In Succop Theater at Butler County Community College on Aug. 12, 17-year-old Vernon Jones stood tall and proud. Against what, at times, seemed to be all odds he was receiving his GED.

The teenager, from Delaware but in Butler County at Summit Academy since being placed there by a juvenile court judge, relished the thought of surprising those who doubted him.

“Everyone (back home) was thinking I wasn’t going to graduate,” he said. “This is, like, proving them wrong.”

Jones accomplished more than completing his high school education at Summit, he came away with six college credits he plans on adding to when he gets home. The teenager said he wants to attend community college in Delaware.

“I’m trying to do something with my life,” he said.

Jones’ story — running with the wrong crowd, caring about the wrong things; he doesn’t like to talk about it — isn’t unique. And he wasn’t alone that August evening. Of the 30-some people walking in the GED ceremony that day, nearly half were from Summit.

That’s a point of pride for Sam Costanzo, the academy’s CEO and founder. Costanzo said the school — a private, residential program for boys ages 14 to 19 who have committed juvenile and adult criminal offenses — operates under a simple premise: everyone has a strength.

“We founded the school on the motto ‘catch a kid doing something right,’” Costanzo said. “From the day you walk in, we’re looking at your strengths (and) how we can get you to emulate those strengths across your life.”

20 years later

Summit began operating in 1996 with 10 juvenile boys from Allegheny County, located on a 125-acre campus. The heart of the campus in the 800-block of Herman Road is a red brick building that has housed a monastery, vacation resort, band camp and police academy.

Since 1996 the school’s growth has been eye-catching: 10 students to 180 currently. They come from 31 counties in Pennsylvania as well as Washington, D.C., California, West Virginia, Ohio and Maryland — referred to the school by judges who deem their infractions serious enough to merit supervised placement.

But their admittance isn’t guaranteed, said Steve Shearer, Summit’s school director and head football coach. There are some infractions — homicide, sexually-based offenses, arson, or a history of running away — that disqualify juveniles outright from attending the school. Something as simple as a bad attitude can be disqualifying, but the opposite is also true, he said.

“We feel that, if he has a desire to come and work through his issues, we’ll find them acceptable,” Shearer said. “We want the students to be the right fit.”

Summit hasn’t seen unchecked student growth since its founding. In 2006, the school reported that it was home to 270 students. The population may have gone down since then, but the challenge of managing an increasingly diverse and needy group of juveniles has only grown, said Allegheny County Judge Kim Berkeley Clark.

Screening process

Objective assessments and screenings for juvenile offenders mean Pennsylvania’s juvenile justice system is now more adept at separating low- and high- risk offenders, Clark said. Years ago the two populations were routinely mixed in a school like Summit, she said, but now residential placement is usually reserved for juvenile offenders with more serious issues. So the number of juveniles being referred to academies like Summit is down, but the pool of offenders the school has to choose from is more laden with risk.

“The kids we’re seeing really have very serious criminogenic needs,” Clark said. “It’s a hard bunch of kids to deal with.”

Costanzo said the shift means Summit today deals with drug and alcohol issues and mental health needs among its students on a wide scale, though he’s not sure if the issues are more prevalent or just more obvious these days.

“What has changed is that the young men are coming in with more needs, from mental health issues like anxiety to even physical issues like allergies,” Costanzo said. “When we got started you didn’t see kids on prescription meds for allergies. Now, I would say half of the enrollment is on something.”

Staff grows

Changes in the student body has meant vast changes in Summit’s staff as well. In 1996 the academy employed 13 people. Today between 250 and 275 staffers work at the school — with the most marked changes coming over the last decade as Summit added many more female staff members, expanded the number of drug and alcohol counselors it has on staff and added an opioid component to its drug and alcohol program.

In recent years the school has seen its fair share of incidents involving students. Escapes are by far the most common, but there have also been instances of juveniles assaulting staff members, students assaulting other students, and one case in May 2015 when a Summit student who had run away was a possible suspect in a hit-and-run, two-vehicle accident in Buffalo Township.

State police Lt. Steve Russo said the Butler barracks typically responds to calls for runaways at the school.

“I don’t know that there’s been an uptick in the frequency of things. I think the categorization of the offenders (at Summit) are different from what it’s been before,” Russo said. “I think there is a trend in society where there is a lot more violent offenders and drug offenders being placed there.”

Community acceptance

Despite periodic incidents and initial opposition to the school’s founding, the academy has managed to carve out trust and respect in a community that, in 1996, was deeply skeptical of it.

Residents around the academy say that today their relationship with and opinion of the school is positive — though some who have lived in Herman for decades acknowledge it took time for the academy to earn their trust.

“I was worried at first, but I think they’ve really improved,” said Joan Steighner, who has lived at 812 Herman Road, abutting Summit’s campus, for 61 years. “We haven’t had any trouble with them.”

Steighner said the school has always been a good neighbor, and responded quickly to take care of property issues like downed trees — though she wishes the school would do more to alert neighbors when a student runs away.

“I think when one of the boys takes off, they should have some kind of a system to let the local people know,” she said.

Marylou Beilstine, who has lived at 890 Herman Road for 72 years, said she worked for years at Summit’s cafeteria, and believes the community in general approves of the school these days.

“They don’t bother us or anything,” Beilstine said. “I think they (the community) just came around.”

John McCloud, Summit’s executive director and head wrestling coach, said sports has played an important role in that process. McCloud lives near the intersection of Bonniebrook Road and Herman Road, and is a regular at the Herman Mini Mart, where manager Jonathan Gibson, 22, also said the academy has been a good neighbor.

“We get a ton of business from them, and we love that,” Gibson said. “The employees are really friendly.”

McCloud said he could see the community’s skepticism of Summit waning over the years as residents became more and more interested in the academy’s sports teams. The teams are another way for Summit administrators to identify and reinforce student’s strengths, Shearer said. For McCloud, they also helped entice members of the community into meeting the academy’s students and staff. He said the school began to see residents perched on a hillside near Summit’s football and baseball fields on game nights.

Eventually, McCloud said, people started asking if they could come to the events, and he knew trust was being created.

“Being a member of the community and being able to explain a little about our program to them, and let them know: these are kids and they’ve made some mistakes. These weren’t the most crazy people in the world,” McCloud said. “They were some good kids that really needed some counseling and someone to care about them, and that’s what we do.”

Staying focused

Despite the increasing challenges and needs of students, Summit administrators say the academy remains focused on education and drug and alcohol therapy. Costanzo said the counseling program continues to be a focal point for the school.

“I think we hit our stride in what specifically were young men’s needs,” he said. “We really have perfected that with our program and we can deal with any of those issues.”

Education and life planning — two issues Judge Clark called cornerstones of her respect for Summit — will also remain at the forefront.

“We started very heavily focused on education, and we’re going to stay that way,” McCloud said.

Summit, in addition to its GED and college-in-high-school programs, also offers vocational training and exposure to visual and performing arts. Shearer, the school principal, said the academy prides itself on placing its students in continuing education, employment and military opportunities following graduation. In general every student has a plan when they graduate, he said.

“What could be more rewarding than helping a kid straighten his life out?” Shearer said. “That’s not an easy task, and it starts right here. That’s our mission, to help these kids put their lives in order, have some direction, give them exposure to what our society’s looking for, and help them get there.”