Marijuana Policy Project

WATERLOO --- Waterloo middle schools are replacing the DARE program with another anti-drug curriculum, but officials stress that police officers will not be left out of the classroom.

Local police departments' school resource officers have always taken the lead in teaching the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program. As Waterloo Community Schools switches to LifeSkills Training this year, the officers will continue teaching in collaboration with others.

Debbie Lee, the district's secondary curriculum coordinator, told the Board of Education last week that when administrators began looking at plans to replace DARE two years ago the officers said they would teach any curriculum chosen.

Officials wanted to maintain police involvement because it is important for officers to "create relationships with students," she said. "It's significant that they know these students and they can go out into the community and call them by name."

School resource officers will share the classroom duties with science teachers and guidance counselors. The collaborative approach takes into account the officers' time limits.

LifeSkills Training teaches personal, social and drug resistance skills. Like DARE, its goal is to prevent tobacco, alcohol and drug abuse among adolescents. However, Lee said the program has a much more extensive research base than DARE.

Logan Middle School is in its third year implementing LifeSkills through a grant from Pathways Behavioral Services. For the first two years, DARE ran alongside LifeSkills as it was taught to sixth-graders and then seventh-graders. This year, eighth-graders are being added, and DARE is being dropped.

"We are now ready to say that we do not need DARE," said Lee. "LifeSkills is a far more comprehensive approach."

Bunger and Central middle schools are just starting a three-year Pathways grant implementing LifeSkills. The curriculum is being put in place at Hoover Middle School through district personnel and resources. Each school is starting with a sixth-grade program and expanding to the other two grades next year.

Lee said LifeSkills will be taught during science classes and be "embedded" into the curriculum. She said officials also are talking about eventually starting the program in elementary schools and taking it through ninth grade.