Council votes to end DARE program
By Sylvie Belmond belmond@theacorn.com

SYLVIE BELMOND/Acorn Newspapers LAST CLASS- These fifth-graders at Peach Hill Academy are among the last DARE graduates in Moorpark. The city will no longer fund the program. Dep. Tim Lohman, center, who has been working with local students for the past five years, taught the course.

While Moorpark fifth graders were pledging to stay away from drugs at several Drug Abuse and Resistance Education culminations throughout the city, officials elected to eliminate the program to make the funds available for a fulltime high school resource officer position at Moorpark High School.

With 2,400 students on campus, Moorpark High has more immediate needs, according to Moorpark Unified School District Superintendent Ellen Smith.

The resource officer is an important role model and a contact point for students and the administration on the large campus, school officials said.

The school district and the city will each contribute $75,000 to pay for the position during the next fiscal year.

The decision to cancel DARE is shortsighted, said Mayor Patrick Hunter, a lieutenant with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. He was in favor of keeping both the DARE program and the resource officer.

Eliminating DARE, Hunter said, removes two important components of law enforcement- prevention and intervention. Identification, apprehension and prosecution are the other three components, he said.

DARE also creates a positive relationship between students and authorities, and it communicates important life lessons early on, Hunter said.

"One of the problems with government and bureaucracy is that it quantifies everything. But you can't place the DARE program into that mold because you can't quantify how effective it's been," Hunter said.

In addition to sharing antidrugs, antialcohol and antismoking messages, Dep. Tim Lohman also gave students coping skills to help them deal with peer pressure and make better decisions later in life, the mayor said.

"Every little bit of preventive education must be supported," said Councilmember Mark Van Dam, a middle school teacher.

By the time a student reaches eighth grade, Van Dam said, he or she has already formed opinions on what's right and wrong. Early intervention is the key, he said.

"DARE is a wonderful program. It gives students the information they need to make good lifestyle decisions," said Peach Hill Academy Principal Donna Welch at a culmination event Wednesday.

The program is not a fix-all, but it's a good foundation, said Lohman, who's been working with local students for five years.

Lohman has done an outstanding job fostering a positive relationship between students and law enforcement, Smith said, but the DARE curriculum is no longer widely used in schools because its effectiveness hasn't been proven,

The program costs about $190,000 per year and was funded entirely by the city for several years. It will be replaced with other established and more affordable drugprevention programs, Smith said.

The Moorpark Unified School District is using the Project ALERT program in sixth grade, she said, because it's been shown to produce results and it can be implemented by teachers and even student peers.

Since the school district expressed a preference for the high school officer in lieu of DARE, the city went along with those wishes, according to Councilmember Keith Millhouse.

"This was a very difficult decision," said Councilmember Roseann Mikos, indicating the city could not afford to pay for both programs without more school district contributions.

Since costs keep going up because the sheriff 's department raises contract fees with the city every year, the council was compelled to choose one over the other, Councilmember Janice Parvin said.

The City Council will make a formal decision on this matter and all fiscal matters later this month when they finalize the city budget for the 2007/ 2008 fiscal year.