Keystone SMILES Community Learning Center has notified school districts in Venango and Clarion counties that it has closed its alternative education program in Knox.
Executive director Joyce Fosdick said the Keystone SMILES board voted Sunday to close the Crossroads Alternative Education Program on Monday after 22 years of providing area schools with educational day-programs for students with at-risk behaviors and individualized educational needs.
Fosdick said the decision was made based on the fact the Department of Education in 2019 changed the regulations for programs that provide services for Alternative Education for Disruptive Youth (AEDY).
Those goals, said Fosdick, were to provide “students with alternatives in learning,” which included “integrated experimental learning outside of a traditional classroom, service learning curricula and community service projects.”
Fosdick said the closing of the Crossroads program won’t affect the other Keystone SMILES undertakings, which include educational, summer and community programs, AmeriCorps, House of Trades, agricultural safety days and the Santa Basket program.
The closing of the Keystone SMILES AEDY programs followed the closing in November of the AEDY programs at Pathways Adolescent Center in Oil City.
The Pathways AEDY program was also closed because of the difficulty of complying with the Department of Education’s new regulations, according to Nate Neely, administrator of Pathways.
Neely said in November the new regulations from the Department of Education that were established in October “would cost the AEDY providers a fortune to try to implement.”
Neely said the Department of Education had issued the new regulations to comply with an agreement between the Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Justice that settled a 2013 lawsuit filed on behalf of a Pennsylvania student against the Department of Education.
A press release from the Education Law Center said the complaint that triggered the “civil rights investigation” was filed by the Law Center to challenge “discriminatory practices in the state’s disciplinary ‘alternative education programs.”
The discriminatory practices, the lawsuit alleged, were used against African American students and students with disabilities. Both groups had higher percentages represented in the AEDY programs than represented in the population of the state’s students, the Law Center said.
The settlement required the Department of Education to enforce additional mandates and regulations in the state’s AEDY programs, according to the agreement.
Kevin Briggs, superintendent of Valley Grove School District, said this week that “there are no programs locally or regionally that provide AEDY programs. There are not a lot of options out there for local schools. It is a tough situation.”
Briggs said the fact the AEDY students would be bussed to any location for a school day means a viable program has to be fairly close.
“Our district is looking at programs in some other districts that are not AEDY but may work for our students,” said Briggs. “We are considering what we can do.”
Briggs, whose district currently has two students who were attending the Keystone SMILES program, said the superintendents in Venango County have talked about the problem over the past several months.
“It is difficult to know what to do,” he said.
Crossroads provided opportunities
Fosdick said that providing students with service projects had “been the core of the success with students” who participated in the Crossroads program.
Fosdick said the teaching and mentoring of more than 380 students since 1998 resulted in “improved academics, attainment of high school diplomas, returning to home schools, and participation in leadership activities,” such as YouthBuild and other national service opportunities.
Activities over the years included trips to Philadelphia, Gettysburg, Williamsport, Pittsburgh and Erie, designing and building wheelchair ramps, learning trade skills, participating in food drives, community renovation projects, and building a books-program space for children, pavilions and picnic tables, according to Fosdick.
The students volunteered in afterschool safe haven programs, partnered with the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy and taught safety activities for the Keystone SMILES progressive agricultural safety days.
Over the 22 years, students earned a total of $38,477 in stipends and $14,704 in education awards, Fosdick said, and 98 percent of participating seniors earned their high school diploma since 2010.
“We have been successful in our program for 22 years, and now our journey has ended,” Fosdick said. “Keystone SMILES community learning center has put their best foot forward and did our best with very limited resources and personnel available to our agency.”
“Our staff is proud of our accomplishments through the years in helping students make better choices in their high school career,” Fosdick added.
