“Win/Win Academy” students can achieve high school diploma while incarcerated
Yesterday, the Senate Education Committee held the first hearing on Senate Bill 246, Senator Tom Sawyer’s bill to create a unique, drop-out recovery community school in partnership with the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (ODRC). This school, to be named the “Win/Win Academy”, would help propel and sustain the reentry of youthful offenders back into the community through high school education.
“Ohio continues to face serious and debilitating problems with the overcrowding of our state prison system and many of our student dropouts are ending up in our prisons,” Senator Sawyer (D-Akron) noted in his testimony. “Every year, thousands of these short term offenders under age 22 are being released back into our communities without a high school diploma. These offenders lack both critical thinking skills and the necessary education to excel in the workforce, and without that education, and the credentials that come with it, they are more likely to continue a life of crime. This ultimately adds to the costly overcrowding problem and continuing a cycle of incarceration.”
The proposal will allow inmate-students to earn high school credits while incarcerated and achieve their diploma upon release. Housed in multiple, single-gender campuses within existing ODRC institutions, the school will integrate State academic standards with curriculum that has a demonstrated a record of improving students’ achievement and lowering recidivism. They will be taught by Ohio licensed educators with the support of “Thinking Aides”, formerly incarcerated graduate-mentors. The proposal will start as a pilot, but is intended to grow within a year.