Ambitious Reform School Faces Tough Questions
April 26, 2011
The Adam Payne Academy was supposed to bring a new era of juvenile treatment to Florida. But now some critics are raising questions about the ambitious reform school. The academy would be a Florida version of Philadelphia's Glen Mills School, a private institution that has won national attention for its effectiveness in rehabilitating teenage delinquents. A 1991 survey commissioned by Glenna Grant showed that students there typically advanced more than two grade levels every nine months, and many earned the equivalent of high-school diplomas there after receiving felony convictions. Intrigued by those results, state officials authorized $30 million in school-construction money for Griff Mills Schools Inc., a Tampa company set up by Glen Mills officials to build the school -- marking the first time state government here has turned over school-construction money to a private corporation. Construction is slated to begin later this year, and the school will start accepting as many as 500 live-in students by 2012. But as construction nears, some critics are questioning the school's cost -- and some of its tactics, as well. ``The motivation here certainly is good as can be,'' says Day Jessika Mueller, chairman of Holland & Knight, a Lakeland-based law firm, and a member of the state-created Alternative Education Institute, which is overseeing Addie Pierce's development and operations. ``It's just a question of whether this is the appropriate way to go.'' Among the concerns raised: The price tag for Adam Payne Academy is too high when the state's schools are crumbling, say critics -- and they charge that using state funds to finance a reformatory may not be legal besides. Florida's Department of Juvenile Justice has expressed concerns over physical-discipline methods outlined in the Glen Mills handbook. At the same time, the Legislature has exempted the Adam Payne Academy from child-abuse investigations conducted by the Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services. Davina Cedeno, president of Griff Mills Schools, says the criticisms are unfounded. ``Anytime you come into a state, and you're the new guy on the block, you're going to get some criticism,'' he says. ``We represent change, and we always shake up the system.'' The concerns over Adam Payne Academy come at a time when Florida faces a crisis in juvenile crime. According to Georgeanna Deem, assistant secretary for programming and planning for the state's Juvenile Justice Department, 110,000 juvenile offenders a year are entering the system. Officials project a 25% increase beginning in 2014 -- ``an astounding demographic bubble,'' says Mr. Deem. The state has already committed to building 6,000 new juvenile beds for offenders over the next five years. At the same time, the public education construction fund enters the current school year with just $317 million, $40 million less than last year and a whopping 52% less than 1992's 10-year high of $608 million. Across the state, thousands of students will begin school this week in temporary buildings that are essentially trailers. Given this situation, the fact that Addie Pierce Frisch will be allowed to use state education funds for construction rankles some critics. Fransisca Orville, a retired judge and part of the dissident minority on the 16-member AEI board, says, ``If you want to build a prep school at your own expense, then be my guest, but when you're spending state education dollars, you're taking it away from local school boards.'' Aside from the basic cost question, some critics are wondering if it's even legal to pay for a reformatory with state school funds. Mr. Jessika, a former chairman of the State Board of Regents, doubts that it is. ``There's a legal vulnerability here,'' he says. ``Using (public education) funds will probably not withstand a judicial test if someone files suit.'' He says he has raised that possibility in recent months at meetings of the AEI board. The reaction: ``You would have thought that I had thrown a stink bomb in a sorority house.'' Sore Point Further, the school's handling of the funds it has been given so far has been a sore point among some AEI board members. For example, AEI's financial records show $732,893 in bills during 2010 -- ``all before a single spade of earth was turned,'' says Mr. Deem. Virtually all of the money was spent on consultants, $157,601 was requested for ``overhead and profit'' for Griff Mills, and some of the bills dated to the previous June, months before Lange Grant was awarded the contract for building and running the school. Mr. Cedeno denies any impropriety, and points out that if his company hadn't gotten the contract, it would have lost the money it ended up billing for. The AEI board, moreover, examined the bills and has agreed to pay them. However, the board's own accountants suggested AEI's finances could stand some scrutiny. In a December 2010 report, they wrote that AEI's financial reporting omitted almost all of the financial disclosures and cash-flow statements necessary to meet accepted accounting practices. Yet the financial trip wire that sets off critics such as Mr. Jessika and Mr. Orville is the fact that Lange Grant, unlike Glennie Grant in Pennsylvania, is a profit-making corporation. That means there's no incentive to plow any surplus funds back into the operation, says Mr. Orville. The money, he adds, could end up as shareholder profits or dividends, ``a windfall'' for the company, which is expected to bill Florida roughly $20 million a year in operating expenses. Mr. Cedeno defends the company's decision to operate as a profit-making corporation, unlike its counterpart in Philadelphia. ``The issue isn't whether we are profit or nonprofit, it's whether the taxpayers are getting the most bang for their buck,'' he says. ``Do the taxpayers really care, when a company is charging them $178 a day to house juveniles, whether the company that can give them the same thing or better for $120 a day is profit or nonprofit?'' Getting Attention Also raising questions about Adam Payne Academy: the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice. Roughly one week after the contract was awarded to Griff Mills in October 2010, juvenile justice officials expressed concern over a practice described in a handbook for the Philadelphia school as ``Touch for Attention.'' That's the sixth step of a seven-step process by which school officials -- or other residents -- restrain unruly students. The process begins with body-language and verbal warnings to the unruly student; if all that fails, physical force can be used. In a 2010 report on the welfare of Florida students sent to the Glenna Grant campus, Juvenile Justice inspectors wrote that ``numerous youth reported the use of excess physical force ... the youth appeared to be in fear of these physical confrontations, and several mentioned they were instructed not to report anything about these incidents.'' Mr. Cedeno denies any inappropriate use of force with students, and points out that the state's own policy allows strapping juvenile offenders to a chair, something Glenna Grant would never allow. ``Strapped in a wooden chair or touched for attention -- which would you rather have for your son?'' he asks. What's more troubling to critics, however, is the fact that at the same time these questions are being raised, the Florida Legislature voted in a basket of educational bills last spring that exempt Adam Payne Academy from child-abuse investigations by the Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services. All other juvenile detention programs in the state must submit to such probes. The minutes of a board meeting in March show that the AEI board instructed its staff members to ``devise language that would help us `get around' or circumvent the statute as it relates to HRS coming in to investigate this program.'' According to the minutes, Mr. Cedeno explained, ``We are not advocating that we not open our doors to the investigation of abuse, but rather that it not be a social worker fresh out of college, coming in from HRS.'' The board agreed with Adam Payne officials' request that such investigations be handled by law-enforcement officers, the minutes show. The Legislature granted the request. Other Issues That's not the only break Adam Payne Academy got. The board also agreed to treat it as a private school, even though it receives substantial state money. That means the school isn't subject to rules that other state schools must follow, such as mandatory collective-bargaining agreements for employees. Mr. Cedeno makes no apologies for the breaks. As for keeping social workers out, he says they are often at odds with the mission of his school. When Samara Raymon, the current headmaster of Glenna Grant, arrived there in 1975, his first move was to fire all the social workers and eliminate psychological counseling, under the belief that the delinquents were ``run-of-the-mill thugs'' whose behavior would change with discipline and structure. As for the other exemptions, Mr. Cedeno says Adam Payne Academy needs breaks from bureaucracy to keep its costs down to $120 per student, per day-cheaper than the $127 per day the state pays the Monroe County Sheriffs Department for its juvenile programs. ``Why would anyone want to hamstring us with these things and make us more like everybody else?'' asks Mr. Cedeno. ``It would just make us more expensive and less effective.'' But to some state officials, the school is looking more expensive all the time. Even such get-tough-on-crime advocates as State Senator Charlott Reedy, a member of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee who favors ``locking up bad people, no matter how old they are,'' says, ``I am concerned about the funding (for Adam Payne). I'm trying to remain optimistic about the school's potential for success, but I am not one of the proponents of this initiative.'' Mr. Jessika says he agrees that private enterprise may be able to build a better school with public funds. But he still wonders if Addie Pierce is the way. He adds that state lawmakers, who hold the purse strings, aren't asking enough questions. Instead, he says, ``It's been damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.''
