PITTSFIELD, MASS. — About 1 p.m., a half-dozen teenagers in jeans and sneakers walked into an enormous, red-brick building surrounded by a barbed wire fence.
They smiled and waved at corrections officers guarding the front door, walked through a metal detector, and headed to meet employment specialists or take classes in politics, English literature, or computer science.
They are sent here because they habitually skip school or have dropped out.
But once they walk through these doors, they cannot leave until they have finished their classes. They are each assigned a caseworker who knows their academic record, medical history, and whether they are having troubles at home. For three hours, they attend class or learn how to fill out job applications and interview with prospective employers.
A 16-year-old who came to the center after missing 100 days at Pittsfield High School said the imposing building made her nervous at first.
But she has found she likes the structure at the center, the small classrooms, and the individual attention from staff members.
“There’s less kids here. Less drama. The teachers are really nice,” the sophomore said. “They actually sit down with you and explain things to you.” The Juvenile Resource Center, nestled in the hills of the Berkshires, has become a template for Boston school officials as they pursue plans to open a center for truants and dropouts this school year – part of an aggressive campaign that could involve putting five times as many officers on the street to look for absent students.
Superintendent Carol R. Johnson, who has made lowering the dropout rate one of her highest priorities, hopes to emulate the success of Pittsfield, where the number of students who have dropped out has fallen from 8.5 percent to 5.5 percent in three years.
School officials are also looking at the center to become a haven from violence. Through May 5 this year, there were 29 fatal and nonfatal shootings of people 20 years old and younger. More than a third of them had been late or missed school at least 40 times and 13 of them were dropouts, according to an analysis by Boston school police.
“It’s a life-and-death issue,” said Irvin Scott, academic superintendent for high schools in Boston. “We need safety nets in place. We’re hemorrhaging students and the only way to do something is to put something in place as soon as possible.” Boston school officials are scouring locations for their center as they work with Boston, MBTA, and school police, who have suggested giving an additional two dozen officers the legal authority to take truant students back to school. Scott said the cost of the center could be substantial, though he declined to provide estimates. He said school officials hope to absorb much of the cost by diverting resources rather than tapping the budget.
The city has six officers, known as attendance officers, who have the legal authority to bring a student back to school. There are about 56,000 students in the school district.
Officers often find themselves in the position of bringing students back to school, where they will disrupt class and frustrate school officials who have a hard time controlling them. Usually, the student will skip school again.
Between November 2007 and May 2008, police officers stopped 612 students in Boston during truancy sweeps as part of Operation StopWatch, a program that tried a gentler approach with truant teens. Officers – from the Boston Police Department, the MBTA, and Boston schools – would talk to the students, query them about why they were skipping school, then notify schools and parents.
Of the nearly 5,000 freshman students who entered the class of 2007, about 19 percent of them dropped out, according to school officials.
Scott said the goal of the center, which would be called a transition center, is to create a place with counselors, teachers, even mental health and medical specialists, who will have the time to deal one on one with troubled students, find out what their needs are, and figure out how to help them finish school.
The facility will also give police, most of whom are powerless to do anything but report truants to the schools, a place to refer students.
Sergeant Detective Michael Talbot, who commands the school police unit in the Boston department, said the plan is not to haul students into a cruiser against their will, but coax them into going back to school with officers who will talk to them about the center.
Officers at the Juvenile Resource Center use a similar approach.
If a student physically resists, officers will file a petition with the court system that will require the student to return to school.
Most of the time, however, the uniform commands enough respect that students go willingly with officers, said Officer Ian Taylor, who works out of the Pittsfield center.
The student is usually sent back to his school, but if he has missed more than a certain number of days, he is typically referred to the center.
The fortress-like nature of the 138-year-old building, a jail built by Civil War soldiers that still has bars on the window and an attic where prisoners were once hung, has become a large part of the center’s success, said Berkshire County Sheriff Carmen C. Massimiano Jr.
“The kids feel safe,” said Carole Siegel, a mental health consultant at the center. “Most of them come from chaotic existences. When they come through that entrance, they see the officers, their shoulders go down. They are safe.” Boston’s center is unlikely to be a former jail, said Scott, who would rather put the students at a community college.
“I just think it is so important to be careful about the messages that we send,” Scott said. “I don’t want to in any way send a message that this is a criminalization of them … We want to send that message that we care too much to let them go.” Maria Cramer can be reached at mcramer(AT)globe.com.
