the pressure to use drugs or alcohol.

"The government and the school system are seeing everything together now,"
said Officer Paul Hixon, who is teaching DARE this year in more than a
dozen elementary schools, including Bowen, and who taught Life Skills in
the county before merger. "The county was doing one, the city doing another
and the school system supported both. That's the rope everyone was tugging on.

"Now, everyone is focused on what do we need to do to get our kids ready,"
Hixon said. "Actually, this probably should have been done four years ago."

For several years DARE has been criticized by some who say the program
wastes money and fails to persuade youths to stay away from drugs and
alcohol. Jefferson County Police Chief William Carcara dropped DARE and
introduced Life Skills at several county schools. The new program, which
proponents say goes beyond "just saying no," quickly gained supporters.

By the end of the year, the Life Skills curriculum will be in every
sixth-grade classroom, with seventh grade added next year and eighth grade
the year after that. Police officers will instruct DARE - revamped in
response to the criticism - and teachers are being trained in Life Skills.
That program eventually will be paid by a federal grant the school system
received for several programs.

Community groups are paying for the first year. The grant, which will pay
for the program's $82,000 annual cost per grade, doesn't cover sixth grade.

The Smoke-Free Coalition donated $43,000 in tobacco settlement funds, Seven
Counties Services gave $10,000 and the Delinquency Prevention Council
donated more than $34,000. The $87,000 will pay for teachers and students'
materials and for first-year training.

"This is truly a community effort," said Charlie Baker of the group Safe
and Drug-Free Schools.

School officials, police commanders, parents and academic experts are
applauding the effort to offer both courses.

"The more you repeat something, the sounder the learning and more
long-term," said Deborah Wilson, chairwoman of the University of Louisville
Justice Administration Department. She has studied the effectiveness of
Life Skills. "You can't expect kids to learn about drugs and alcohol in the
fifth grade and expect them to carry it through."

While only officers can teach DARE, teachers can instruct Life Skills. The
police department approved DARE. Baker and others with Safe and Drug-Free
Schools focused on earning a grant to provide Life Skills courses.

"It made sense to me to do DARE in elementary school and Life Skills in
middle school," Baker said. "It's almost like students will be getting a
double dose doing it this way."

Though Tyra said he would prefer to have Life Skills again at Bowen, he
wasn't disappointed with the police decision to teach DARE at the
elementary level.

"The conversation needs to be continued," Tyra said. "I can't deliver the
message as well as an officer. The uniform makes a big difference."

That's why some are concerned that Life Skills won't be as effective if it
is taught by a teacher. Parent Sylvia Thompson, whose son took Life Skills
at Bowen last year as a fifth-grader, thinks having an officer involved is
crucial.

"I hope that connection always stays there, that's mandatory," said
Thompson, whose husband is a federal law-enforcement officer. "All the
children get to develop a relationship with a law-enforcement officer, and
it's not just what they get on the streets and on television."

The goal beginning this year is for officers to go into the classrooms
occasionally and help teachers with the Life Skills curriculum.

Thompson said she became a believer in the course after her son Will was in
it. "I was just blown away with how much he learned in Life Skills," said
Thompson, an emergency room nurse. "He was asking us questions he had never
asked us before."

Ciera Lewis, an eighth-grader at Brown School in downtown Louisville, took
Life Skills at Fern Creek Elementary. Having the courses reinforced for
three years will help students, she said.

"It will make them think," Lewis said.