DARE PROGRAM REPLACED WITH NEW ONE

WATERLOO --- Waterloo middle schools are replacing the DARE program with
another anti-drug curriculum, but officials stress that police officers
will not be left out of the classroom.

Local police departments' school resource officers have always taken the
lead in teaching the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program. As Waterloo
Community Schools switches to LifeSkills Training this year, the officers
will continue teaching in collaboration with others.

Debbie Lee, the district's secondary curriculum coordinator, told the Board
of Education last week that when administrators began looking at plans to
replace DARE two years ago the officers said they would teach any
curriculum chosen.

Officials wanted to maintain police involvement because it is important for
officers to "create relationships with students," she said. "It's
significant that they know these students and they can go out into the
community and call them by name."

School resource officers will share the classroom duties with science
teachers and guidance counselors. The collaborative approach takes into
account the officers' time limits.

LifeSkills Training teaches personal, social and drug resistance skills.
Like DARE, its goal is to prevent tobacco, alcohol and drug abuse among
adolescents. However, Lee said the program has a much more extensive
research base than DARE.

Logan Middle School is in its third year implementing LifeSkills through a
grant from Pathways Behavioral Services. For the first two years, DARE ran
alongside LifeSkills as it was taught to sixth-graders and then
seventh-graders. This year, eighth-graders are being added, and DARE is
being dropped.

"We are now ready to say that we do not need DARE," said Lee. "LifeSkills
is a far more comprehensive approach."

Bunger and Central middle schools are just starting a three-year Pathways
grant implementing LifeSkills. The curriculum is being put in place at
Hoover Middle School through district personnel and resources. Each school
is starting with a sixth-grade program and expanding to the other two
grades next year.

Lee said LifeSkills will be taught during science classes and be "embedded"
into the curriculum. She said officials also are talking about eventually
starting the program in elementary schools and taking it through ninth grade.