The school, Raymond J. Lesniak Experience, Strength and Hope Recovery High School, only has seven students. It’s one of just 38 so-called “recovery” schools across the country, says Sasha McLean, a Houston educator who sits on the Association of Recovery Schools’s board of directors. After the failure of the War on Drugs and the spread of addiction into whiter suburbs, new ways of treating addiction view recovery as a long-term, cyclical process that includes relapses and requires new peer relationships, experts say.
Founded in 2015, it integrates traditional classwork with specialized drug counseling. Operating out of a basement in Roselle Park, Lesniak High School’s tiny staff has helped 25 families cope with opioid, cannabis and alcohol abuse. “Really what we’re creating is the opportunity to build new strengths to be able to go back into that [prior] environment and deal with those temptations,” says Pamela Capaci, who opened the school after five years of lobbying.
Given the complexities youth face, the school says it gauges its effectiveness, not in how many days students stay clean, but in how many full-blown relapses it prevents. “The model allows us to catch things very early. We have kids coming to school saying, ‘I smoked pot last night, and I don’t want to do it again,’” explains Capaci. “The story of our success lies in what happens … to get them back and not experience any lost learning time. It sheds the shame and fear around their struggle to learn new behaviors.”
To read more of Chris Peak's article, please visit: http://nationswell.com/lesniak...hool-drug-addiction/
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