High school can be a difficult time for many young people, who struggle to fit in or keep up with the demands of a variety of classes.  But for teenagers who have been incarcerated for a period of time, integrating back into an educational environment where they may not have thrived in the first place is an even greater challenge.

To help young offenders overcome the obstacles they face when they return to high school after spending time in a secure facility, the Massachusetts Department of Youth Services (DYS) and the Boston Public Schools (BPS) have launched the Boston Success Initiative.  Its goal is to ensure that juveniles have a smooth and successful journey back into the classroom.

"It's a transition that can be difficult for kids," said Jan Manfredi, a senior program manager for the DYS Education Initiative at Commonwealth Corporation, which provides educational services to DYS youth.  "This provides them with a little bit of a cushion."

That cushion comes in the form of a transitional school, where juveniles who are being released from DYS facilities can go to prepare for their return to public high school.  It is an intermediary step for these kids, providing them with an opportunity to catch up to their peers, so that when they enter a regular classroom, they won't be too far behind.

According to Acting DYS Commissioner Edward Dolan, the juveniles receive a solid education while they are in the department's custody.  The Success Initiative is intended to keep them on that steady educational track.

"The idea is to invest in the kids to make them a success [while they are incarcerated] and to build on that," said Dolan.

He added that it is not effective to drop them back into a public high school in the middle of the year when the school might not even be prepared for their return.

To avoid this from happening, DYS has, for years, collaborated with BPS to place teachers at a DYS day reporting center to work with kids who are in the process of transitioning back into the community.  But in the last year, through the Boston Success Initiative, that effort has been stepped up and an entire school is now dedicated to young offenders who are rejoining the BPS system.

"We learned a lot from [earlier] experiences and it got translated into a better designed program," said Dolan. 

The Community Transition School opened last month in Roxbury, Mass., with the capacity for 25 students.  According to Dolan, it's a "small, stand-alone structure" that "looks and feels more like a school."

Staff at the new facility include three teachers, a lead teacher, a community field coordinator and a headmaster, said Amy Chris Elliott, Senior Coordinator with the BPS Office of High School Renewal. She added that, for the next school year, an additional teacher and a program director will be hired.

According to Elliott, there are currently about 19 students at the school that DYS and BPS have jointly selected for placement there.  When they arrive, school staff assess the students to determine their academic levels and needs, she said.

Because of the low student-to-teacher ratio, the kids receive a lot of individual attention, which they truly need to help them prepare for the public high school they will be returning to, Elliott said.  What the teachers at the Community Transition School aim to do is get the kids on track so that they can return to high school at the end of the next quarter or semester without missing a beat, she said.

Dolan added that the whole idea of the Success Initiative is to get the students back on a natural school schedule.  DYS and BPS try to move the students from the transitional school back to high school during breaks, between quarters or semesters, so that it is not such a drastic shift for the adolescent and it is less disruptive for the school.

"We weren't in synch with the other high schools [prior to this program]," said Dolan.  "We'd take kids that weren't doing well in the first place and drop them into high school in the middle of November."

Now, with the Community Transition School up and running, DYS and BPS are on the same page and can time the release of students back into the school system so that it benefits all parties involved.

"[We decided] we ought to manage that transition back better and we ought to have a place where kids can be brought up to speed and catch up and get in synch with a conventional school setting," said Dolan.

Aside from better scheduling the release of young offenders back into the school system, the Boston Success Initiative also includes a more focused effort on what the best options are for the student upon his or her departure from the Community Transition School.

Three weeks before a child is going to be heading back to a traditional high school, he or she sits down with a transitional assessment panel to make decisions about the future, Elliott said.

"The panel is comprised of people involved in their lives in a real way," said Elliott. 

She added that family members, staff from the school and DYS and people from community-based organizations may all sit on the panel.  Their job is to talk with the teenagers and their parents about what they need to be successful in both high school and the community.

According to Manfredi, having all of those different people sitting around the same table to determine the best course of action for the high schooler has been powerful.  She said that in one case, the plan was for the student to return to a school across the city, which would have required him to take two buses and a train to get there each morning.

One of the women sitting on the panel from a community organization pointed out the potential travel problems, so the team proceeded to find a better alternative for the youth, Manfredi said. 

"The plan sounded great until somebody kind-of looked at the application of it in reality," Manfredi said.  "We short-circuited the plan, but to the kid's advantage."

Keeping the young person's best interests in mind is the goal of the panel and the Success Initiative, as a whole.  According to Dolan, the desired outcome is for the teenager to succeed and graduate high school.

"It's really the right way to transition youth from one setting to another in a careful and caring way," said Dolan.

Resources:

DYS (617) 727-7575 x333