Kids These Days:

During the school board meeting Jan. 8, it was mentioned twice that the Costa Mesa schools in the district would have funding for the Drug and Alcohol Resistance Education (DARE) program but the City Council canceled the program.

The second mention was uttered by board President Martha Fluor and included a call to action to the meeting’s attendees to ask the council to fund DARE. But the call sounded more like scapegoating, as though the board was saying, “Don’t blame us, blame the Costa Mesa City Council.”

Both of our kids were in the DARE program years ago in local schools. I thought it was a complete waste of time and money because this type of lesson should be the responsibility of parents.

When I shared this with a parent, he said, “Steve, there are a lot of homes in this area where kids do not get the teaching and examples from their parents that you and your wife provide for your kids.”

He was right, of course.

But what if, when the results are in, DARE simply doesn’t work? Perhaps DARE is only something that makes us feel like proactive citizens when all we may be doing, at best, is creating a distraction and at worst, creating a lot of curious kids?

Wendy Leece is uniquely qualified to discuss DARE’s merits, having served on the school board, and is a Costa Mesa city councilwoman.

Leece sent me some information on the city’s School Resource Officer (SRO) program, which places police officers on campuses as a deterrent.

SRO is not a DARE substitute, so I asked Leece why DARE funding was canceled.

“DARE money was not getting good results. Look at the data. If the research doesn’t support [DARE], why would you keep using it?”

Why, indeed.

Leece is correct and even the Costa Mesa Police Department questioned the DARE program and it’s $257,729 price tag a few years ago.

In the conclusion of an agenda report on DARE in July 2005, the four signors of the document, which included then-Police Chief John Hensley, wrote: “Based upon research contained in various studies suggesting that the DARE program is ineffective as well as current departmental needs, staff is seeking direction on the future of the DARE program” (It should be noted that canceling DARE saves the city $30,076 for supplies and vehicle maintenance and it releases two officers back to the regular force. Their salaries and benefits were pegged at $227,653. Total: $257,729).

“The city did its due diligence,” said Leece. “And at the end of the day, I fall back on my school board experience and believe we are not getting the bang for the buck with DARE the way we are with the SRO program.”

DARE results throughout the country are not impressive. In 2003, 20 years after it began, DARE did not have the support of the U. S. Surgeon General, the National Academy of Sciences, and the U.S. General Accounting Office. Even the U.S. Department of Education prohibited schools from spending federal money on DARE because it found the program to be ineffective. In Kentucky, one study showed DARE to have lowered resistance to peer pressure to drugs and alcohol, not raised it.

In 2001, even DARE went back to the drawing board. “Our feeling was, after looking at the prevention movement, we were not having enough of an impact,” said Herbert D. Kleber, the head of DARE’s scientific advisory panel in 2001. “There was a marked rise in drug use. Our job was to answer the question, how can we make it better?”

All of which leads me to wonder why two members of the school board, including its president, would ask parents to waste their time appealing to the Costa Mesa City Council to fund a program that does not work.

“We have to stretch our dollars in these tough economic times,” Leece said. “Just because a program feels good doesn’t mean it works.”

STEVE SMITH is a Costa Mesa resident and a freelance writer. Send story ideas to dailypilot@latimes.com.