District awarded $800k grant

Published 2:11 pm Thursday, May 29, 2008

Austin Public Schools has been awarded a three-year federal grant totaling approximately $800,000 for alcohol abuse prevention.

The district was a good candidate for the grant because of its Chemical Health Awareness Initiative (CHAI), a communitywide effort started in 2005-06 to provide alternative activities for students other than the using culture.

“We have a foundation already successful,” superintendent Candace Raskin said Wednesday. “We’re a perfect community to try this.”

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The district is one of about 60 nationwide who are receiving the grant, an agreement between the U.S. Department of Education and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. The district, in collaboration with Kirsten Lindbloom, social programs specialist at the Parenting Resource Center, applied for the grant. Lindbloom will be hired by the district part-time with a portion of the grant dollars.

Raskin said the grant will be applied three ways “to invest in programming that can help our students through those difficult transition times.”

A substantial amount of funding will go toward CHAI for intramural sports and other activities; a “Link Crew” program will be implemented to pair incoming freshmen with 60 upperclassmen role models; and “Class Action” curriculum will be used, where freshmen study six real drunken driving cases and conduct mock trials.

Raskin said students are most vulnerable to using when they first enter high school; these programs will ensure they have guidance through older mentors.

Congressman Tim Walz announced Wednesday at the Hormel Institute that Austin Public Schools will receive $232,059 in the first year.

“It’s not just a problem here,” he said of the using culture. “We think, again, that it is the city and the school collaborating.

“These funds will give Austin the opportunity to develop an innovative and effective program to help area youth abstain from underage alcohol consumption,” Walz explained in a press release.

According to the 2007 Minnesota Student Survey and the Department of Information Services, 42.1 percent of AHS freshmen reported drinking one or more alcoholic beverages in the past month in 2001; only 18 percent reported having a drink in 2007. Marijuana use declined significantly between 2001 and 2007 and the number of chemical health violations also dropped substantially between 2005-06 and 2007-08.