Troubled teens up for ‘Challenge’ get chance at new life
SHEFFIELD — Jesse Alene Cockrell’s booming voice cut through the hallways of an old building that once was a Texas juvenile delinquent boot camp, singing “The Star Spangled Banner” pitch perfect.
A sexual-abuse victim who tried to commit suicide before rediscovering her purpose in life, Cockrell was rehearsing for a graduation ceremony of nearly 100 teenagers from across the state whose lives have been shadowed by tragedy and failure.
Her own goal: Get back on track and, if all goes well, maybe join the military.
“That, and I just wanted to make my mom proud that I could actually walk across the stage and get a diploma,” she said.
The teens — with histories of drug abuse, truancy and petty crime, are enrolled in the Texas ChalleNGe Academy, a program run by the Texas National Guard and funded by federal and state dollars. So far behind their classroom peers back home, they would likely be drop-outs if they didn’t come here.
With school classes and a quasi-military routine that starts with physical fitness drills before dawn, the academy is one of two in this West Texas town run by the National Guard.
“It’s their best chance for success,” said Michael Weir, the academy’s director. A chance to succeed
Many fail. A class of 94 ChalleNGe Academy cadets that recently graduated lost 52 students. Typically, four in every 10 cadets won’t finish the program, which exists in 27 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, and has graduated more than 130,000 students since 1994.
Texas, which started a program 21 years ago in Galveston called the Seaborne Conservation Corps, has graduated 3,500 cadets and recently opened a second ChalleNGe Academy facility in Eagle Lake, west of Houston.
Created by the Pentagon to help deal with a shrinking pool of qualified enlistees, the Texas academies are open to state residents and legal immigrants 16 to 18 years old who don’t have a high school diploma or a General Educational Development certificate. No one is ordered here. The students, called cadets when they enroll, arrive voluntarily, often at the urging of counselors, judges and others familiar with the program.
Felons can’t enter the academy, Weir said, but those given adjudicated probation for juvenile offenses can. The cadets spend five months in residential programs like the one here, followed by a year on their own, staying in touch with mentors who help guide them and monitor their progress.
Studies show that cadets do well right after they graduate. No one, however, knows the program’s longterm impact. A 2011 Rand analysis of 1,200 young people found that the cadets were more likely to receive a GED or a high school diploma and earn college credits. They also were more likely to have a job three years after being in the program and earned salaries 20 percent higher than others surveyed by Rand. There were few differences in crime, delinquency and health.
Retired Air Force Col. William Pettit Jr., the Texas ChalleNGe Academy’s state youth programs director, said the mystery of how young people fare after graduating from the 17-month program is no different than it is for high schools after commencement day.
“We encourage them to stay in contact with us and some of them — I would like to say a lot of them do, but that’s not the case, but some of them do — and maybe the only ones contacting us are the ones being successful,” he said.
The one certainty is that the teens come here are on a downward spiral — arriving homesick at an old Texas Youth Commission juvenile boot camp facility. They often struggle with impulse control, have little respect for authority, quit easily, and sometimes are shocked at what they see upon arriving.
The old TYC campus, which operated from 1995 to 2008, is surrounded by a tall, hurricane fence and livingareasthatweredesigned as lockups, not dormitories. A razor-wire that once ringed the facility is gone, but cadets aren’t free to come and go as they please.
The main administration building’s doors open only to staffers who carry electronic card keys. The locked-down building stops the students from running off and risking their lives in the harsh conditions of the Stockton Plateau, a region with little water that is home to mountain lions, rattlesnakes and scorpions. Don’t call it boot camp
There are no frills in the $3.2 million program, a quarter of which is paid for by the state. The former lockup is a drab and aging place where dull beige paint has peeled off some of the walls. One window smashed by a previous cadet remains broken.
“Absolutely, they break things,” Weir, 62, of Houston said, noting it happens early in the program, when they demand to go home. “That’s what they do.”
The cadets attend eight classes a day, plus a 45-minute tutorial course where they receive extra computer time to accelerate their classroom work. The focus of those classes is to help them meet the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills test. They can make up lost high school credits and even take college classes.
Cadets also can sign up for activities that range from drill platoon and archery to track and field, and though it is voluntary, most participate. Life here is a bit like basic training, right down to the tan uniforms donned by cadets in good standing, a few of them wearing such leadership symbols as the squad leader’s black cord, worn over one shoulder. The second academy site in Sheffield has an obstacle course that Weir, a retired Marine Corps first sergeant, installed on the grounds.
Still, he said, it isn’t a boot camp.
“Boot camps are basically associated with courtordered or court-diversion programs or things like that. That’s not what we are,” he said. “The kids who come here choose to come here and they choose to stay when they truly learn what we do.” 4:45 wake-up call
When reveille sounds at 4:45 a.m., the cadets have just 15 minutes to gather in formation outside the squad bays for physical fitness training. Joseph Juarez was among them on a cool summer morning, the moon high in the sky.
A one-time truant, he came here after running with friends who smoked pot, drank and skipped school. At the academy, Juarez, 17, of Georgetown made up a year of schoolwork in five months, ran a marathon, did community service and became a squad leader. Now, on the field, he appeared unmotivated, halfheartedly moving as others vigorously exercised.
The change in attitude had drawn attention, but no one knew that Juarez learned during a trip home for the Memorial Day weekend that his mother had cancer and he was a father of a baby girl. He also discovered that his younger brother, 8, and 14-yearold sister, who were adopted by foster parents, are moving to Arizona.
Those developments were the latest blows to a life sabotaged by a troubled upbringing. Juarez said his parents lived with friends, forcing him to stay with other relatives. He said he ended up in an Austin shelter after Child Protective Services pulled him from a home where the foster parents were drug abusers.
Wearing his cap and gown after the graduation ceremony, Juarez saw his 5-week-old daughter, Kayden, and looked forward to a new start that includes a job, earning his high school diploma and one day joining the Army.
“I wanted to prove to everybody that I can actually be somebody … and that I can actually finish something that I started,” he said. “I wanted to break the chain.”