PREVENTION PROGRAM AIMED AT SAUGUS MIDDLE SCHOOL

SAUGUS - Youth and Recreation Director Greg Nickolas plans to use a
tried and true method to attack the substance abuse problem in town:
common sense.

"I'm taking all the good people and all the efforts put out there and
I'm pulling them together and organizing them," Nickolas said. "We'll
be a clearing house of resources and we'll use the schools as a forum."

A study done by the Northeast Center for Healthy Communities has shown
there have been more opiate-related hospitalizations of Saugus
residents than any other community in the Northeastern part of the
state.

That is not news to Nickolas, who deals with the fallout of that
statistic every day, but it does give him the ammunition he needs to
push through a comprehensive prevention program at the Belmonte Middle
School.

His plan is actually a little more intense than simple common sense,
but it is comprised of the "it takes a village" theory.

Nickolas has been wary of prevention programs taught in the school in
the past, only because they are generally not executed well. "You'll
get a research-based or science-based prevention program and they show
to be highly effective in a controlled environment," he said.

But a classroom with a teacher operating under budget constraints, the
weight of MCAS and other required duties is hardly a controlled
environment, and Nickolas said the curriculum is often left by the
wayside or worse, taught ineffectually.

"It's not the teacher's fault," he adds quickly. "Actually it's an
injustice to expect them to do this."

Nickolas said problems also arise when teaching positions created
specifically for prevention programs morph into something else under
budget constraints.

With that in mind, Nickolas is working with health and wellness
teacher Kim Politano to put his colleague Chris Tarantino in the
classroom to teach the program. He also plans to bring in Detectives
James Donovan and Leonard Campenello from the Police Department's Drug
Task Force, along with Fire Chief James Blanchard, who is often among
the first responders to any medical incident. Addicts, former users
and healthcare personnel will also be invited to speak with students.

In conjunction with the drug prevention program, Nickolas is also
launching a mentorship program at the high school. Building off the
peer mediation program, Nickolas wants to train students, then rotate
them through the middle school to work with younger kids.

Nickolas is confident his program will work if the town can stay the
course, but he admits results won't be immediate. He said it will take
a good three years to see numbers change and he firmly believes they
will.

One reason for his confidence is that he has seen a similar program
work in Saugus before.

Nickolas is quick to add that the substance abuse problem is not a
school problem; it's a community problem.

"It just manifests itself in the schools but they are doing a great
job, especially Joe Diorio at the high school," Nickolas said.

Eventually Nickolas wants to include fourth and fifth graders as
well.

"This is not just substance abuse either," Nickolas said. "It's diet,
exercise, study habits - everything."

And he said it's about pulling together a fragmented community to
solve a community-wide problem.

"I hate to talk in statistical terms because I know the names and
faces of those statistics," Nickolas said. "The good news is this
program doesn't cost the town any money and this is the thing that
will get us results."