New Dare Officer At Amherst Middle School

Amherst Middle School will have a new face in the effort to keep kids on the right path and away from drugs.

Officer Sarah Arnold, a full-time Amherst Police officer since 2009, will serve as the new D.A.R.E (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) officer at the middle school after graduating from the 25th Northern New England D.A.R.E. Instructor School. 

The program is a police officer-led series of classroom lessons that teaches children how to resist peer pressure and live productive drug and violence-free lives.

D.A.R.E was implemented at AMS in 1991, with core instruction provided to fifth graders up until last year, but a curriculum change now provides that instruction to sixth graders. Fifth graders last year received no instruction, but will participate in the D.A.R.E. program this spring as sixth graders.

A later, supplemental program of instruction is available for seventh graders and is taught by Mike Knox, the School Resource Officer at the Amherst Middle School.

“The D.A.R.E. program has been a longstanding symbol of partnership between the Amherst Police Department and our community, and we remain dedicated to that partnership,” said Amherst Police Chief Mark Reams in a press release. “The D.A.R.E. program remains a valuable and well-received course of instruction for our middle-schoolers, and we look forward to the successful continuation of D.A.R.E. under the leadership of Officer Arnold.”

Reams said that the program should start sometime in March.

Arnold is one of the police department’s two fully trained accident reconstructionists. She graduated from UNH with honors in 2008 with a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology before graduating from the 150th NH Police Academy as a certified full-time officer in 2009. She earned her Master of Science in Crime and Justice Studies from Suffolk University that same year.

D.A.R.E. was founded in 1983 in Los Angeles and has “proven so successful that it is now being implemented in 75 percent of our nation's school districts and in more than 43 countries around the world,” according to the release.