FUNDING CUTS PUT DARE EFFORT ON ENDANGERED LIST

In another era Meaghan Sennott might have described the Sandwich program as
"the cat's meow" or even "groovy."

But as a fifth-grader in today's world Meaghan sums the program up in a
word amplified by an adverb. "Awesome, totally awesome."

It is a view shared by her parents, her friends and many teachers across
the Cape. It was the view of more than 100 parents and grandparents who
attended a DARE graduation Friday at the Mattacheese Middle School in West
Yarmouth.

But it is not an outlook necessarily shared by everyone, particularly those
in state government who hold the purse strings.

Next year DARE programs in Massachusetts - which involved an estimated
240,000 students across the state this year - could become a thing of the past.

In January, acting Gov. Jane Swift axed the $4.3 million DARE budget from
her fiscal 2003 state budget proposal of about $220 billion. It was one of
the smaller cuts - including cuts to anti-smoking efforts, charter school
student reimbursements and aid to towns for public works projects - to
close a projected $2 billion budget shortfall.

Around the state, legislators are warning DARE supporters not to be too
optimistic about funding in light of the looming state budget crisis.

"There is nothing concrete - not yet anyway - but a lot of programs are
likely to be cut," said Michael Karath, aide to state Rep. Demetrius
Atsalis, D-Hyannis.

"The House is just starting to put a budget together and we expect there
will be a lot of programs knocking on the door asking not to be cut,"
Karath said.

"Who would want to cut a program like this? DARE has been very popular
among Cape schools," he said. "But we won't know what will happen until
discussions get underway."

Karath noted that funding for community policing grants - used by many
municipal departments to fund police-school programs other than DARE -
could also be at risk this year. Some Cape departments use community
policing grants to put officers in high schools and elementary schools.

Cape police chiefs are saying now they hope the Legislature will see fit to
fund DARE. If that does not happen, "this might be our last DARE
graduation," Yarmouth Chief Peter Carnes said Friday at the Mattacheese
Middle School.

Broader use and scope

Despite its possible expendability on Beacon Hill, the program's widespread
popularity among schools, police, parents and students is undeniable.

DARE, the acronym stands for Drug Awareness Resistance Education, was begun
in 1983 as an anti-drug program in California.

Since then, the program has changed "to reflect the changing concerns of
our communities," said Ralph Lochridge spokesman for DARE-America, the
national organization that oversees training and curriculum development.

"There continues to be an anti-drug component in the curriculum, but we've
broadened the program to address issues like tobacco use, violence, gun
safety, domestic violence, gang involvement and date rape - whatever is
most appropriate for a particular community," he said.

DARE has spread to 54 countries and involves 36 million children worldwide.
The program is used in 80 percent of public schools in this country, and in
every school district on the Cape and islands. From the start, the program
has involved bringing police officers into classrooms to teach students.

DARE offers a curriculum used by police officers to teach a variety of
subjects, aimed at increasing self-esteem, self awareness and negotiating
skills. Students engage in role playing, create skits, and write essays and
reports.

Professional curriculum writers map out the activities, in concert with
educators and police officers, according to Lochridge.

Cuts jeopardize programs

Across the country, DARE programs are funded in a variety of ways including
public and private grants.

In Massachusetts, DARE is funded through grants from the state Executive
Office of Public Safety. Money is disbursed to police departments through
the Governor's Alliance Against Drugs.

Cape and islands police departments received a total of $148,256 in DARE
grants for the current year. These ranged from the $155 given to Truro, to
the $15,000 given to larger towns such as Falmouth.

How the money is used varies by police department. Yarmouth, for example,
got a $9,700 grant and uses the money to pay for other officers to fill in
shifts when Officer Richard White is teaching three days a week at the
Mattacheese Middle School.

Sandwich got a $15,000 grant that is used to assign Officer Brian Bondarek
full-time to Sandwich schools.

Bondarek, whose enthusiasm for working with children appears boundless,
said discussions about "how to say no to drugs, and how to cope with peer
pressure are certainly part of our program" in Sandwich fifth-grades.

But, he added, "I try to be flexible, I try to take advantage of those
teachable moments. This year for example, the topic of divorce came up
because several kids had parents going through that. So we dealt with that
by talking about differences between people and how we cope with our feelings."

Another time, cancer became the subject of discussion when fifth- graders
learned that Bondarek's daughter had just successfully finished treatments
for cancer. This, along with the knowledge that "there are high cancer
rates in our community was something that had the kids worried," he said.

"It was one of those 'teachable moments' - and maybe the kids had more to
teach me about their worlds at that moment than I had to teach them," he said.

"When I was growing up in Sandwich, my television had three channels,
theirs have 300. We didn't have cellphones. We didn't hear about high
cancer rates. It's a different world for this generation," he said.

"DARE is one part of our overall school program," said Sandwich Chief
Michael Miller, who worries about what will happen if his department loses
DARE funding.

"We definitely want to continue having police work with the schools and in
the classroom, but I just don't know at this point what we would
specifically do with our fifth-grade program, now a DARE position," he said.

DARE pays for Bondarek to work with fifth-graders regularly, although he
does visit periodically with first- and third-grade classes, as part of the
DARE program.

Sandwich also assigns a school resource officer to the high school, paid
for out of the department's general budget.

"This is a program that has generated tremendous parent support and is
considered a real resource for the school system," Miller said of his
department's focus on placing officers in schools.

Joanne Sykes, who teaches health to seventh- and eighth-graders in Sandwich
agrees. "DARE is much more than an anti-drug program.

"It is far more encompassing than that - in the '80s and '90s, the program
was adjusted to include discussion and means of coping with violence. Then
came the issue of bullying," she said. "What I have seen come into the
classroom more recently is a discussion of tolerance and diversity - all
because of the DARE program."

Sykes said it adds to a student's experience to participate in discussions
and hear perspectives "from a professional other than a teacher."

She adds, that bringing someone other than a teacher into the classroom
also "takes the pressure off for students. They are not being graded. It is
something different for them. Even if I were to say, 'You're not going to
get a grade on this.' I'm still the teacher."

Debating the benefits

Sykes is disturbed by what she perceives as yet another cut in education
programs - "that's what it is, if the DARE program is not funded. I don't
see any proposals that suggest using the DARE money for other educational
programs. So how does cutting it help?"

She is aware of recent studies critical of DARE, which claim the program
has done little to prevent drug use in older students.

Last year a report by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse
stated that 61 percent of the nation's high school students said drugs were
kept in or used at their schools. The same report concluded that DARE was
having very little extended impact on students.

Sykes points out that these studies "are narrowly focused on substance
abuse and DARE has much broader range than that. If anything, those studies
point to a need to have something for the upper grades in the way of
programs or support for students. "

Yarmouth's Chief Carnes responds to the critical studies by noting, "There
is no way to realistically measure how many students chose not to use drugs."

Lochridge said his 25 years of working, first as a federal drug
investigator and then for DARE, "leads me to conclude that 10 percent of
kids are probably going to use drugs, no matter what we do for them.
Another 10 percent will never use drugs regardless of what they hear in
school. It is that 80 percent in the middle you want to reach."

Parents of students who have gone through DARE programs react similarly.

One Sandwich mother noted, "Banks see a lot of checks bounced. Does that
mean they should stop teaching math in school?"

Mari Sennott, another mother from Sandwich, is a strong supporter of the
program after seeing how much her daughter Meaghan enjoyed it.

In January when Meaghan and her friends learned of Swift's proposal to cut
funding, they began a petition drive, gathering signatures from fellow
students at the Wing School in Sandwich, from adults in their neighborhoods
and finally from Sandwich selectmen. It might have helped that Meaghan's
father is Selectman Hank Sennott, said his wife with a laugh. The petitions
have been sent to the governor's office.

What did not escape the parents in this case is that their daughter got a
lesson in civics.

"They saw something they didn't like about how the government is working
and they decided to change it," said Sennott.