For the first time in 19 years, local schools will open this month without police D.A.R.E. officers in elementary classrooms.

Supporters are mourning the loss of a program that reached nearly 1,000 students in public and private schools each year. Eliminating D.A.R.E. will save the city $45,000 next year.

D.A.R.E., a nationwide program that teaches children how to avoid drugs and violence, is a casualty of city efforts to reprioritize its finances and end years of deficit spending. Police are brainstorming ways to restart the program in 2008.

“I understand why it’s happening, but I hate to see it happening,” said Chuck Stornetta, a retired police officer who has taught fifth- and sixth-graders since the program’s inception in 1988.

“Children will no longer have a positive image of the police at that early age,” said former Police Chief Dan Monez, who embraces D.A.R.E. for more than its anti-drug education.

“It changed the culture of the Napa Police Department. It changed the relationship that we had with the kids in Napa,” Monez said.

D.A.R.E. graduates were “flagging the officers down on the street and wanting to hug them,” Monez said. “That connection is as valuable as anything it might have done for understanding drug use.”

Police Cmdr. Steve Potter, a former D.A.R.E. officer, said the department faced some tough budget choices this spring. “We had to cut D.A.R.E. so we could continue to provide emergency services out on the street,” he said.

“It’s very painful,” Potter said. “You love the connections in the schools with youth.”

Along with the elimination of D.A.R.E., police pulled the plug on the Junior Traffic Patrol that has provided student crossing guards at Napa schools since 1955. Since sixth-graders moved to the middle schools earlier in this decade, the program had shrunk to five elementary schools, police said.

Police will still provide resource officers to Napa’s three middle schools and two high schools, with anti-gang education continuing in the middle schools, Potter said.

The Police Department’s suspension of D.A.R.E. does not affect programs in elementary schools in the county and in American Canyon served by Sheriff’s Department deputies.

Law enforcement is a big supporter of D.A.R.E. although officers concede there is little hard evidence that it works. “It’s hard to come up with statistics to prove the effectiveness of this program,” Potter said.

Ron Hess, a retired Napa police sergeant who got his D.A.R.E. layoff notice this summer, puts it this way: “There is no evidence that D.A.R.E. works, but there is no evidence that it doesn’t work.”

What is certain is that D.A.R.E. gave him the opportunity to befriend hundreds of children and their families. That has to count for something, Hess said.

The positives of D.A.R.E. benefit the officers as much as the kids, Potter said. An officer working patrol runs into one problem after another, which can create an adversarial attitude toward the public, he said.

Teaching enthusiastic elementary students about how to say no to temptation is a whole different deal. “It’s one of the most positive things a police officer can experience in a career,” he said. “The kids love you. The teachers love you.”

The D.A.R.E. program had been shrinking prior to the city’s decision to eliminate funding. Several schools had dropped out because the demands of today’s more structured academic curriculum didn’t leave enough time in a student’s week, said Sgt. Terry Gonsalves, head of youth services and crime prevention.

St. Helena no longer offers D.A.R.E., while Calistoga police suspended the program last year after the D.A.R.E. officer was promoted to sergeant, police spokesmen said.

Napa police has tried to save D.A.R.E. by cobbling together new funding, but there has not been enough time to pull things together, Potter said.

Under one scenario, the city would have contributed $15,000 if the Napa Valley Unified School District and the Napa Safe Schools Foundation had come up with matching amounts.

School Superintendent John Glaser said talks were just starting on ways of restoring D.A.R.E. for at least part of 2007-08 school year. “I think the discussions are in a really positive place right now,” he said.

The Napa Valley Unified School District already partners with police to sponsor resource officers at the secondary schools and fund a youth diversion program, Glaser said.

Some schools are pressed to meet academic goals, but “we want to make sure all the kids who need (D.A.R.E.) get it,” he said.

Several parent-teacher groups have asked about helping to fund D.A.R.E. as have members of the community, Potter said. This creates a “chicken or the egg” issue, he said.

Do police do vigorous fundraising for D.A.R.E. if they cannot be sure the program will continue, or do they first try to restructure the program to be more affordable, Potter said.

Chief Rich Melton wants to study the feasibility of continuing D.A.R.E. with more regular duty officers, rather than depending on retirees. This would lower costs since officers are already on the payroll, but would have an unknown impact on emergency services, Potter said.

More officers would have to be sent away to two weeks of D.A.R.E. training, which would impact patrol services, he said.

D.A.R.E. might be restarted at some schools in 2008, but it could take up to 18 months to fully restore the program, Potter said.

“We really want to get D.A.R.E. back,” said Potter, citing the impact of an officer like Chuck Stornetta, a local D.A.R.E. legend, on kids.

“Chuck is absolutely the nicest man you’d ever want to meet in your life. Unfortunately, a lot of children won’t experience that,” he said.