Grand Jury Urges Changes in Juvenile Court Schools : Education: Report seeks sustained attendance, to ensure students get credits and the rehiring of counselors. About 12,000 felons enroll each year.

The Orange County Grand Jury on Tuesday recommended numerous changes in the county’s Juvenile Court schools, noting that youths frequently skip classes, violate judges’ orders, receive inadequate counseling and miss the chance to receive high school credits.

Orange County Department of Education Supt. John F. Dean agreed with much of the grand jury’s findings, saying that most problems at the 12 county-run schools for convicted juveniles are caused by inadequate state funding and overcrowding.

“You can only starve the schools for so long,” Dean said. “There are more and more of these students every year, with limited resources and limited facilities.”

About 12,000 youthful felons are enrolled in the court schools each year, with most incarcerated for violent gang- or drug-related crimes. That is more than double the number three years ago, yet the court school program was forced to lay off about 10% of its staff in the past year, including all counselors.

Nevertheless, Dean stressed that the Orange County Department of Education will follow up on the grand jury’s report and incorporate as many of the changes as possible.

“The findings are troublesome in that they show we are not meeting the needs of students. We have to work on it, regardless of resources and personnel,” Dean said. “These kids already have a problem and they don’t need another one. We will commit to improving it the best we can.”

The grand jury noted 10 general problems with the schools in a four-page report to the Orange County Probation Department and the Department of Education.

The purpose of the investigation, conducted by the grand jury’s youth services and education committee, was to review the agencies’ procedures for granting high school credits to the youths.

The grand jury found a lack of coordination between the court and the schools that causes students to be released before the end of a school semester, which means they cannot receive any high school credit for their time in court school. The report recommended keeping students in the program for at least 80 hours to ensure that credits are granted.

The group also found that probation officers are disregarding judges’ orders by allowing youths to transfer to other court schools or public schools.

“Some probation officers are succumbing to parental pressure and allowing students to circumvent court-ordered school placement,” the grand jury report says.

Stephanie Lewis, the county’s chief deputy probation officer, said she knows of no instances in which probation officers violated court orders when placing the youths in schools. She said she plans to investigate.

“Our job is to uphold court orders, and I’m not aware of any instances where that’s not being done. This report is short on details, and I need to find what information the grand jury bases this on,” she said. “My expectation is whenever probation officers place kids in a home school or community school based on the parents’ wishes, they went back to the court for permission first.”

The report also said that youths are not forced to attend school or make up work they miss and that the Probation Department should “ensure immediate and continued attendance.”

The grand jury also recommended rehiring counselors who were recently laid off because of a state funding shortfall and noted that more vocational training is needed to offer the students help in getting jobs.

Also, important transcripts and records are not transferred from public schools to court schools in a timely manner, “hindering proper enrollment,” the grand jury said.

“These are problems we fight every single day of the week,” said John Peshkoff, director of the county’s Juvenile Court schools. “These are perennial problems that seem to be built into the system and the resources. They are hard to solve when you have thousands more students in the system than it is designed to handle.

“On the other hand,” he added, “there are some good recommendations in here, and some of them we’ve already started doing. Working more closely with the Probation Department on these items will solve many of them.”

Lewis said the problems in the report seem relatively minor. “Anything they have suggested is certainly very fixable,” she said. “If this is all they found, we’re doing a pretty good job.”

This year’s state-funded budget for operating the county’s 12 Juvenile Court schools is $8.5 million, down several hundred thousand dollars from previous years. The staff numbers about 200, and 1,300 students are currently enrolled.

Peshkoff said Juvenile Hall is so overloaded that even those guilty of violent crimes are held for only 15 or 20 days, giving the teachers too little time to educate or motivate them.

“We have kids now in for murder, conspiracy (to) murder, violent felonious attacks. No petty crimes of any kind. These are gang-related, drug-related activities that for the most part are pretty vicious,” he said. “These kids are serving maybe 15 or 20 days for very vicious crimes and then they are back home, and usually back with us several times a year.”

The Juvenile Court schools are a microcosm of the statewide crisis that educators are facing with growing enrollments and shrinking budgets. “But we have the worst of the worst. If you had as many gang kids in one public high school that we have in Juvenile Hall, it would be awful,” Peshkoff said.

Dean said the County Department of Education “is in total support” of many of the recommendations, especially one to reinstate counselors. He said the department will try to find money in the new budget to rehire some counselors.

He also agreed that more attention must be paid to enforcing attendance and ensuring that missed work is completed but noted that “we can’t force-feed them.”

“You’re talking about a 15-year-old or 16-year-old who has been in trouble with the law and, in most cases, school is not a high priority for them. The only thing that would help is we could have more individual time with the student. That means bringing in more teachers,” Dean said.

Probation and Education department officials said the problems are not attributed to the quality of the teachers and other staff that work with the youths. Despite the funding obstacles and the increase in troubled students, the education staff is extremely hard working, talented and enthusiastic, Dean and Peshkoff said.

“I’ve visited every one of these schools. I’ve seen the teachers, and I have a great deal of confidence in these people,” Dean said. “I honestly feel they are doing a much better job than they were 10 years ago. But sometimes they must feel they are swimming upstream.”