DARE WASTES MONEY, DOESN'T MEET GOALS

The Waukesha School Board's Curriculum and Instruction Committee has
approved a plan to subsidize the police department of the city of Waukesha.
It is called the DARE program. The district will commit $15,000 of its
revenue to fund half the cost and the city will spend a like amount. The
problem is that the taxpayers of the city are still paying $30,000 for a
failed program.

Every national study of the DARE program has shown that it does not live up
to its over-hyped goal. The vested interests at the municipal and school
district level refuse to acknowledge this. County Sheriff William Kruziki
was quoted as saying, "There is no way to assess the benefits of DARE."
(Freeman, June 20, 2001).

Every other school district educational course must undergo periodic review
to assure that it is accomplishing its objectives. Waukesha School Board
member Dan Warren stated that he has sat through 160 drug-related expulsion
hearings in the district. That would, by any reasonable standard, suggest
that DARE is not an unbridled success in Waukesha.

However, because DARE is on the same level as mom and apple pie, and
because it alleviates students from self discipline, parents from morality
education and the school administration from social responsibility, the
program is not to subject to any objective standard.

This does not mean that there should be no anti-drug education within the
community. But the DARE program and its cute bumper stickers have not been
the answer.

In addition to the $15,000 in taxes to be committed to DARE, the school
district is already on the hook to the city for an average of $33,000 in
taxes per year over the next three years for the COPS in Schools program.
This program places city officers in the secondary schools on a full-time
basis. Are there any other ways that the district can tax the city
residents to subsidize the current municipal administration?

John R. Marshall

Waukesha

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