DOES DARE DESERVE FUNDING?

Your front -- page article (How DARE They?) and editorial in the same vein
in the May 8 issue raise some interesting points.

The budget shortfalls in education due to provincial government cutbacks
have had a negative effect on our kids' learning experience, especially
those children who need the most help. At the same time, forcing school
boards to examine what are essentials versus non-essentials is in itself
not a bad thing. This is not to be taken as an endorsement of the
Conservative Party's actions; I ran against the Harris government in the
last provincial election because of their policies. However, describing
those policies as "just a lot of short-sighted penny-pinching" serves to
cloud the issue rather than clarify it.

Spending $80,000 on the DARE program makes sense, if it works. What your
readers were not told is that there is no evidence that it does.

This has been known for some time before it was alluded to at the Drug
Education In-service that your editorial mentioned, which I attended as
chair of Q.E.Park School Council.

So would that $80,000 be better spent on textbooks, software or classroom
supplies, or do we continue DARE as a public relations exercise?

If the school board chooses to take money from academic curriculum for
"feel-good" budget items such as DARE, or a "Diversity Officer" who has no
measurable work to do, then the value of those items should be apparent
enough to withstand scrutiny at budget time.

Whether the decision is to save or chop, as parents and taxpayers we should
be able to feel reasonably sure that expenditure decisions are based not on
image, but on value.

ADRIAN RATELLE