HUNTINGTON BEACH : DARE Program for Younger Students

The Huntington Beach City School District board this week agreed to expand its Drug Abuse Resistance Education program to include kindergarten through fourth-grade students.

If the Huntington Beach Police Department’s charge for the services of an additional DARE officer meet district budget expectations, the district will become one of the first in Orange County to involve its younger students in the program.

Under the current DARE program, one Huntington Beach officer serves the district and focuses on fifth-graders.

The Police Department plans to broaden the program in February to include students in seventh and eighth grades. The cost of that program, as well as the existing one, is covered by the Police Department.

The planned expansion into the lower grades, however, would be paid for by the district. Officials have earmarked a yet-undetermined sum of state Drug, Alcohol and Tobacco Education funding for the new program, said John Magnuson, the district’s manager of special projects.

“The Police Department will come back to us with a dollar figure. . . and if we can afford it, we’ll go ahead and do it,” Magnuson said.

He said the perceived success of the DARE counseling and instruction curriculum prompted district officials to consider including younger students. “We felt it would be a good idea to place more emphasis on the K-4 students, and then carry it on through” higher grades, he said.