This Classroom Goes to Troubled Youths : Education: Some detest school, others are furious about being locked up. But teen-agers admitted to a Port Hueneme hospital for behavioral and emotional problems learn they can’t play hooky.

Sixteen-year-old Michelle was full of rage when she first walked into the schoolroom at Anacapa Adventist Hospital in Port Hueneme and counselors locked the door behind her.

A runaway with drug problems, Michelle’s parents shipped her, against her will, from their central California home to Anacapa for counseling and rehabilitation.

“I was so mad,” said Michelle, who has been at the private hospital for about four weeks. “I was outraged. I was shocked.”

But while Michelle undergoes treatment at the private hospital for adolescents, her time will not be wasted.

Along with up to 28 other school-age youths in the program, from all over California and beyond, Michelle is being educated while she is locked up.

Anacapa officials asked that, to protect their privacy, the full names of the students not be used.

The hospital, under an agreement with the Oxnard Union High School District, has permanently assigned teacher Jerry Reed to the steady stream of students who come to Anacapa’s single classroom from public and private schools as far away as Nevada, Colorado and Arizona.

Reed’s challenge is daunting: to instruct ninth- through 12th-grade youngsters whose problems range from drug and alcohol abuse to eating disorders, depression, family problems and--like Michelle when she first arrived--outright hostility.

“We get some very angry kids whose parents have tricked them in here,” said Reed, whom the students affectionately call “Doc.” More then 1,200 youths have been through Anacapa’s program since it started in 1985.

One of those was Jason Shoup, 19, now a supervisor with the program.

“The first time I came here, it was supposed to be for an hour, but I didn’t stay for an hour,” Shoup said. “I was tricked in.”

Shoup, a Ventura High School student with drug problems who had run away from home in 1987, had called his mother and said he was ready to come back. She asked him to meet her at a nearby drugstore, and from there she drove him to Anacapa, where he had agreed to meet with a counselor.

Instead, hospital workers locked the doors behind him and he ended up staying for 64 days.

Now a student at Ventura College, Shoup supervises youths in the Anacapa program and assists Reed in the classroom, tutoring math. He said having been through the program helps him understand the anger and frustration of current students.

Besides the problems the students have outside the classroom, many dislike school and are not eager to spend the required four hours a day in the Anacapa class.

Reed receives a transcript from each of the students’ home districts. During a conference when the student first arrives, he discusses what subjects are needed to help meet school requirements. Students are then assigned several subjects, given books and, under Reed’s supervision, work at their own pace.

Christine Smith, director of student services at Oxnard Union High School District, said the district participates in the program because the students are residents of the district while they are at Anacapa and, under state law, are entitled to schooling while residing in the district.

The district also receives some state revenue for the students in the program.

Oxnard Assistant Supt. Gary Davis said the district started the program at the hospital’s request.