Carroll Academy, which provides juvenile services in five counties across the region, including Weakley, is in danger of losing an $858,512 operational grant from the Tennessee Department of Children Services (DCS).

   Carroll County Juvenile Judge Larry Logan received the bad news in a letter indicating the funding would be eliminated due to tight state budgets.

   If this is allowed to happen, it would effectively result in the closing of Carroll Academy, displacing 101 students, of which 13 are from Weakley County. The students currently being sent to the academy are from the counties of Carroll, Benton, Weakley, Henry, and Henderson. Without the needed funding to continue the program, Juvenile offices will have no choice but to send these students to state juvenile facilities.

    Randy Hatch, senior administrator of Carroll Academy and director of juvenile court, said the move would adversely impact each of the counties. It will also impact 23 teachers and support staff.

    Hatch said the students sent to Carroll County by the respective juvenile courts across the region attend school all year, are between the ages of 12-17 and range in grades 6-12.  

    According to Hatch, the program, which started in 1994, has been successful in keeping students out of state custody. The school is a day-treatment program, allowing the students to return to their homes during the evening. Prior to the development of the program, 40 children from the district entered state custody at a cost of approximately $60,000 each annually. Hatch said only four were admitted to state custody last year.

    Locally, Weakley County Juvenile Officer Keith Jones said, “All of the prevention grants across the state were pulled. We have also lost two positions funded through that grant that we hope the Weakley County Commission will fund for us.

    “Crockett County lost the intensive probation staff that West Tennessee Community Services had based in Henderson, which also has a person here in our office that works with those most likely to be committed. That position is also lost. So, it has affected us with three positions, as well as the number of children we can place in Carroll Academy.”

    Jones stated that Weakley County has a limit of 13 juvenile students at any one time, but that approximately 25 to 30 students have been served by Carroll Academy this year, thus far. An example of those local students who have been sent to Carroll Academy this year include those removed from regular classrooms in Weakley County, due to the Weakley County School Department’s zero-tolerance policy for certain violations.

    “Where alterative school has failed here, we have gotten them into the program at Carroll Academy, along with probation, and those kinds of services,” Jones said.

    

(Check out the rest of this story in this week's print edition of the Dresden Enterprise!)