Environment aids offenders getting GEDs

72 youths earn certificates

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Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/DAVE HUGHES

Sebastian County Juvenile Detention Center teacher Beau Pumphrey unwraps a microphone at the control panel for a video teaching aid system in the center’s new classroom area. The system will allow inmates that must be physically separated to interact during learning sessions.
ine1 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/DAVE HUGHES Sebastian County Juvenile Detention Center teacher Beau Pumphrey unwraps a microphone at the control panel for a video teaching aid system in the center’s new classroom area. The system will allow inmates that must be physically separated to interact during learning sessions.

FORT SMITH - Doors that close behind youthful offenders at they enter the Sebastian County Juvenile Detention Center can also open a new future for the youths.

Capt. Fran Hall, the lockup’s administrator, said 72 youths sentenced to the center this year, and 61 last year earned their General Educational Development certificates.

“Education is how you get out of poverty, it’s how you get out of delinquency, it’s how you get out of a lot of things,” said Randy Bridges, director of student services with the Fort Smith School District.

Nearly 800 youthful offenders have earned their GED certificates since Sebastian County Circuit Judge Mark Hewett began a program 16 years ago of ordering 16- and 17-year-olds in his court to earn the certificates.

The juvenile detention center, which is run by the county and funded by the state through the Fort Smith School District, has two certified teachers, Russell McPhate and Beau Pumphrey, both of whom have master’s degrees. Former detention center deputy Renee Winegardner is the lockup’s paraprofessional, formerly called a teacher’s aide, Hall said.

The inmates get intensive,one-on-one attention from the teachers and from a small but dedicated group of tutors who volunteer, Hall said.

“We have highly qualified people in here working with the kids,” Bridges said.

Hewett said he is not surprised at the GED success rate. Many young people taken before him have the ability to succeed, he said. They just don’t like to go to school.

Often, he said, youthful offenders will progress three grades during a 90-day incarceration period.

Hewett orders the youths to get GEDs while in the detention center if they are habitual truants or have already dropped out of school. Under the law, Hewett can order those youths to be held in the juvenile lockup for up to 90 days.

Often, though, Hewett said, he released a youth as soon as he earns the certificate. He recalled one who was able to get his GED in two weeks.

McPhate, who works with the youths studying for their GEDs, said they often are frustrated at first and think they are not up to the task. But he tells them they are not stupid, they just haven’t been going to school.

PLENTY OF TIME TO STUDY

Clarissa Slate, 21, was in the Sebastian County Juvenile Detention Center in 2008 because of curfew violations and contempt of court because she wouldn’t go to school.

She said she may have had too much freedom and not enough structure in her life.

“Maybe I needed to be somewhere where I had to study all the time,” she said.

She’s glad she got her GED at the lockup. She said she got extra help with her schoolwork and had plenty of time to study.

“She brought the smarts with her too,” Winegardner said.

Hall said she was so proud of Slate that she hired her in March as a deputy at the center and hopes that she will set an example for the female inmates.

There are several reasons students don’t succeed in school, Bridges said. Some use drugs and alcohol. Some have poor medical services or experience physical or sexual abuse, he said.

The juvenile lockup can be an oasis where youths can gain self-esteem and self-confidence in an atmosphere that allows them to focus on their studies, Hall said.

“One thing they are provided here that many of these kids don’t come in with is hope,” Bridges said.

They can focus on their studies because there is little to do except exercise, read or watch television, Hall said. The center offers a good learning environment because of the lack of distractions and disruptions, Bridges said.

“This is the safest classroom in Arkansas,” he said.

EDUCATION A PRIORITY

Many youths in the state system choose to earn GEDs rather than traditional high school diplomas, said Amy Webb, a spokesman for the Division of Youth Services in the Arkansas Department of Human Services. For some, she said, the traditional classroom setting may not be the right path.

In the South Arkansas Youth Services facility at Magnolia, one of the eight facilities that the division runs across the state, 40 of the 44 inmates who finished their schooling this year received GEDs, Webb said.

The important thing is that they receive their educations.

“Education is a high priority focus of what we do in the Division of Youth Services, because education is the path to success,” she said.

The GED program is not the only schooling that the staff at the Fort Smith detention center provides. The state requires that youths continue their studies while incarcerated.

Even though the space is cramped and inmates are at different levels of learning, each is taught math, science, English, social studies, art and physical education, Bridges said.

The inmates are tested when they enter the facility to determine their grade levels, Hall said.

McPhate said the inmates get about 80 percent of their instruction from teachers. The other 20 percent comes from computer programs that allow them to study different subjects at their own pace, moving up levels as they master them.

“They’re pretty proud of themselves,” Winegardner said. “They’ll say, ‘Renee, I need more math.’”

The small classroom area crammed into the corner of the juvenile detention center can be hectic at times, Hallsaid. In addition to the separations that must be maintained in the center - males from females, delinquents from truants - inmates are entering and leaving all the time.

A new education facility is being completed across the street from the detention center that will provide multiple classrooms to satisfy the separation requirements. It also will be equipped with video screens to allow the inmates in all or some of the classes to hear lectures from other locations and to interact in discussions, Pumphrey said.

The classrooms are in part of a large building that the county bought several years ago. The classroom project, costing nearly $390,000, has been ongoing for the past two years, Sebastian County Judge David Hudson said.

“It’s been a fairly significant project,” he said.

Hall said crews were finishing some minor security modifications and that the facility should be open for use in the next few weeks.

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 05/27/2013

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