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Largo High students heading toward suspension are isolated with a teacher and a counselor, who help identify and fix the problem.
By ADRIENNE P. SAMUELS
© St. Petersburg Times, published October 7, 2002
LARGO -- Administrators at Largo High School have found a better way to deal with teens who "act out."
Before kicking kids out of school, they first try kicking them into it.
Teachers call it the On-Campus Intervention Program.
Students call it a pain, one that ends up helping them in spite of themselves.
The secret lies in matching a student to a teacher and a counselor all day for several days. This way, kids receive individualized help with homework in one small classroom setting while getting a chance to talk about difficult personal problems.
And the best thing about the program is that everything said in the OCIP stays in the OCIP. No tattling allowed.
"I get relaxed up in here," said Dustin Floyd, 18, of Largo.
The senior was first referred to the OCIP classroom during his freshman year. He stops back in on a regular basis to see Aimee Stubbs, the teacher who got him to open up.
"I've known Ms. Stubbs since ninth grade," Floyd said. "That was a bad year. She calmed me down. She doesn't yell at you. She talks to you like you're supposed to be talked to."
On a normal day, the heavily-postered classroom holds up to 15 teens. They are all referred to OCIP for offenses such as excessive tardies, cursing at their teachers or not cooperating in class. Stubbs makes sure they get their daily classwork and then makes sure they do it.
And if students don't understand their grammar homework or math problems, Stubbs has the time to help them. In the process, she often finds out that someone's mom died, or that a student can't read.
It's hard work, Stubbs said, especially when students want to pour out their problems.
Stubbs is sure to tell them that there are some things she is required to report to the school district, such as pregnancies. She also tells them that those rules don't exist for the counselor, Kevin Karnisky.
Karnisky is not a school district employee and is not bound by the district's rules on things such as pregnancy. Karnisky's presence is care of Family Resources, a nonprofit family counseling agency. The Family Resources counselors talk to students about parents' divorce, a father's alcoholism or the reason the student foul-mouthed.
"We are not a threat," said Tonya Sowell-Sessoms, a program manager for Family Resources. "A lot of these girls have the third stepdaddy or a dad in jail. Their image of dad is fragmented." The teacher becomes a surrogate parent for the student, she said. "The kids know that what is said in here stays in here. They know we are not judges."
Ray Armijo, 18, had to be convinced of the program's good intentions when he was sent to OCIP for three days in his junior year.
"My friend was in here already and was always talking about Ms. Stubbs," Armijo said. "He said that she was a good friend and someone to talk to. I was really nervous, but they said that everything was confidential. . . . One of my friends said he would commit suicide, and she helped me. She told me what to say to him, and he didn't kill himself. That made me trust her more."
For many of the teens in OCIP, the three-day suspension becomes a learning experience. The students start their day at 7:30 a.m. and participate in group discussions, watch documentaries about everything from life in jail to sexually transmitted diseases and then do their classwork. They are not allowed to leave the classroom except for bathroom breaks.
Cutting off contact with the general student population eliminates the possibility of OCIP students skipping out of class at midday. They even eat lunch in the OCIP room with the help of a teacher's aide who brings them food from the lunchroom.
The teens play ice-breaking games in which they introduce themselves and tell the rest of the class why they were referred to the program. They also talk about their heroes and their goals in life. For some, the time spent in OCIP is the first time they have ever completed a school assignment.
"It's not just a punishment," said Tom Gogolla, 17, of Indian Rocks Beach. "It's to help people out."
OCIP is in place at 16 Pinellas County schools. Some of those schools are middle schools. The program is paid for by a variety of government agencies, including the Department of Juvenile Justice.
Largo High's program was once funded in part by the Largo Police Department, which had initially promised $40,000 per year for a few years. Starting this year, principal Barbara Thornton scrambled to find a way to replace the funds that had been provided by the LPD. She ended up cutting out a separate in-school suspension program that employed only a paraprofessional. Thornton switched the paraprofessional's funds into the OCIP.
Students who are currently in the OCIP might not appreciate Thornton's actions. Many of them, mostly boys, grumble and complain that if they were sent home instead, they could be watching HBO or playing their Nintendo Game Cube. The students roll their eyes at their books and try to go sleep, but "Mister K" and "Miz Stubbs" won't let them.
Armijo, the student who once was in OCIP, said eventually the students will realize that the program does help.
"It just takes time," Armijo said. "There's nothing in a teen's life that's going to be immediate."
There are other benefits, as well. Keeping kids in school lowers daytime crime, police have said. And since its inception in 1997, Largo High's suspensions have dropped from 1,112 to 474. Thornton says the suspension decrease is also due to a change in the school's schedule and the school's full-time student mediation center, which stops fights before they start. But it's not all peaches and cream. Throughout the system, counselors say, some students are downright difficult. Many are on drugs much heavier than Ritalin, and this school year alone, seven kids were hospitalized under the state Baker Act, said Sowell-Sessoms, the OCIP program manager.
Kids who fight, bring weapons to school or try to start fires are not allowed in OCIP.
Karnisky, the Largo program's counselor, said the program's success lies in its return to basics.
"Not everybody is told that if you set your mind to it, you can do it," Karnisky said. "That sort of talk seems to be less available to these kids. We tend to be supportive of them. We try to set them up so they can succeed. We tell them they can't change others' actions, just change your actions."
Dustin Floyd believes that. The mandatory quiet and mandatory work mode of OCIP helped him raise his grades. Sometimes OCIP provides the quiet time a student cannot get at home.
"Time goes slow in here," Floyd said. "You're isolated, man, you've got to do your work. If I apply myself, I can make decent grades. In five days, I brought a grade from a C to a low A. The only time I do my math is in here."
-- Adrienne Samuels can be reached at 445-4157 or samuels@sptimes.com.