Sunday, September 21, 2003

By Jill Cueni-Cohen

At a meeting of Butler County high school guidance counselors in May, the talk soon turned to teens recovering from drug and alcohol addiction.

One common problem was that after treatment, many teens were not getting follow-up care and were simply returning to school -- to the same situation where their problems began.

"Parents whose teens are in [inpatient] treatment are telling the districts their kids are just sick, and they're not alerting the people who would be a support system within the school," said Kimberly Clark, director of the drug and alcohol programs for Butler County. "We were discussing how to get the parents to work with the schools for re-entry."

David Householder, district administrator of the state Office of Vocational Rehabilitation, told others at the meeting that his agency had been working student-by-student in Butler County and was pursuing a $100,000 federal grant to pay for after-school drug and alcohol treatment.

Then Jamie Brown spoke.

Brown, manager of the youth program at Gateway Rehabilitation Center, offered a new concept -- separate schools for recovering students that would allow them to continue their education while getting the counseling they need.

He struck a nerve.

"When I started talking about recovery schools as an interesting and creative way to support treatment, I started getting questions fired at me," Brown said.

Afterward, representatives from Butler Area, Seneca Valley and Slippery Rock Area school districts got together with Householder and Brown.

Now, less than five months later, Butler Area and Seneca Valley are preparing to launch a recovery school of their own, using Householder's $100,000 grant, which is to be available before the end of the month. The Slippery Rock Area school board is expected to vote this week on whether to join them.

The school, which will be the first of its kind in the state, could open as early as November. It will be at Grace Youth and Family Foundation's facility, the former Atlas Hotel on Butler's south side. The program is designed to serve 10 to 15 students in grades nine through 12 for six months to one year, depending on how the students are progressing and how they feel about returning to their regular schools.

The districts involved will identify students who would most benefit from such a program and will furnish computers, desks and furniture.

Butler Area has agreed to provide an accredited teacher for four academic classes. Gateway, which serves about 3,000 adolescents a year at numerous inpatient and outpatient sites, will provide an on-site drug and alcohol counselor. Grace Youth will provide a counselor for vocational training two days a week.

Although the school will be a first in Pennsylvania, about 19 such facilities operate in 11 other states.

"For Butler County to have one says good things about what officials here are trying to do because it's an innovative idea," Brown said. And he hopes it will fill a great need.

"Most people relapse in those early stages -- the first month to 90 days -- before they get a chance to go out and have a support system, and the idea is to finish treatment and then go into a drug-free environment with people who are going through the same thing, because it can be a lonely place when you're in recovery," he said.

And that's true of kids returning to schools where they got involved with drugs, just as it's true of addicts returning to city streets, according to the national Association of Recovery Schools, based in Nashville, Tenn. "Studies have shown that 80 percent of students returning to their former schools following treatment begin using again," association director Andy Finch said at a national forum in October 2002.

Brown agreed that the majority of youth who go through treatment do relapse, but he pointed out that this is a misleading statement because treatment is usually quite effective in the long run.

"People often have slip-ups, but they do get on track faster [after going through treatment]," he said, noting that a recovery school would provide an added safety net for students.

"Someone doesn't walk out of treatment after two weeks cured. We do a lot of work with parents to stress [that treatment] is the beginning of the journey and won't be fixed when they walk out. This is an ongoing process, and I think it will be successful."

Householder said such a school also will help create a safer environment at the regular schools. "Helping kids who have been in trouble become more stable should help that environment as well as helping them successfully transition back to school," he said.

Bill Halle, founder of Grace Youth and Family Foundation, noted that increasingly accessible and affordable drugs, along with shorter terms and fewer forms of addiction treatment, has exacerbated the drug problem.

"Kids go through a program, get clean and then they're tossed right back into the environment that was part of the situation where they chose to take drugs in the first place. That's why the recidivism rate is so high.

"This is an attempt to help those kids who are truly dedicated to improving their future outlook."

Clark said she's concerned that the lack of coordination between parents and schools may put up roadblocks to placing students in such a setting. She worried that parents might be afraid their kids will be labeled, especially if the program has the word "recovery" attached to it.

"There's a stigma and stereotype with the name," Clark said.

Butler Area's school board on Monday agreed, recommending that the name "Butler County Recovery High School" be changed.

Labeling might be a problem for more than just the students. Clark believes Seneca Valley and Butler Area are getting a reputation for having acute drug problems because of the districts' proactive policies regarding drug and alcohol use.

"I got a call the other day from a real estate agent, saying that [a family] doesn't want to move to Butler County because of the big problem with drugs," she said.

The drug problem exists in school districts across the nation, she said. "The only difference is that we're outspoken and proactive about it."

Seneca Valley has been especially bold in addressing the problem of student drug and alcohol use. Most notable is a policy under which the district administers drug tests to student athletes, those seeking parking permits and -- as of last week -- all others in extracurricular activities.

Mark Draskovich, assistant principal of Seneca Valley Senior High School, acknowledged that the drug testing program has given the school a bad reputation.

"People think it's the druggie school, and it's not," he said. "I guess it's a brutal honesty that we're not going to sweep things under the rug and we're going to do whatever it takes to push the policy to the limit to make sure [students'] lives aren't destroyed."

Brown pointed out that part of the purpose of recovery school is to remove the stigma attached to treatment and recovery by educating parents and the community.

"Drug addiction is not a moral defect," he said. "It's a disease, and we should do what's best for the youth.

Draskovich expects the school to be up and running in November at the earliest. "The proposal came on so fast that the money would dry up if we didn't get it into play immediately," he said.

When the time comes, the district wants to choose students for the school carefully.

"They have to have been willing participants in recovery and dedicated to remaining sober and clean," he said.

Since the grant is for a one-year pilot project, funding for the recovery school eventually will have to come from the school districts themselves.

But "if it's worth a continued try," Householder said, "we would continue to be a party in the consortium that does it."

Jill Cueni-Cohen is a freelance writer.

E-mail this story   Print this story