Pubdate: Wed, 07 Aug 2002 Source: Florida Times-Union (FL) Copyright: 2002 The Florida Times-Union Contact: http://www.times-union.com/aboutus/letters_to_editor.html Website: http://www.times-union.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/155 Author: Beth Reese Cravey Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/dare.htm (D.A.R.E.) 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.