DARE STILL ON BUBBLE, BUT STILL ON FOR YEAR

Over 1,000 students in Strathcona County should be taking the DARE program
this year despite threats that a lack of funding could have shut it down.

Strathcona County RCMP have opted to continue administering the Grade 6
drug awareness program for at least one more year.

"For this year, we have re-aligned our resources from within our staff here
and I am dedicating a full-time DARE instructor/coordinator to over see the
program within all the schools," said Inspector Brian McLeod, the officer
in charge of the detachment.

Along with the full-time instructor, the school liaison officers and
several police volunteers will round out the instructors needed.

But, unless a new source of funding is created this could just be a
one-year reprieve.

"We don't want to keep going back to the drawing board looking for money,
so we're hoping that we can develop something that is more long-term with
the schools," said the police chief.

As it stands, the Strathcona County RCMP finance the DARE program with
officers often volunteering to teach while off-duty. The school boards,
with tight budgets of their own, were not contributing to the cost of the
program and with tighter demands on police budgets, having a full-time
instructor was becoming unfeasible. That led to the cops suggesting last
year that they would pull out of the DARE program.

That may change as the RCMP and both school boards are starting
collaboration to come up with a funding formula.

"It's important that we don't work at opposite ends, that there's not
several different groups going out trying to raise money for this. It's
going to be one concerted effort," said Brian Carbol, the public school
board's associate superintendent of instructional services.

What form the effort will take has not been defined, although Carbol
suggested they may look at a DARE foundation with several revenue sources.
It could also include corporate sponsorship, similar to the partnership in
Fort Saskatchewan with Dow Chemical.