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DARE GROWTH PROMPTS REVIEW

St.  Robert police have a problem, but it's not necessarily a bad problem: too many schools like Officer Crystal Nunn, who was asked to begin a Drug Abuse Resistance Education program at Freedom Elementary School and now handles several other programs at schools on Fort Leonard Wood.

Nunn had worked as a police officer in St.  Robert before she left for a suburban St.  Louis police agency where she received training as a DARE officer.  When she returned to the St.  Robert Police Department last year, city officials decided it would be good to use her DARE training to begin a program when the Waynesville R-VI School District opened a new elementary school in St.  Robert.

St.  Robert City Administrator Norman Herren asked members of the St.  Robert Finance Committee what they should do next.

"We started out with the idea that we had a qualified DARE officer and we would use her in the school since it was the first school in the city," Herren said.  "She turned out to be fantastic and we've gotten more and more requests to use her."

That's good for the schools but not so good for St.  Robert police, who can't use her for road patrol duty when she's working in schools.

Alderman Todd Williams asked how other communities handle the DARE program; Herren said no other school system in the area has a certified DARE officer and said he didn't think Fort Leonard Wood military police were now using the DARE program.

Alderman Theresa Cook, who chairs the finance committee and is a Waynesville administrative employee, said she'd check with other cities and school systems on how they handle the DARE program and would report back to the committee.