DARE STAYS ALIVE IN LAKE WORTH

After 20 Years, The Anti-Drug Program Gets Mixed Reviews, But Some School
Districts Say It Is Effective With Younger Students.

LAKE WORTH - Cleaning horse stables won't necessarily steer children away
from using drugs and alcohol, but Lake Worth officer Chauncy London hopes
it will teach students to be responsible.

London, 40, is in charge of Lake Worth's Drug Abuse Resistance Education
program, which is offered in elementary school and high school in the small
northwest Tarrant County district.

The DARE program focuses on fifth-graders, who receive several weeks of
instruction from police officers. Officers also teach younger students
about concepts such as "stranger danger." In some districts, including Lake
Worth, DARE is also taught to ninth-grade students to reinforce the
fifth-grade lessons.

But after 20 years, the anti-drug program is getting mixed reviews
nationally and from some area school districts. Several Tarrant County
districts, including Fort Worth and Arlington, have discontinued their DARE
programs because of the cost and because national research indicates that
DARE isn't effective in curbing drug use.

The Everman school district dropped DARE several years ago and now uses
other drug-intervention programs. Lynn Ferrell, the district's Drug Free
and Safe Schools and Communities coordinator, said their programs track
students from elementary through high school.

"In DARE, kids were told to just say 'no.' They got information, but they
weren't given solutions for getting out of situations where their peers
wanted them to use drugs," Ferrell said.

Even though Fort Worth lost DARE, other intervention programs replaced it.
And there are 45 drug-intervention specialists based at middle and high
schools who teach the drug-prevention classes.

A popular program is Life Skills Training from Columbia University for
students in third through ninth grades, said Michael Steinert, a supervisor
in the district's discipline services office.

In the lower grades, the Life Skills program focuses on why children are in
situations in which they use drugs or violence and helps give children
self-esteem and learn to make decisions. In high school, the students
receive more detailed information about the harmful effects of drugs.

But the school districts that continue to use DARE, such as Lake Worth and
White Settlement, say the program is effective with its target audience -
younger students.

What's more, DARE officials are retooling the curriculum used nationally to
emphasize discussion and problem-solving skills among students rather than
lectures.

London, who came to Lake Worth in 1999 after working as a North Richland
Hills police department SWAT team officer, took the program a step further
this summer by offering a class to supplement what students had learned
during the school year.

Students learned about teamwork by playing basketball, riding horses and
even cleaning the barns.

During a humid June morning, 11 students took turns scrubbing water
buckets, picking up trash and sweeping the horse stalls at the Benbrook
Stables.

Morgan Burt, 11, said she doesn't mind working hard around the horses and
spending time in summer classes.

"I think DARE is cool," she said. "I'm learning to say 'no' to drugs.'