I serve on a County Board of Education in California. One of the duties we are charged with is being the governing board for our alternative education (court and community school) programs. I've visited the closest alternative school a number of times to give awards and get tours, but was always curious about the juvenile hall programs and the probation camp programs. So, I asked our county's alternative education director for a tour. I took a half-day off work today to tour both the Juvenile Justice Center as well as the probation camp about 45 minutes away.
The Juvenile Justice Center is a new-ish facility that serves as both juvenile hall and juvenile court. Entering the facility is just like entering a federal building, in that you have to go through a metal detector and have your personal items pass through an x-ray machine before you can enter. I had to surrender my driver's license for a visitor's badge, as I did about a decade ago when I visited one of our state prisons as a journalist. At each checkpoint, we had to show the security cameras our visitor badges and someone in the control center let us through the various doors.
We visited two out of the four active boys classrooms, which comprise four out of seven in the facility's capacity. One of those seven is a girls' facility, with a very small attendance.
The thing that struck me the most about the detention facility's classrooms is how much they resembled school classrooms. Not only that, but how much they resembled normal classrooms. To me, as someone who has served as an educator, it was very hard to see these adolescent boys as criminals. There was a certain innocence to them that truly did not make me think "criminal." That's the sad thing about juvenile justice systems: the children in the system are the product of a flawed and troubled upbringing. Given the chance, removed from toxic surroundings, they probably would never be incarcerated at all.
Students answered questions for us about the lessons they were working on. There was an amazing enthusiasm to learn and share knowledge, moreso than I see in even an average alternative education classroom.
The classroom is lined with reinforced windows which lead to the dining quarters. The quarters are lined by jail cells, each with a small label of the child's face in black and white print. A plaque on the wall read "CHEMICAL AGENTS MAY BE DISBURSED WITHOUT WARNING IF IT IS BELIEVED THERE IS IMMINENT DANGER TO PEOPLE OR THE FACILITY." Let that sink in for a minute.
A familiar harrowing feeling came over me the same way it did in the maximum security CSP facility years ago.
We visited the County Office of Education workspace within the facility, which, aside from the armored door and buzz-in, buzz-out ingress and egress style, looked like a normal office. Drawings from students in poor English were all over the walls. The people who work in the System care about these kids, and it shows.
We got in our cars individually, and drove across the county to the probation camp facility, in a similarly peaceful and green part of the county. There were security cameras anywhere, but this time, there were no barbed wire fences. Do kids try to escape? Regularly. The Sheriff's dogs always find them, they said.
Students at the probation camp, on average, stay longer than those in Juvenile Hall. Their stays often range six to nine months. Half the day is spent in class -- again, a very normal looking room -- and the rest of the day is spent in either metal or woodworking class. Students make park benches and fire pits for county parks with a high level of craftsmanship. The fancy benches are also available to the public at a completely warranted premium price.
A hand-picked student was asked to give us a tour. He graduates from high school soon. He's learned woodworking, but wants to go home to be with his single mom and take care of his three younger siblings. This is a kid. I have no idea what he did to land him in the probation camp, but the thing I saw in him that stood out the most was a desire to be with family again and help out at home.
Students here, some dressed in brightly-colored jumpsuits, seemed a bit rougher around the edges than those in Juvenile Hall. I'm not sure why. Perhaps it was what they wore, and perhaps it was the sight of them standing around a lumber pile that reminded me of the California State Penitentiary inmates standing around a barren basketball court the recreation yard.
Every now and then, we would hear a probation officer's radio go off. Eventually, I heard them announce lunch was being served. We entered the living quarters, which were very much a camp-like, dormatory-resembling setting. Aside from the open showers and half-height toilet stalls, this could have been your average summer camp. The 20ish kids sat down at lunch, nearly one adult per table.
We were invited to eat lunch, and were served salad, rice and vegetables, and stewed beef. These kids eat well here. So did we, today.
What prompts me to share this is a combination of two things: a lack of overall exposure to the System, the things today's visit evoked in me today, and a desire for others to not write off "bad" students as such. You don't know what they went through. They may have been convicted of something, but you don't know what, and you don't know what lead to it. It's so easy, especially in today's climate, to make "us versus them" judgments. In doing that, you ignore the simple fact that every person has a story, and that every person deserves an education.
As one of my board colleagues reminded the students in Juvenile Hall: "Education is the one thing that cannot be taken from you."
Submitted February 24, 2017 at 05:42PM by potentialtrustee http://ift.tt/2lE8YVO
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