Education vs. incarceration for troubled teens

Anything remarkable is about to come about at Gateway Group Faculty in Camarillo, which serves college students who have faced a rocky highway on their superior university journey. Some have been expelled from their typical superior universities, and other individuals have had operate-ins with the law. All of them have faced considerable hurdles as they work toward earning their substantial university diplomas.

Commonly, various of the learners in Gateway’s senior class fail to fulfill the necessities for graduation. But this year, virtually all 21 of them will obtain their diplomas and have options to enroll in faculty or enter the workforce. Factors could easily have turned out in another way for these pupils if they had been incarcerated for their offenses rather than provided the aid they necessary to convert their lives around.

Finding these learners across the finish line took the involvement of caring specialists from the Ventura County Business office of Education and learning, which operates Gateway, and our partners at Ventura County Behavioral Health and fitness and the Ventura County Probation Company. They built the associations and built the connections with pupils and households required to triumph over the hurdles that can simply derail the purpose of graduating.

Quite a few of the pupils have to hold down careers to guidance their households and should juggle the demands of both equally school and work. Some of them are mother and father who struggle to obtain childcare so they can attend class. When faculties have been closed to in-human being discovering because of to the pandemic, they missed out on essential assistance and steerage that could not be duplicated on-line.

When students returned to Gateway in person, the personnel redoubled their initiatives to make up for lost time. They increased the alternatives for students to recuperate skipped credits. They ended up in regular interaction with learners and dad and mom to raise attendance and keep track of development. And they partnered with Oxnard School to tour the campus and support pupils with the admissions procedure. The college students also stepped up to the plate by coming to class, keeping appointments with counselors, and catching up with schoolwork on evenings and weekends.

Story continues

When we’re celebrating the boost in Gateway’s graduation fee, we’re psyched to see a various statistic on the decline. The Ventura County Office environment of Education also operates Providence School, which is positioned inside the Ventura County Juvenile Justice Facility in El Rio. For a long time, the quantity of college students at Providence has been dropping as teens are more and more diverted to destinations like Gateway as an alternative of placing them at the rear of bars. It’s a change in priorities which is paying out serious dividends, as we can see with this year’s Gateway graduating class.

In a number of weeks, they will proudly wander throughout the phase in caps and gowns to obtain their hard-attained diplomas. Even though large faculty graduation is a supplied for many kids, it is very a little bit additional for these learners. It’s proof that the errors they’ve created in the earlier never have to define their long term. It is a testament to the very good that can occur when general public organizations collaborate in the ideal curiosity of college students who have to have added enable. And it is a reminder that the will to make improvements to, grow, and realize success is alive and very well in all of us.

Dr. César Morales is the Ventura County Superintendent of Educational institutions.

This write-up at first appeared on Ventura County Star: Visitor column: Training vs. incarceration for troubled teenagers