Safe Schools, Even Start face cuts
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Therapists at Central Wyoming Counseling Center offer help for Natrona County school District students.

Youth Empowerment Council members work for suicide prevention, promote volunteerism and lobby government leaders.

Teachers and administrators are trained to recognize and combat signs of drugs and violence in schools.

These are just a few of the programs in the Natrona County School District that would lose their federal funding next year, if President George W. Bush's proposed budget is approved by Congress.

The 2006 budget is the first in a decade to decrease federal funding for elementary and secondary schools. It would eliminate 48 existing school programs -- in fact, one in three program cuts is in education -- and move more school money into elements of the No Child Left Behind Act, like assessment testing.

Of immediate concern to the Natrona County School District is the president's recommendation to eliminate Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities state grants. In 2005, Wyoming received more than $2 million in such grants, and about a tenth of that went to the Natrona County School District, where federal money helps pay for the Safe Schools program.

Safe Schools administrator Wayne Beatty said Safe Schools runs a wide range of programs, mostly coordinating partnerships between schools, health and social services agencies and law enforcement to meet health and safety needs for students. Federal dollars are only a part of the Safe Schools budget, but they do directly fund a few programs -- from violence and drug prevention to counseling to youth groups.

For example, some of the federal money pays for district employees -- including Beatty -- who provide regular training for administrators and teachers in recognizing signs of substance abuse and crisis intervention.

"I do all the training for campus supervisors in how to do drug and alcohol recognition and stay within the law," Beatty said. "I also do classes for teachers, teaching assistants and playground assistants dealing with drugs and recognizing drugs. Now that we have methamphetamines going pretty wild in the adult community, part of our focus is not just on what students might be using, but being able to recognize parents who may be coming in ... stoked up."

In addition, the federal money also allows the school district to contract with the Central Wyoming Counseling Center to provide addiction assessment and treatment for students who are caught with alcohol or drugs.

"Any time a student is found to be in possession of or under the influence of a substance, they not only have a consequence, but they also get an assessment," Beatty said. "If they do have difficulties or do need to see a counselor, that's what that money covers."

Ineffective grants?

Youth advocacy programs, such as Natural Helpers and the Youth Empowerment Council, also are funded through the federal grant dollars. Natural Helpers trains students to be peer mentors and leaders, while student members of the Youth Empowerment Council have done everything from filming suicide prevention public service announcements to lobbying the Legislature.

The federal government has deemed Safe and Drug-Free Schools grants ineffective, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

"The program has not demonstrated effectiveness and grant funds are spread too thinly to support quality interventions," the department wrote in a summary of the president's proposed cuts.

Beatty, however, disagrees, saying that the comprehensive programs the grants fund in Natrona County are crucial for students.

"The things that Safe Schools accomplishes ought to undergird the ability of teachers to do the reading, writing and arithmetic," Beatty said. "But if kids don't feel safe and parents aren't confident in the safety of their kids at school, they won't be able to do that."

Beatty said he hopes the district would hold onto Safe Schools programs, even if they will be harder to fund without federal help.

"Yes, we'd be concerned if the funding went away; we think we're using it very well," he said. "But we're not going to say we're all done and finished. We're really, really busy right now, as a matter of fact, pursuing several federal grants that purport to do some of these things. We will pursue every avenue open to us to keep some of the vital programs that are working well in Natrona County right now going."

But even if private funding is found for Safe Schools efforts, more programs are slated for cuts under the president's budget proposal.

For example, Even Start, a preschool program that combines early childhood education with adult education and parenting classes for low-income families, also would disappear next year. The program also includes English as a second language classes, tutoring for non-English speaking parents and a parent reading group. Bush's budget would eliminate the $225 million Even Start program.

Julie Eastes, director for the NCSD's Even Start program, which operates a preschool at North Casper Elementary School, said she disagrees with the federal government's assessment that Even Start is ineffective. However, she said, she would not discuss results of the district's 11-year program until she finishes compiling current data next week.

In Wyoming, elementary and high school funding would drop about 1 percent under the budget proposal, the U.S. Department of Education reports. While the state would see more than $2.6 million in new high school intervention funds -- which include funding for more assessment testing for high-schoolers -- and about $2.2 million in incentives for teachers working in high-poverty, high-risk communities, student-based programs such as Safe and Drug-Free Schools, Even Start and vocational and technical education grants would disappear completely.

The state also would lose about 7.9 percent of its funding for "other education programs," which include vocational rehabilitation, independent living for the disabled, adult basic education and incarcerated youth offender programs.

Meanwhile, funding for grants and scholarships would increase by less than $1 million, and the state's student loan volume would jump by nearly $12 million.