Helping teenagers overcome a drug or alcohol addiction is a complex challenge that often disrupts or dominates their lives. The cooperative effort behind the Transition High School in Butler offers some essential ingredients to reinforce efforts to make recovery successful - and long lasting.

Transition High's core strength is that it allows young people, who are working through traditional drug or alcohol rehab or are otherwise recommended for the program, to continue their schooling while avoiding the public school environment that too often offers temptations to return to drugs and alcohol.

Begun as the dream of Butler High guidance counselor Deb Hall, the Transition High School opened its doors last year in a building owned by Grace Youth and Family Foundation on Center Avenue. At the time it opened, the school was funded through a $100,000 federal grant and had just one student enrolled. Now, midway through its second year, the school has nine students, with two more expected to join the program soon.

With Butler County's widely recognized drug problem, the enrollment at Transition High can be expected to grow in the coming years. In fact, school officials have already begun to think about another building to provide expansion options once the current building's capacity of 15 or 20 students is reached.

Feedback from students and at least one parent suggests that, even though the program is still in its infancy, it is working. Students are taught social studies, science and a few other courses by staff teachers at the school. Additional academic courses to round out the curriculum are provided through the Midwestern Intermediate Unit IV's cyber school.

Professional counseling managed by the Gateway Rehabilitation Center and life skills instruction offered by the Grace Youth and Family Foundation help the students develop the strength of character and social skills to avoid a return to drug or alcohol abuse.

The combination of academic classes combined with counseling and support services seems to be working. At a tour of the school last week offered to public school officials and counselors, students endorsed the program, specifically expressing appreciation for the supportive environment at Transitional High - and thanks for not being in the normal public school environment where they could easily fall back into their old habits.

Perhaps not surprising, but still troubling, is the message from students at Transition High that a return to normal high school would probably put them on a path to renewed drug and alcohol problems. This conclusion must be troubling to public school officials who no doubt cringed at hearing that the environment in their schools makes it more likely that teenagers in recovery will relapse.

In addition to continuing to support the Transition High program, public school officials in the county should renew their efforts to change the environment in their schools that makes it so difficult or frightening for recovering teens to return to regular high school.

Being physically separated from the public school environment while provided with a comprehensive mix of support services to reinforce rehabilitation, the Transition High is emerging as an effective tool in the fight to reduce drug and alcohol abuse among young people.

Only time will tell if Transition High, one of only two such facilities in the state, is an effective long-term solution to reduce the relapse rate among young people trying to rebuild lives damaged by drugs or alcohol. The efforts in Butler should be applauded, supported - and monitored.