SUFFOLK SCHOOLS TO SAY GOODBYE TO DARE

FOR nearly 20 years, Suffolk County police officers have been teaching
students in the county's five western towns about the risks of
tobacco, alcohol and other drugs, as well as about peer pressure and
safety. But that is changing as the county police department
eliminates its DARE program, which will be replaced with a more
general health and safety curriculum.

"We felt that DARE was not doing what it was supposed to do," said
Commissioner Richard Dormer of the Suffolk County Police, who
announced this month that he would reassign 16 of the 26 officers in
DARE - for Drug Abuse Resistance Education - to patrol duty and that
the 10 other officers would participate in the new program beginning
in January.

"We wanted to have more flexibility, and to be able to tailor the
lessons to what's going on in an individual community," Commissioner
Dormer said.

Suffolk County police officers have provided classroom lessons through
DARE to about 30,000 students a year in the fifth through seventh
grades since 1988.

The new program, known as the Enhanced HealthSmart Curriculum, is for
students in kindergarten through 12th grade. It is more comprehensive
than DARE, Commissioner Dormer said, and will cover many of the issues
that youngsters have to deal with today, including gangs, gambling,
bullying, driving fatalities, dating violence, Internet safety and
identity theft.

HealthSmart was developed in conjunction with the county Health
Department and Eastern Suffolk Boces, and will be offered free to all
Suffolk school districts. It will be taught by teachers in their own
classrooms and supplemented by assemblies conducted by county police
officers.

Project DARE, which was begun in 1983 and is based in Inglewood,
Calif., is the most widely used school-based drug prevention program
in the country. But recent studies have criticized its effectiveness.
In a 2002 study, the National Research Council, which functions under
the National Academy of Sciences, found that DARE made no significant
difference in drug use among students.

Nassau County has never participated in DARE, but instead uses a
federally financed program known as Great, for Gang Resistance
Education and Training. It focuses on students in fourth and sixth
grades and is primarily an antiviolence program, run by five full-time
police officers. The program is now in 13 high-risk school districts,
based on crime statistics.

The program's goal is to help students develop the skills to make the
right choices, said Officer Elizabeth Claffey of the Nassau County
Police Department.

Martha Kahan, school liaison for Eastern Suffolk Boces, said the
HealthSmart Curriculum, published by ETR Associates, addresses the
main risk behaviors identified by the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention.

Eastern Suffolk Boces has already provided the one day of training for
1,500 teachers, from about half of the school districts in the county,
on how to put the program in place.

But Sheldon Karnilow, superintendent of schools in the Half Hollow
Hills district, which has used the DARE program in its fifth, sixth
and seventh grades for nearly 10 years, said that its loss was very
disappointing.

"It has had a tremendous impact on the students and has become part of
our school culture," Dr. Karnilow said. "I'm concerned that when the
responsibility for teaching the curriculum falls on the shoulders of
the teachers, who already have a full curriculum, that it won't have
the same effectiveness that it did when the police officers came to
visit."

Over the past few months, the 300 teachers in kindergarten through
fifth grade in the Sachem school district were trained by Eastern
Suffolk Boces after the district adopted HealthSmart as its official
health curriculum.

Jill M. Gierasch, assistant superintendent for elementary curriculum,
said that the teachers have been excited about the program, which
includes a 30-minute lesson each week, and that the district planned
to supplement it with visits by police officers.

"I'm sure many people will be disappointed over the loss of DARE," she
said. "The kids got a lot from the police officers, but the new
program is a positive enhancement."