YOCHA-DE-HE STUDENTS GRADUATE FROM DARE

Tribal School Kids First Class To Pass Anti-drug Program

Ten students became the first DARE graduates in the history of tiny
Yocha-De-He Preparatory School in Brooks on Thursday.

The Yolo County Sheriff's Department conducts the Drug Abuse
Resistance Education program for sixth-graders throughout the county.
Until this year, though, it had never visited the small preparatory
school run by the Rumsey Band of Wintun Indians, which has 22
students across all ages.

Thanks to a grant from the tribe's annual mitigation fund, they made
it happen.

"(DARE) is not just about saying no to drugs," explained instructor
Reid Thompson. "We work on life skills; how to get out of situations
gracefully and tactfully."

Receiving awards were fifth-graders Jake Eason, Valya Harman and
Nathaniel Villalobos, sixth-graders Diamond Marquez, Demetrius
Lowell, Miranda Reyes and Hannah Sheehan and seventh-graders Mike
Evans, Jasper Lowell and Roman Reyes.

Teacher Todd Gettleman said the 10-week program involved Thompson
visiting the class for an hour each Tuesday to put students through a
variety of activities.

"We do a lot of role-playing," he said. "We try to hit all the
different learning skills. The optimal thing is to have them teach
each other."

To graduate, each student had to write an essay on the lessons of the
program. Thompson and the rest of the class selected the two best as
valedictorians, who read their essays aloud on Thursday.

Marquez and Demetrius Lowell read about the program and how it taught
them the ways to recognize different drugs as well as their effects,
peer pressure and how to escape it.

"I learned to be drug free," Marquez said.

It's not clear what the future holds for Yocha-De-He's program. DARE
is normally administered to sixth-graders, but next year's class will
have already graduated. However, everyone involved expressed an
interest in seeing it return along with the Stranger Danger program
offered for the younger kids.

The tribal mitigation money is offered every year, so it would be
possible for the program to go on hiatus for a year or two and return
with a new grant.