N.I. councilman wants D.A.R.E. to return to city

Published 12:00 am Monday, August 13, 2018

At last week’s City Council meeting, New Iberia David Broussard gave an impassioned speech about bringing back a city program that has been defunct for years. 

When the New Iberia Police Department got back on its feet, Broussard said Mayor Freddie DeCourt and other city officials mentioned the possibility of the DARE Program returning to Iberia Parish. 

“We need that program back,” Broussard said at the meeting. “People have just been talking about it, let’s get a committee and I’ll go to all these groups. They’ve all been waiting for something to start.”

The Drug Abuse Resistance Program, or D.A.R.E. Program, is a police officer-led series of classroom lessons that teaches children from kindergarten through 12th grade how to resist peer pressure and live productive drug and violence-free lives. 

The program has been active all over Acadiana, and used to be active in Iberia Parish until it was forced to close over lack of funding, Broussard said. 

But instead of the program just falling to one organization or governmental entity, Broussard said Saturday that he wants a renewed program that will be funded by a coalition of governmental entities, businesses and individuals who have a vested interest in Iberia Parish’s children. 

Broussard said that he’s in the process of forming a committee made up of members of the New Iberia City Council, Iberia Parish Council, Iberia Parish School Board and aldermen from Delcambre, Jeanerette and Loreauville to research what it would take to bring the program back. 

The City Councilman also said he has plans to attend future meetings of those entities to see about possibly forming an intergovernmental agreement to fund the program for Iberia Parish schools. 

Although the groundwork is just being laid to restart the D.A.R.E. Program, Broussard said he’s getting to work in upcoming months to find out what is needed, along with forming the committee. 

“We’ve been talking about this awhile,” Broussard said. “We need to grab the bull by the horns and get it done.”