DARE-ING TEACHERS

To Reach Children, Officers Fight Funding Cuts, Dropping Numbers

At 9:30 on Tuesday morning, the 19 fifth-graders in Leslie Robertson's
class, at Northern Elementary School in Georgetown, enter their classroom
with eager looks on their faces.

Their excitement is met with hearty hellos and instructions from a
uniformed police officer to settle into their seats.

The children are not intimidated. Trooper Rick Devers has become their
friend during the past several weeks. They are excited to see him and
interested to hear what he will say today.

Devers, like many other officers in Kentucky and across the United States,
is a Drug Abuse Resistance Education officer. He spends four hours a week
teaching DARE to the fifth-grade classes at Northern Elementary.

"I like this age group of people, and I want to give them something they'll
remember," he says. "I think they'll remember DARE."

Devers has been active in the program, instituted throughout the state in
1987, for the past five years. He has been a police officer for 30 years.

Devers begins his lesson with Robertson's class by reviewing last week's
lesson about self-esteem.

"A high self-esteem helps you say no to drugs," he says.

Devers quickly segues into this week's lesson on assertiveness. The
children begin scribbling their new DARE definition into their workbooks as
Devers explains the three ways or "response styles" of saying no to drugs.

He tells the children, then demonstrates by role-playing with them, that
saying no with "confidence" is the best response style to use in any sticky
situation. But he reminds them they can't say no to whomever they please.

"There are some people who have authority over you like your teacher or
your mom or dad," he says while a few students in the back giggle about
telling mom no when she asks for help with the dishes.

Those same students snap to attention when the timbre of his voice drops,
signaling something important, an exception to his previous rule.

"If people who normally have authority over you ask you to do something
wrong, they give up their authority over you," he says.

The children solemnly nod their heads in unison. Devers' meaning has hit home.

After class, as Devers slips out of the room to repeat his message to 20
more fifth-graders, Robertson's students can't wait to discuss DARE's
importance.

Ten-year-old Morgan Schulten says, "It's education but it's very fun. We
get to see how things would actually be, and we get to act out stuff."

Daniel Huber, 10, adds that DARE gives him knowledge about being good to
his body.

"You can stay healthy and have a better life. You won't end up on the
street and you won't have lung cancer or gum cancer," he says.

Fifth-grade teacher Donna Oser says there is no better resource than a
police officer for practical living education.

"He's dealt with drug busts and seeing children make bad choices," she
says. "It allows him to get on their level."

Devers says, "They'll come and talk to me about things they won't even talk
to their parents about."

He also says students from previous classes often recognize him and share
with him their success stories about turning down offers for illegal drugs.

Devers' sentiments are echoed by several other police officers who have
been involved with DARE since its inception.

Lt. Kevin Payne, former director of the Kentucky DARE program, says the
program, which began in Los Angeles in 1983, began in the Fayette County
schools in 1986 and was launched statewide by Gov. Martha Layne Collins.

Other officers were trained and in 1987 the program was piloted in four
other counties: Boyd, Rowan, Daviess and Scott, Payne says.

In 1988, Payne says, officers were trained across the state. Greg Howard,
director of training and operations in the Department of Criminal Justice
Training center at Eastern Kentucky University, taught those first classes
in Fayette County.

He says when the program was started statewide it, "caught on like wildfire."

Lt. Jimmy Richerson, assistant commander of the state police academy in
Frankfort-also was one of the first DARE officers. He says DARE quickly
became popular.

"At one time 109 counties had the DARE program in their schools," he says.

But last year only 51 Kentucky counties offered the program to their students.

Payne says low numbers of officers in police departments across the state
added to the problem. There is little money in DARE.

Payne says the program is being revamped nationally to meet the needs of
classrooms today.

"Some schools don't have DARE now because it didn't fit into their
schedule," Payne says.

He says he hopes the new 10-week program will change that.

"With the new curriculum, we're going to every extreme to ensure its
effectiveness before it starts," Payne says.

Richerson says the program does its job now.

"DARE gives kids the information to make a good choice. They know better
when they leave the classroom," he says.

Howard says, "If it's nothing more than to introduce police officers to
kids, then it's worthwhile. But on a side note, if it keeps kids off drugs
and out of gangs, then that's a double whammy."