For immediate release from the
Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake Schools

January 23, 2007

Following negotiations with the town of Glenville

BURNT HILLS:  At their meeting on January 22, Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake Board of Education members agreed to find $2,000 in the district's budget to enable the 5th grade DARE program to go forward as usual later this spring at the Pashley Elementary School.

     Pashley parents and administrators had become concerned recently that funding cutbacks in the town of Glenville police budget meant that the Glenville DARE officer would be unable to provide lessons to their 81 fifth graders.  The town had informed the school district in November 2007 that it would be unable to provide the program in 2008.

    The other two elementary schools in the BH-BL district are located in Saratoga county, where DARE is provided through the county Sheriff's Department, and DARE lessons are scheduled to go ahead as usual. 

Compromise plan reached in Glenville

     Superintendent Jim Schultz told Board of Education members on January 22 that further conversations with town officials had allowed him and Glenville police chief Michael Ranalli to arrive at a plan where a DARE officer could come to Pashley for only $4,000, and that that cost could be split 50/50 by the town and school district, if the school board agreed.

    Since the cost of the DARE program has always been paid by a police agency up to now, neither Mr. Schultz nor the Pashley parents and PTA members at the school board meeting were eager to break this precedent and assume financial responsibility for the program themselves.

     However, several school board members said that the program was important enough to warrant spending $2,000 on it. Mr. Schultz also thanked Chief Ranalli for finding a way to make this happen at such a modest cost.

     Questions were raised at the meeting about the effectiveness of DARE and whether the school district has access to other equally effective programs. Mr. Schultz stated that the school district would go ahead with the program this spring and at the same time conduct an assessment of the place of the program in the overall BH-BL health curriculum.

Widely used program

     DARE, which stands for Drug Abuse Resistance Education, is an international program whose curriculum teaches children to avoid drugs. It was founded in 1983 and is now used in 75% of US public school districts, according to the DARE America website.

    Police officers who have been specially trained in the DARE curriculum are placed in schools under an agreement between a school district and police agency. Students learn about the dangers of drugs and alcohol, review how to handle peer pressure, and practice a number of techniques for saying "no" to drugs.

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