The Miami R-1 6th grade class held there D.A.R.E. Graduation today. The DARE program enables students to interact with police officers or sheriffs in a controlled, safe, classroom environment. This helps students and officers meet and understand each other in a friendly manner, instead of having to meet when a student commits a crime, or when officers must intervene in domestic disputes and severe family problems.
According to the D.A.R.E. website, 36 million children around the world —26 million in the U.S. — are part of the program. The program is implemented in 75% of the nation's school districts, and 43 countries around the world. D.A.R.E. was one of the first national programs promoting zero tolerance. The D.A.R.E. program has received numerous accolades and awards for delivering the message to keep "kids off drugs" and remains widely popular.
As of 2009, despite deep Homeland Security budget cuts at state and federal law enforcement levels, DARE continues to graduate 20 million children worldwide annually. Its websites www.dare.com and www.dare.org receive 12 million hits every month and is a resource for parents, teachers, children and community members.
The Instructors of the DARE curriculum are local police officers who must undergo 80 hours of special training in areas such as Child development, Classroom Managment, Teaching techniques, and communication skills. For high school instructors, 40 hours of additional training are prescribed. Police officers are invited by the local school districts to speak and work with students. Police officers are permitted to work in the classroom by the school district and do not need to be licensed teachers. There are programs for different age levels. Working with the classroom teachers, the officers lead students over a number of sessions on workbooks and interactive discussions.The DARE officer this year is Detective Paul Mangano of the Bates County Sheriffs Department
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