SCHOOLS GET NEW PROGRAM

DARE drug curriculum being replaced by SAVE

As the school year gets under way today, Clay County sheriff's deputies will
be back in public school classrooms along with the students, teaching them
how to steer clear of drugs and violence.

But this year, those deputies will be teaching from a different page than
they did before.

Sheriff Scott Lancaster has dropped the Drug Abuse Resistance Education, or
DARE, program, developed in California in 1983 and provided to Clay
sixth-graders for years, in favor of a new curriculum created by the Polk
County Sheriff's Office.

Called SAVE, for Substance Abuse and Violence Education, the new curriculum
will save the Clay sheriff's office more than $20,000 this year, said
spokeswoman Mary Justino.

The copyrighted DARE materials cost $12.50 per child, which, for the 2,000
or so sixth-graders expected in Clay schools this year, would run about
$25,000. The Polk sheriff's office provides its curriculum free and copying
fees totaled only $1,658 for the year, she said.

Also, DARE training cost $200 per officer; SAVE training was free -- one
officer received training from Polk County and then brought other Clay
officers up to speed on the program, she said.

SAVE is broader-based, targeted at three grade levels -- fifth, sixth and
seventh grades -- rather than the one grade, sixth, Clay County deputies
served through DARE. In addition, SAVE is shorter, a three- week kickoff
course for fifth-graders, a 10-week course for sixth- graders and a
three-week review course for seventh-graders, as compared to the 17 weeks of
DARE, and easier to fit into school schedules.

"It's more than money. It's the quality of what we're doing for the kids --
the classroom time we're taking them out of the academic environment, a
number of issues," Lancaster said. "But the biggest issue is that we have
more control over the material."

The SAVE curriculum can be tailored to the specific needs of individual
schools, said Lancaster. The program is designed not only to address the
issue of substance abuse, but also other problems youth encounter. Lesson
plans include goal setting, school violence, conflict resolution, confidence
building, gang identification and alternatives and cultural diversity,
according to the Polk County Sheriff's Office Web site, which describes the
program.

Also, because SAVE will be in more schools and more grade levels, there will
be more opportunities for deputies to interact with students on a regular
basis and build relationships with them. Lancaster, who was one of Clay
County's first school resource officers, has always championed increased
deputy presence on school campuses.

"There are so many advantages to having deputies working one-on-one with
students and teachers. The SAVE program, like DARE, will be a tool used to
continue to that tradition and make that bond an even better one," he said.

Lancaster announced the new program Thursday at the Orange Park Mall, where
the sheriff's Juvenile Crime Unit, which includes school resource officers,
had set up a booth with brochures on SAVE, as well as other school- and
child-safety information.

SAVE was created in 1994 in Polk County, where the sheriff's office had been
using DARE for five years but wanted a program that addressed issues beyond
drugs, the agency's Web site said. That same year the program was deemed
"exemplary" by the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies,
when the Polk County Sheriff's Office received national accreditation.

Since then, it has also been adopted by 20 other agencies, including
Alachua, Marion, Okaloosa, St. Johns and Wakulla counties, as well as
Bartow, Belleview and Lake Wales.

"We feel that we're on the cutting edge," Lancaster said.

Clay County School Superintendent David Owens said he endorsed the change.

"It's a fact that schools alone cannot solve the problem of drug abuse and
violence, but I believe the SAVE program will be a great influence on our
youth and, as a result the schools and the community will be better for it,"
he said.

Charlie Parsons, executive director of DARE, declined comment on SAVE
because he was unfamiliar with the program. But he said DARE, a not-
for-profit program that he called "the cheapest thing going," continues to
grow across the country and internationally.

"We do, from time to time, have the program dropped for whatever reason," he
said. "My biggest concern if they drop DARE is if they don't have anything
at all."

Also, DARE is not only expanding geographically but in its curriculum
offerings as well. There are programs either in operation or being developed
for kindergarten through fourth grade, upper elementary grades, middle
school, high school and parents, he said.

DARE is being offered to millions of children in all 50 states in the U.S.
-- in 80 percent of the nation's school districts -- and in 53 other
countries.

Nationally, DARE has stirred debate in recent years as studies contended
that the program was not particularly effective in steering students from
drugs.

The DARE Web site said, "Even the most critical research ... indicates
positive short-term effects ... We know that DARE is not a silver bullet.
One year of DARE or any other prevention program does not provide a lifetime
inoculation against drug use. However, DARE provides an important foundation
to build strong prevention efforts, and is the largest and most consistent
drug education delivery system in the world."

The sheriff's office hopes Clay businesses will step forward to provide or
help subsidize extra items for the program, such as SAVE- inscribed pencils
and T-shirts, Justino said.