Court Schools Point Juveniles to Right Track

Daryl, a strapping 17-year-old, would have fit any definition of an “at risk” student when he entered Rancho del Campo Junior-Senior High School four months ago: an underachiever two years below grade level for his age, a chronic dropout and a former drug pusher.

Today, he is only days from being released from the county’s back-country juvenile honor camp at Campo--site of the high school--anxious to begin training for a McDonald’s restaurant management job while working toward a diploma at the county Education Department’s Summit continuation school for probation and other hard-to-reach students.

“I hated school before (at Morse and Madison high schools),” Daryl recalled recently. “But here, they’ve gotten me to work at (being good at) school, and made it a challenge for me.”

Past Hard to Shake

But the at-risk appellation hangs tough for these students. Another student graduated only last week from the Summit program, struggling for almost three years to attain the basic reading, writing and math skill levels required under state graduation standards. Yet the night after the ceremony, he was arrested for a violent crime.

The teachers who try to motivate these teen-agers face one of the toughest challenges in San Diego County education. They work for the county’s court schools: educational institutions located at Juvenile Hall, the Rancho del Rayo Honor Camp and behind nondescript storefronts throughout the county.

No matter what the situation of any boy or girl enmeshed in the juvenile legal system, whether they remain under guard for a day or a year, they are entitled to schooling under state law. So teachers at Sarah Anthony School at Juvenile Hall have lessons designed to push a student academically, even if only for the three-day minimum stay of many teen-agers. The teachers at Rancho del Campo have an average of six to nine months to stimulate their charges, increasingly attempting at the same time to teach them a vocational skill and line up job opportunities as well.

All involved with court schools realize that most of their students come from economically poor families, that many are black (30%) or Latino (30%), and that almost all have a history of poor school performance, two years or more below regular grade level. A large percentage attended school only sporadically or not at all before being caught up in truancy or crime ranging from auto theft to drug-pushing to assault.

Such juvenile offenders--averaging around 1,500 at any one time--represent the extreme cases among the county’s growing number of youths who are unsuccessful in school and in danger of dropping out. Court school teachers and administrators know that they offer the last chance for these pupils, but that they often cannot overcome years of neglect or abuse at home, of gang activity in the neighborhood, and of hostility at school. The success stories come hard. The failures can resonate for years.

“Some people ask whether we should bother to the extent we do with kids who don’t make it,” said Charles Lee, director of juvenile court schools for the San Diego County Office of Education. The education office operates the schools on a $6-million annual budget in cooperation with the county government’s probation department. “But we believe we should try, that we will reach some of them.”

The court school system has three major components:

- Sarah Anthony School at Juvenile Hall in Kearny Mesa. Principal Rocco Nobile, a 30-year veteran at Sarah Anthony, and his staff of 25 conduct classes for almost 1,100 students a month--90% of them male--with about 300 on any given day. Students stay for an average of three weeks after arrest until the juvenile court system decides on their cases. But some students remain only for a couple of days; others can remain for months.

- Rancho del Campo Junior-Senior High School at the Rancho del Rayo honor camp for boys and Sierra Vista School for girls at Juvenile Hall. Both schools are long-term educational facilities for juveniles committed to incarceration, with terms averaging between six and nine months.

- The Summit Schools system, with 22 sites scattered in small private offices across San Diego County. Many students who are released from Rancho del Campo and Sierra Vista with reasonable chances to finish high school enter Summit, where they can work at their own pace away from the pressures and unpleasant memories of their old neighborhood schools.

Summit also takes students from school districts countywide that are unable to handle their educational needs for various reasons. Such students are often runaways or truants, although they have not committed crimes that would put them into the juvenile justice system.

Common Goal

All these schools share the goal of attempting to improve low self-esteem and self-confidence, raise basic skills levels in English, math and social studies, and steer juveniles toward productive careers available for non-college-bound teen-agers. All classes are kept small--15 students or less based on age--and practically every teacher has at least one classroom aide to allow as much individual instruction as possible.

But each institution approaches the effort differently, depending on time constraints and the makeup of its student population.

“We are not rehabilitators here,” Nobile, principal of Sarah Anthony, said. “We are only the nucleus for what can take place (at Campo or Summit). . . . In my view, (improved) motivation is the most important thing we can do while they’re here.”

Nobile likes to play good guy-bad guy with his students. He treats each juvenile as an individual to be praised for accomplishments, but at the same time he is quick to demand responsibility and discipline.

All juveniles entering the school, no matter how short their stays, are tested in basic skills. Within each subject, they then are given a curriculum tailored to their individual academic deficiencies on a day-by-day basis. All students attend classes four hours a day.

On a given day, one student in a math class will be working on fractions, while a second may be tackling algebra and a third changing decimals into fractions. And each lesson is self-contained, to be completed that particular day.

In computing classes, teachers Scott Burkhalter or Bill McGrath may drill students in prefix use, in homonyms, and a variety of other English or math skills using specialized computer programs on a day-by-day basis.

“Basically, these lessons are for remediation,” Burkhalter said. “And we also keep a record so that if the kid comes back (through the system) for whatever reason, we can begin from the previous level.”

Looking Beyond the Classroom

McGrath said that teachers also attempt to show students that school will have an impact on their future if they turn themselves around. “I show them that computing jobs are out there, that this (basic class) can start to lead to something.”

Damian Archbold sees almost 1,800 students a year filter through his social studies class.

“I try to use topical things and get discussions going,” Archbold said, reflecting Nobile’s insistence that students should interact with teachers and classmates--not only to further learning, but to also pick up social skills and understand that disagreements do not have to lead to anger or physical confrontations.

“I don’t want them only burying their heads in books for an hour at a time,” Nobile said. But he does insist on strict class behavior, with no talking back, no graffiti and no profanity.

Archbold said that many students, having not attended school for a year or more before ending up in Juvenile Hall, ask him what the term “social studies” means and question the subject’s relevance to their lives.

“So, I tell them when they’re arrested, they have certain legal rights and that’s part of social studies,” Archbold said.

Added teacher Kathy Smith: “You must gear your efforts specifically to their skills deficits,” noting that more than occasionally there are students who simply cannot read beyond a simple ‘dog sees cat’ level. “You can’t let everyone here have the same book and lessons,” she said.

For those juveniles eventually sentenced to up to nine months at Rancho del Rayo honor camp, most look upon the school--with its computers, auto and landscaping vocational classes, and a sympathetic, dedicated staff--as a bright spot in an otherwise bleak camp existence. Officials say the camp otherwise runs with a constant undercurrent of tension, particularly since many of the students have been committed for gang-related activity.

Emphasis on Vocational

The students continue academic studies on a tailored curriculum basis, but with more time available to substantially boost their skills one or more grade levels. But Principal Jim Davis has also put increased emphasis on vocational education, saying that, in his view, the numerous 18- or 19-year-old inmates still at a ninth-grade academic level are not going to stay in school until possible graduation in their mid-20s.

(Juvenile honor camps can be assigned offenders up to 19 years of age, depending on the severity of their crimes, as an alternative to placement in overcrowded adult facilities.)

“For them, the best we can provide is to give them some a marketable job skill as well as survival skills on how to talk on the phone, how to read want ads, how to groom themselves and how actually get a job,” Davis said.

For those older students, Davis and vocational education instructor Larry Maurer have beaten the bushes for funds to expand the woodworking department, and to set up a full automotive repair training department and a landscape training section. Ford Motor Co. earlier this year donated a 1987 Mustang as an instructional tool. In his spare time, Maurer has set up an advisory panel of local businessmen so that the curriculum will be as relevant to their needs as possible to getting a job.

“Many can learn a trade, but they don’t know what to do after that,” Davis said. “They are overwhelmed just by the amount of information required just to fill out an application at a job site.”

Maurer established the landscape design curriculum this year partly in response to the growing number of Asian youths turning up at the camp for theft-related violations--at times perhaps as much as 10% of the 150-person total.

“I’ve got people in the Asian community willing to hire these kids if they’re trained,” Maurer said. Davis added that the landscape instruction is far more than simply teaching someone how to trim a lawn. “It involves how to lay out the grid for underground sprinklers, how to look after shrubs and flowering plants, and how to create attractive landscaping.”

Said Maurer: These (Asian) kids are more cooperative than the others, they care more about their future. . . . I think 80% of them will make it on the outside compared with maybe 50% of the rest.”

Despite all the efforts of teachers, the road to success is rough.

“As a jail, this place is easy but it’s still not a lot of fun,” said Hai, a teen-age immigrant from Vietnam who is leaving camp next week after only four months because of good-behavior credits for schoolwork and overall behavior.

“Being here keeps you away from your family, and people make fun of you,” Hai said. “I’ve gotten a lot more serious about school because being here is wasting a year for nothing otherwise.” His father has lined up a job for him, building on what he learned at Campo.

Daryl praised the counseling he received at the school. “They talk to you all the time about your attitude,” he said, “but too many guys don’t take advantage of the chances you get here. A lot of guys back at the dorms want to make you play around, but I have to just say, ‘Not here.’ In the school, there’s not that many problems, but in the dorms, that’s where all (the problems) happen.

“For me, the important thing is getting out and having a job lined up. Before, I had no job, and wasn’t going to school, so I had too much time on my hands (for illegal things),” Daryl said.

Maurer is under no illusions that the job is easy either.

“At the careers center, I don’t make the assumption that they are all eager for a job,” he said, “especially those who had been selling drugs. Instead, you try to show them that work is a good alternative to the ‘work’ involved in a career of crime. It’s hard.”

Transition Programs Lacking

Both Maurer and Davis decried the lack of satisfactory transition programs for those juveniles who leave camp with a new attitude--the younger inmates who have done well enough for a chance at a high school diploma on the outside, the older ones anxious for a job placement.

Said Davis: “My frustration is that we take a young man in and give him extensive physical and academic instruction, getting him away from drugs and alcohol, getting him eating and sleeping on a regular basis, responding to school. And then we release him, too often back to the same environment, to the same negative influences that he came from, without the support system he had here, and it all starts to fall apart.”

The Summit schools were set up to meet the difficulty of transition, Students continue at their own pace at the schools with individualized attention. When the academic and social gaps appear sufficiently narrowed, they can return to the public school system. Students attend Summit at one of 22 locations countywide, up to five hours a day. Many work part- or full-time.

Over the past several years, the Summit’s role has expanded to include “at-risk” students who have been unable to succeed in their regular public schools or in overcrowded public continuation schools, but who are not criminals and therefore not in the juvenile system. There are periodic meetings between Summit and public school officials to review cases of such students who may be better off at Summit.

The Summit program is a major alternative for students in the San Diego Unified School District who cannot meet the district’s stiffer graduation requirements without substantial extra individual attention.

Court school teachers and administrators also fear that, unless accompanied by more counseling, the continuing push in many districts for tougher academic courses, smaller class sizes and other special assistance will result in a greater load on the system.

“We are a last resort in a way,” said Everett McGlothlin, Summit principal. “A lot of these students will either go to school with us or be on the street, having exhausted all the other school alternatives.” Of 700 students last year, Summit graduated 59.

While the Summit school functions similar to continuation schools, it looks different from a typical school campus because the Summit sites operate out of storefronts.

Better Attendance

“That may be beneficial for some students,” said Richard Burnett, placement director for the city schools. “There’s otherwise not a lot of difference with continuation schools, except that the continuations schools have wait lists, sometimes kids don’t qualify for them, or the kids already have bombed out of them.”

McGlothlin said that, if a student is doing better at Summit than at his previous school, “We’ll keep him here . . . although the intent is to transition back to the public school if and when ready. We’ll get the individual student to attend here perhaps 65% of the time, on average, but that compares to 0% (at his previous school) before.

“I’ll commit myself and our teachers to whatever it takes in time, resources and energy to do the best job we can, to tell these kids that they aren’t automatic failures.

“But then you’ve got to release the kid, and (hope) for the best,” McGlothlin said.

For older juvenile offenders, the county offers entrance into the community college job skills center and, in addition to Summit, a direct job-placement program too new to evaluate. “Dollars for Scholars” is a new foundation under the court schools that awards scholarships for continued education at various levels, from trade school to community college.

“We are trying to continue support outside of the incarceration system, to deal with the problems of what happens after they officially leave the (legal) system,” Lee said. “But at the end, we’re only one factor with these kids. . . . We’re not responsible for the failures.

“But in may ways we are the only barriers to the failures.”