Liberty Lake Elementary only CV school to have DARE

Fifth-graders at Liberty Lake Elementary School will once again be the only students in the Central Valley School District to be offered the DARE program.

Thanks to private donors and the city of Liberty Lake, the national drug and alcohol program will be back at the school this spring.

The Central Valley School Board gave the go-ahead at its regular meeting Monday night, followed by clapping and cheering from parents in the audience.

“This is great not only for the students but for our whole community,” said Carol Asmus, the wife of Liberty Lake Police Chief Brian Asmus. “It helps kids build a relationship with the officer that they see driving in their neighborhoods every day.”

Brian Asmus, a certified DARE instructor, will volunteer his time to teach the program.

The decision to allow the program to be offered at only one school within the district was not without opposition.

Last year, board members Lynn Trantow and Cindy McMullen voted against allowing only Liberty Lake to have the program, in a 3-2 vote.

This year’s decision was a mirror image, with Trantow and McMullen dissenting.

Both cited the inequity of allowing one school to have it, but not all schools in the district.

“An opportunity that comes along and treats one student differently than another has to really be looked at,” McMullen said. “I can’t support a situation where we have curriculum that can be offered to some but not all of our students.”

After voting no, McMullen made a motion to direct the staff to contact Spokane County Sheriff’s Office and the Spokane Valley Police to determine if the district’s school resource officers can be used to implement DARE in the other 12 schools in the district.

It passed unanimously.

“I think we all agree that DARE is something that we want,” said board member Craig Holmes.

The Central Valley DARE program was dropped last year when the newly formed city of Spokane Valley negotiated a police contract that did not include the program.

Thirteen of the district’s 14 elementary schools are within the city limits. The DARE program, which must be taught by a credentialed law enforcement officer, had previously been financed by Spokane County for 15 years.

In response the school district began offering a district sponsored drug and alcohol education program last year, called Project Alert.

This year, that program will undergo some changes, before being brought back to the schools in the spring.

“Although Project Alert is a very good program, we did run into some glitches,” said Jean Marczynski, district administrator. “One of the key elements of DARE seems to be the involvement of the officers. We hope we will be able to tap into their expertise and help connect them with the students as well.”