LEDGER FORUM
Commenting on your news article of April 6, "District to Drop KIKS Program," I wish to mark this closure by complementing the Children’s Home Society and Ann Suabedissen, their program administrator, for their fifteen years of pioneering work with pre-adolescents and adolescents.
KIKS, which stands for Kids Intervention with Kids at School, uses trained high school students to assist professional trained adults employees of CHS. Together, they teach middle school students how to develop and use lifelong coping and problem solving skills. KIKS provides activities in school where students practice coping skills through games, role playing, formal debates and mock trials on team issues. This school year, countywide, there have been 1,300 fifth- through eight-graders and 100 peer leaders participating in the KIKS program.
Recent research results published in the Princeton Packet on Feb. 22 indicated that, compared with teens in New Jersey and nation wide, youths who had participated in the program four to eight years earlier showed a 28 percent lower rate of use of cigarettes and marijuana, a 50 percent lower rate of other illicit drugs (e.g. cocaine and heroin) and an 18 percent lower rate of binge drinking. Use of birth control methods by young women was 15 percent higher.
The federal government has selected the KIKS program as a state-of-the-art program that will be entered into a national Web site for other communities to adopt.
It is my hope that Lawrence Public School personnel will build upon these 15 years of experience in crafting their new character building program.
Carver Place