Long Beach
The fight against drug abuse in and around Long Beach schools will be stepped up in the fall with a $193,000 state grant to the Long Beach Unified School District.
At the high school level, funds will be used to train teachers and administrators to recognize signs of drug abuse and to create counseling and intervention teams composed of students, counselors and police. The grant will also pay to implement the Drug Abuse Reduction Program, or DARE, in the sixth grade.
Some of the money will also go to the Long Beach Police Department to pay for on-campus drug suppression, said Robert Hart, district director of special projects. The amount of money the police department will receive and how it will be used has not been decided.
The grant was the largest of 19 awarded this year by the state Office of Criminal Justice Planning. Thirteen other school districts, including Los Angeles Unified, had programs extended from last year.
Hart said the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and Signal Hill Police Department may also be asked to participate, so that the program can be extended into Signal Hill and the part of Lakewood served by the Long Beach Unified School District.
The grant will be supplemented by a $64,333 contribution from the school district general fund, he said.
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