YADKIN TO RESTART DARE PROGRAM

YADKINVILLE -- The Yadkin County Sheriff's Office has hired enough
deputies to staff the DARE program next school year.

Deputies who administer DARE, an anti-drug program, said that it was
dropped this year mostly because of a shortage in school resource
officers. "We were short one school resource officer at the start of
the year. We had a couple of officers resign the middle of the school
year," sheriff's Lt. Richard Nixon said.

Those positions are now filled. There are four school resource
officers who work in Yadkin's eight elementary schools, and one
officer is assigned to each of the two high schools.

As part of the program, deputies teach fifth-graders how to avoid
drugs. DARE, or Drug Abuse Resistance Education, has been in Yadkin
schools for 10 years, officials said.

The plan is to restart DARE in the fall, Nixon said. It was hoped
that DARE would be made available this spring at the elementary
schools, but deputies worried that it might interfere with
preparation for end-of-grade testing. National studies have been
critical of DARE and its effectiveness, and the number of U.S. school
systems that use the program dropped from 80 percent in 2002 to 75
percent this year.

The Winston-Salem/Forsyth County school sys-tem dropped the DARE
program in 1998 and offers another drug-education program.

Some law-enforcement officials and some educators still stand by the
program. "I think any time you're giving children information to help
them make healthy choices for themselves, it's well spent," said
Bonnie Davis, a spokeswoman for Yadkin County Schools.