DARE GETS UPDATED IN SOME AREA SCHOOLS, OTHERS DROP PROGRAM

In the fall, Lexington will become the third school district in the
region to drop DARE, although retaining some elements of the national
antidrug course taught by police officers mainly to fifth-graders.
Lawrence eliminated the once-a-week Drug Abuse Resistance Education
classes two years ago, weaving elements of it into health classes.
Bedford last fall introduced Project Adventure, an alternative
health-physical education program that delivers much the same messages
about peer pressure and decision-making as DARE.

Come September, instead of a DARE officer delivering 17 scripted
lessons to fifth-graders at its six elementary schools, Lexington will
have a ''school resource officer'' assigned to its Diamond and Clarke
middle schools, helping deliver a health curriculum - to be created
over the summer - for grades 6-8.

''We'll look at all kinds of materials and pull out what we feel is
best for our kids,'' said Jennifer Wolfrum, health coordinator for the
Lexington school system. She is collaborating on the new course with
the middle school principals, Joanne Hennessy at Diamond and Pamela
Houlares at Clarke. ''All substance programs are about building skills
- - in decision-making, listening, resolving conflicts, dealing with
peer pressure, analyzing the impact of the media, explaining what
drugs are and how they work,'' Wolfrum said. ''One of the things I'd
like to see us do is have it more interactive with students, to work
with them on actual situations in Lexington where students behaved in
certain ways, to see what alternatives there are, and do more
analyzing of the media.'' One other community will not offer DARE
instruction this year or next. Boxborough, with one school for K-6,
has been unable to spare an officer for the program.

But DARE appears to be thriving in all other school districts in the
region, except Arlington, which has never adopted the program created
by the Los Angeles police in 1983.

''We have five DARE officers, some of them part-time, working with
fifth-graders in all our elementary schools,'' said Woburn's assistant
superintendent for curriculum and instruction, Louise Nolan. ''Every
summer we run a two-week DARE camp at the Joyce Middle School for
incoming seventh-graders. Our DARE officers run an after-school
program at the Joyce. Kids do woodworking and produce a play. DARE
officers lead activities at the Joyce on Saturday mornings. We want
our children to reach out to police officers just as they do to
parents or teachers.'' Over and over, champions of DARE point to the
relationships that youngsters form with cops as perhaps the greatest
benefit.

Bedford's former DARE officer, Jeff Wardwell, is now a youth officer
taking part in many of the weekly Project Adventure classes, in which
fifth-graders at the Lane School gain confidence through rope-walking
exercises and other group endeavors.

''We still get phone calls from parents asking for Jeff,'' Bedford's
police chief, Jack McGrath, said. ''They know the name and know their
kids liked him. There were a lot of benefits. Kids get to realize
police officers aren't different from other people and officers get to
know kids.'' The principal of Chelmsford's Parker Middle School,
Robert Bennett, raves about his town's DARE officer, Rick Hallion.

''This is our third year with DARE,'' Bennett said. ''It's a very
positive program for kids. It's a way for law enforcement to interact
with children in a nonthreatening fashion. It supports what we do in
health education. Youngsters learn to make better decisions. DARE
sponsored a basketball game in March. Students and faculty played
police officers and firefighters. The middle school jazz band played.
We had a contest for posters kids made. We had families there.''
Lawrence, Bedford, and Lexington officials say they were motivated to
drop DARE not only by a desire to establish a comprehensive health
curriculum but also by scheduling pressures in fifth grade, with
music, foreign languages and other ''pull-out'' distractions from core
subjects. ''We're struggling with the same things,'' said Littleton's
school superintendent, Joseph Franco.

''We have DARE in fifth grade, with followup in grades 7 and 8. Our
former DARE officer, John Kelly, is now police chief. He and I have
talked about getting away from the rigidity of DARE, with the canned
lessons. It sounds like what Lexington is doing and what we're
thinking about is bringing DARE to a higher level. Next year we might
not have it. That's in the talking stage.'' Franco said he was taken
aback by one of the findings in a survey Emerson Hospital made of
risky behaviors by students in grades 6, 8, and 11 in Littleton,
Acton, Boxborough, Carlisle, Concord and Westford. ''One out of three
kids here is thinking about suicide,'' he said. ''That's sad. What can
they be dealing with that's so hard to reconcile? There's a lot more
isolation in families today. Kids aren't likely to have aunts and
uncles to turn to when things aren't going well at home. Kids have
fewer support systems now. Schools try to fill that gap.'' The new
health and physical education course at Lane in Bedford was a success,
according to the school's principal, Jill Cane. ''In my first two
years here, we had three different DARE officers, so it was difficult
for kids to form a relationship,'' she said. ''We've incorporated a
lot of the lessons from DARE. They're important for 10-year-olds to
have.'' Wolfrum, Lexington's health coordinator, said the current
consensus is to have 10 or 11 classes next year for sixth-graders and
perhaps as many for eighth-graders. She said the soon-to-be-hired
resource officer will also work with fifth-graders in 1999-2000.

''I know few educators in any school system who take any curriculum
and use it exactly as the publisher intended,'' Wolfrum said. ''Most
teachers will add pieces. ... That's what education is all about.''