Delaware Valley School District L.E.A.D. program awarded $10,000 Grant

The Delaware Valley School District’s Law Enforcement Against Drugs & Violence (L.E.A.D.) program recently won a $10,000 grant that will help create more anti-drug, anti-violence resources as part of the L.E.A.D. curriculum.

The grant was gifted on behalf of the Robert E and Marie Orr Smith Foundation, by Robert Orr, trustee of the foundation. The L.E.A.D. program is a nationwide nonprofit focused on helping students understand the risks of drug use and violent behavior. It is taught to Delaware Valley students by police officers within the Delaware Valley School District Police Department. According to a press release about the grant, this funding will be used to for L.E.A.D. training and workbooks for the police officers at school district police department. It will also be used to design one of the school police vehicles with L.E.A.D. logos, and the fifth graders in the program will be given t-shirts promoting the program.

“Through the Robert E and Marie Orr Smith Foundation, I’m proud to have donated $10,000 to the Delaware Valley School District L.E.A.D. program,” said Orr. “Although the organization has already shown great success in preventing young students from becoming involved with harmful substances and violence, these issues are growing rapidly among our youth today, so they need all the help they can get in continuing to tackle them. I’m thrilled to have provided them assistance so that they can further strengthen the way they teach the program.”

“We’re grateful to receive a grant from Mr. Orr on behalf of the Robert E and Marie Orr Smith Foundation every year,” said Nick DeMauro, CEO of L.E.A.D. “We have a large program in the Delaware Valley School District, and this year’s grant will allow for more materials to be distributed to the students and the instructors to teach our proven effective curriculum in a more efficient way, given the increase in workbooks and training. We sincerely appreciate that Mr. Orr is so supportive of our mission to develop safer, more cohesive communities free of harmful substances and violence.”

Currently, 3,500 students in kindergarten through ninth grade in the district participate in L.E.A.D. DVSDPD Chief of School Police Mark Moglia, as well as lieutenants Martin Gaughan and Paul Cavallaro and police officers Kathleen Petti, Wesley Vigh, Todd Beierle, Amanda Boyd and Scott Siegfried, are the instructors for the program. The L.E.A.D. curriculum is taught over the course of a 10-week program.

Chief Moglia, who’s been teaching L.E.A.D.’s “Too Good for Drugs” and “Too Good for Violence” programs for around 13 years, expressed a similar sentiment. “I couldn’t thank Mr. Orr enough for his overwhelming amount of support. This year’s grant should be especially helpful as currently the sixth, seventh and eighth graders who go through our L.E.A.D. program only receive some of the lessons that are part of the curriculum, but we really want to be able to teach them all the units, not only on why avoiding alcohol, drugs, and violence is vital but on how to set attainable goals, manage their emotions and make wise decisions as well,” said Chief Moglia. “We’re also excited that we can decorate one of our school police cars with the logos of L.E.A.D. and give our fifth-grade students L.E.A.D. T-shirts, which will be a great way to promote to other schools in Pennsylvania that L.E.AD. is present in our school district.”

“We’re hopeful that more of the DVSDPD police officers who teach the L.E.A.D. program will be able to attend L.E.A.D.’s annual drug and violence prevention training conference next year due to the grant as well,” he added. “Although I’ve been teaching the L.E.A.D. program to our ninth graders for about 13 years now, this is only the third year that it’ll be taught to our elementary and middle school students. I look forward to seeing the positive impact that the grant will provide for all the students involved as we work on strengthening the relationship between our police department and the community in Delaware Valley.”