AURORA DARES TO KEEP GOING

AURORA -- On the dry-erase board in Jennifer Auclair's fifth-grade class,
next to the posters of arithmetic values and punctuation rules, police
officer Dan Donka scribbled a chart of all the gangs in Aurora.

"Gangs belong to either the Folk or People nations," he said to the Allen
Elementary School students, as he labeled the diagram on the board. "Kind
of like how in baseball there's the American and National League."

Then, he listed the names of all the gangs in Aurora before giving the
wide-eyed kids a quick rundown of the colors and symbols used by each gang,
their tactics, racial breakdown and whether they're "a bunch of sissies" or
not.

It's not your typical math class. When he asked the children whether they
had any questions, dozens of little hands flew in the air:

What if I ride my bike down a gang neighborhood?

Are there many girls in gangs?

What do you do if there are people in your family who are gang members?

"There is no good outcome to being a gang member," he tells them.

For years, many have questioned whether the Drug Abuse Resistance Education
(DARE) program and its counterpart Gang Resistance Education And Training
(GREAT) have a place in school classrooms, saying teaching students about
drugs and gangs could actually lead them into the lifestyle.

As the debate continues across the country, the Aurora Police Department
has clung to its program for 15 years, boasting more than 40,000 children
in Aurora have graduated from the DARE program, which operates in 37
elementary schools, and more than 25,000 kids have been through GREAT at
eight middle schools.

Supporters say that while there aren't statistics to show the tactic works,
the program is a needed tool to keep kids away from drugs and gangs. As
proof, they offer shining examples of the young students who've passed
through the program.

"Don't drink alcohol because it gives you bad judgment," fifth-grader
Javier Rodriguez said when asked what he's learned.

"Don't smoke," offered classmate Alda Martinez.

Why?

"Because you can get lung cancer," the students in Auclair's class
responded, almost in unison.

A number of studies in the late 1990s, including one by the University of
Chicago that's often cited by local critics, concluded that DARE is
ineffective in preventing student drug use.

Following these studies and nationwide criticism, several police
departments, including Naperville and St. Charles, replaced their DARE
programs, and in 2003 the Kane County Board refused to fund the sheriff's
DARE programs. Opponents say the money would be better spent somewhere else.

"DARE is basically a multibillion-dollar, feel-good program because
politicians, school administrators and parents want to say they're doing
something about the drug problem," said Kane County Board member John
Noverini, who was the most outspoken opponent of using Kane County funds to
support DARE. "People just get attached to the program. It's pure emotion."

Tom Hartman, principal of Bardwell Elementary School, readily admits that
he's attached to the program. But there's a good reason Aurora has clung to
it, he said.

"In the long run, it's hard for us to know how effective the program is and
it's hard to keep track of the children," he said. "But the biggest reason
I keep it is the officer's influence with the students. It's so pertinent
with fifth-graders, who may be heading into gangs, drugs, peer pressure. We
like that it's not just us (at the school) talking about it, but it's
someone from the outside that they can trust."

Local DARE officers and school officials say they don't need numbers to
prove the program works. The stories they've heard from parents and
students is enough to keep them believing in it.

Police officer Pat Rolison, who has worked with the Aurora DARE program
since 1989, said he remembers one Holy Angels student who told him about
her father -- an alcoholic who committed suicide in his depression. She
later said that the program helped her understand what was going on.

As Officer Rose O'Brien looked around at the seventh-grade students she
taught at Jefferson Middle School, she had no delusions that the
"squirrely" preteens are going to change their lives because of her GREAT
course. She doesn't think drugs or gangs in Aurora will stop because of the
program.

But she continues teaching because it allows the students to build a
relationship with a police officer, and because her courses are not just
about drugs and gangs, but also about goal-setting and decision-making.

Maybe a few of the kids will think about something she said before they
make a bad choice, she said.

"I think you know a lot of this," O'Brien told the students. "It's just the
things we have to keep reminding you, and the things you have to keep
reminding yourselves."