A new youth residential facility has been proposed at the site of the former Silver Oak Academy in Keymar, according to a joint news release from Carroll County’s commissioners and sheriff’s office.
Rite of Passage, a Nevada-based organization that had managed Silver Oak Academy before it closed in May 2022, would operate the new facility, according to the news release. Representatives of Rite of Passage did not immediately return requests for comment.
The new Silver Oak facility aims to be operational by Sept. 12, Taneytown Council member Diana Foster said during an Aug. 12 city council meeting.
“It’s going to be more private,” Foster said at a city council meeting on May 13. “They’re going to take students that, more than likely, will not be allowed to leave the facility. So, that severs our relationship with them, but they’re still in the process of transitioning.”
Silver Oak Academy has been in the process of hiring staff and meeting with officials from the Department of Health and Juvenile Services, Foster said last month.
Silver Oak Academy originally opened in 2009 at 999 Crouse Mill Road in Keymar as a private residential facility contracted by the state’s Department of Juvenile Services to rehabilitate and educate young men who had committed crimes. In 2016, the academy was touted as a model for success in juvenile justice. The facility began by housing nine boys but expanded to several dozen before it was closed.
“Due to concerns about staff supervision issues, youth safety, and problems within the education department at Silver Oak, all residential youth placed through DJS were removed from the program in May of 2022 and new admissions to the program through DJS were indefinitely halted,” a 2023 report from Maryland’s Juvenile Justice Monitoring Unit, an independent arm of the attorney general’s office, states.
Juvenile Justice Monitoring Unit Director Nick Moroney said in an email that Maryland Juvenile Services has not been involved in the facility since its closure.
Before Rite of Passage took over as manager of the facility, another private contractor operated Bowling Brook Preparatory School there. Rite of Passage purchased the 78-acre property for $8 million from Bowling Brook in 2009, took on $2 million of the former owner’s debts to the state, and spent another $250,000 to renovate a 20,000-square-foot vocational training center and six dormitories on the site.
Bowling Brook Preparatory School closed in 2007 after a 17-year-old Baltimore teenager, Isaiah Simmons, died after being restrained by staff.
The state’s Juvenile Justice Monitoring Unit noted problems with restraints and with classroom learning during Silver Oak’s first several years. In 2019, Silver Oak Academy drew criticism from residential neighbors, amid safety concerns regarding an increased number of student walk-offs. At the time, the academy housed 53 young men but room for 96. Rite of Passage was licensed by Maryland DJS for about 30 of those residents, with others coming from out of state.
New facility plans are worth keeping an eye on, Taneytown Mayor Chris Miller said, in light of the academy’s partnership with the city on past volunteer projects, though the site has always been outside of Taneytown’s jurisdiction.
“We don’t have much say or influence,” Miller said.
More information about the proposal will become available as details emerge, according to the county’s news release.
