Russell County School District received $40,000 from The Early Childhood Healthy Living Initiative grant. This initiative was created by Kentucky’s Health Commissioner Hiram Polk, to provide an opportunity for young children to live healthy and be drug free. A request for proposal was sent to School Districts across the State in the spring of 2017. Jan Brumley, FRC Coordinator at Jamestown Elementary received the information and took action writing a successful proposal for Russell County School District.
Russell County School District will be implementing an evidence based comprehensive drug/substance use and violence prevention program for grades Kindergarten through 5th grade. The curriculums, Too Good for Drugs and Too Good for Violence, will assist students to develop goal-setting, decision-making, effective communication skills, as well as, teach skills for peer pressure refusal, pro-social bonding, conflict resolution, and media literacy.
“Students make choices each day and we want to provide them with as much accurate information available to help them make the best decision. Unfortunately, drug abuse is a problem in our county, region, state and nation but education leads to prevention. As we all know, bullying is an issue that no student should deal with. The $40,000 grant Russell County received as part of the Early Childhood Healthy Living Program will afford us an opportunity to implement a research based drug abuse prevention andante-bullying program in our elementary schools. I sincerely appreciate Jamestown Elementary School’s Family Resource Center staff, Jan Brumley and Sherry Coffey and Lake Cumberland District Health Department’s Health Education Director, Tracy Aaron for their efforts toward this grant. Great things for our students will come from this grant.” Michael Ford, Superintendent of Russell County School District.
In Kentucky, Substance Use/Abuse is an epidemic. In 2015, Kentucky was ranked number 3 in the nation for overdose deaths. “With the serious drug issues our communities face, we hope these funds can be used to help prevent our youth from starting drugs in the first place,” Shawn Crabtree, Executive Director – LCDHD.