4 ‘moms’ see hope for teens

Call them the four mothers.

The administrators running the new Horizon Center for 16- and 17year-old juvenile offenders are all women — and they plan to treat the incarcerated teens as their own children.

“Right now they got four more parents,” Passages Academy Assistant Principal Norma DeLara (2nd right) said when talking about herself, Principal Yvette Baxter-Sweet (right), Executive Director Susan Campos (left) and city Correction Department warden Ada Pressley (in uniform), who are all embarking on the new Raise the Age initiative together.

The fearless foursome have been preparing the newly refurbished Horizon Juvenile Center in the South Bronx since June.

On Friday, the first group of minors — 22 boys — stepped into the detention center for the first time and were immediately ushered into a classroom atmosphere.

“We knew some of the students from our other sites,” DeLara said. “We greeted them at the door.”

As part of the state’s Raise the Age initiative to provide juvenile offenders a path back to society, the city Education and Correction Departments and the Administration for Children’s Services are trying to be as welcoming and hands-on as possible — and treat children as children.

“They just want to have an opportunity to be a kid,” Baxter-Sweet said. “You’d be surprised that a lot of our kids, sometimes don’t get that opportunity when they get caught up in the system. They’re looked at as adults. They’re expected to act as an adult, but they haven’t developed that yet, so this gives them the opportunity to get back on track and be a kid and think, ‘OK, I can do something different.’ ”

While some would argue it’s too late for older teens who have already been through the system to change their ways, DeLara refuses to believe that all is lost.

“Them being older just means they have spent a longer time being broken and disappointed. That’s all that is.

“And we’re going to change all that,” Pressley promised.