SCHOOL POLICING PROGRAM CHANGES

A Red Deer mother is concerned her youngest daughter won't have the
chance to take the DARE program.

Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) teaches Grade 5 students how to
resist peer pressure and drugs, alcohol and tobacco.

Lise Bettac's two older children, Sean and Julie, learned a lot from
the program in past years.

"They would come home and talk about it at supper and it's an avenue
for communication," Bettac said. "They taught us."

She recently found out the program won't be running this year -
meaning her daughter Katrina won't have a chance to take it.

"I am so disappointed," Bettac said. "I just can't understand it. Out
of the blue they do that with no notification to anyone. No asking for
opinions about it."

The DARE program started in 1999 in Red Deer. Each year, 1,100 to
1,200 Grade 5 students in Red Deer Public and Catholic schools take
part. Funded by the Piper Creek Optimists, the program was delivered
by two elementary school resource officers from Red Deer City RCMP.

City RCMP spokeswoman Cpl. Kathe DeHeer said because DARE was a
10-week program, it ate up all of the time elementary school officers
had and they missed the opportunity to interact with all of the grades.

DeHeer said it meant the 1,012 Grade 5 students interacted with local
police for those sessions, but the other 6,000 or so elementary
students didn't.

She said because DARE doesn't allow any changes to be made to the
program, they couldn't change the number of sessions so that officers
could spend more time with the other grades and still offer DARE.

"We're looking at new programming that allows us to interact with more
children of all grades and not put all our efforts on Grade 5," DeHeer
said.

"We've been exploring how best to deliver programming for children
from kindergarten to Grade 12. I think everybody is going to be
extremely happy with what we're doing."

Red Deer City RCMP, public and Catholic school officials will meet
today to discuss the changes. More details about the new program will
be released next week.

Red Deer Catholic Regional School Division representatives weren't
immediately available for comment.

Bruce Buruma, director of community relations with Red Deer Public
Schools, said the decision to discontinue the DARE program was a joint
decision by the school districts and the RCMP. He said they will look
at the officers doing a variety of presentations in the schools. It
could mean the officers taking part in a science class and talking
about physics and how they determine how a crash has taken place or
going to a writing class and explaining the technical writing they do,
Buruma said.

"We feel we're on a much better track with this. The school officer
programs are still there. They have a very important role. We have
amazing people doing those roles and doing very important work in the
schools," Buruma said.

He said Red Deer Public has a district action plan for substance abuse
and recognizes that prevention and education takes place across the
entire curriculum and at all grade levels. He said DARE isn't the only
program they use.

He pointed to a partnership with the Red Deer College nursing program
where people come into talk to students about tobacco. He said there
are also lessons linked with health programs using AADAC materials.

"We're replacing DARE with what we feel is far better programming, far
better connections for students, for the RCMP," Buruma said. He said
the new program will allow all of the elementary students to become
better connected to their school resource officers.