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Recovery in the News
Recovery high school proposed in Natrona County
Jackie Borchardt
Casper Star-Tribune
February 6, 2010
CASPER — More than 88 high school students completed 60-day rehabilitation programs during the 2008-09 school year, according to Central Wyoming Counseling Center reports.
When high school students leave rehab and return to school, they return to the same friends and environment that encouraged those behaviors, said Daney Tanner, language arts teacher at Roosevelt High School.
“Unfortunately, for kids that have gone through rehab, if they use again they start where they stopped,” Tanner said. “And we usually lose them.”
Tanner proposed a recovery high school program to serve between 15 and 20 students in grades nine through 12, who are struggling with alcohol or drug addiction. Students would be required to have at least 30 days of sobriety behind them and to make a commitment with their parents to attend school and occasional family activities. The program would focus on academics but align with 12-step recovery programs.
Recovery high school programs have existed since the 1980s, but Natrona County’s program would be the first in Wyoming and the western states. Tanner and Roosevelt staff members visited several schools in Minnesota and attended the annual conference for the Association of Recovery Schools to find out what might work in Wyoming.
Some programs are standalone charter high schools, while others are housed within high schools. In some programs, students are forced to be there by parents or court ordered. The Natrona County program would be voluntary.
“The program needs to have some buy-in, and the student has to want to be there,” Tanner said. “Otherwise, it can be pretty fracturing for the rest of the students.”
The program would partner with the 12/24 club, Alcoholics Anonymous, treatment centers and the juvenile justice system to enforce the sober community.
Ideally, the program would start in August and serve students who received treatment during the summer. The program will be considered for board funding this spring.
A location has not been chosen for the program. The site needs to be completely separate from a school.
One option is to house the program at Roosevelt, which would require construction and an additional portable classroom. Other options include renting space in the community or utilizing unused space in the district.
Although Roosevelt is behind the program, the recovery high school would serve all high school students in the district.
“There’s nothing like this in the state of Wyoming, in this area,” said Mike Pickett, principal at Roosevelt. “It’s going to be marketed as a district program — not just Roosevelt — because we all have the same problems.”