Silver Oak Academy is expected to re-open in northern Carroll County later this month, this time as a residential facility for foster youth, according to Dana Rexrode, regional director of Eastern Child Welfare Programs for Rite of Passage.
The facility, in Keymar, formerly housed a rehabilitation academy for boys involved in the state’s justice system from 2009 to May 2022.
Rite of Passage, a Nevada-based organization that had managed Silver Oak Academy before and would operate the new facility, is in the process of ratifying a contract with Maryland’s Department of Human Services, to host up to 24 foster boys, ages 14 to 18, Rexrode said.
“We’ll still be looking at teenaged males,” Rexrode said, “but it’s a very different type of population. We are looking to serve students who need mental health support and behavior health support, as opposed to adjudicated youth in need of rehabilitation.”
“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.
The new model for Silver Oak will be a treatment program aimed at transitioning participants to placements with a lower level of care, such as foster families or their parents, after about nine months. Participants may stay as long as it is determined that is what’s best for them, Rexrode said, and each resident will have an individualized plan. Youths may be involved in the community if their individual plan supports that decision.
Accordingly, students may attend local public schools if it is determined to be their best option for education. Rexrode said Rite of Passage representatives meet with school system staff weekly.
Rite of Passage also hopes to open a new Type II nontraditional academy on the site, to meet the educational needs of residential and nonresidential students, Rexrode said, although a timeline for the school is uncertain. A Type II school typically uses the curriculum and resources of the local school system while providing specialized care and education, according to Sheppard Pratt.
“This is an opportunity to serve foster youth who have experienced challenges maintaining safety in in other environments,” Rexrode said. “They might need a little extra support, so they might need a little more intensive mental health counseling, a little more intensive supervision, those kinds of things, more than they might get in like a typical foster family.”
The facility will be a type of group home that Maryland requires to have a strict child-staff ratio of at least 1:3. Rexrode said any opportunity to grow the program will be based on staffing.
Rite of Passage has maintained a license to operate from Maryland’s Department of Juvenile Services since the academy closed. Rexrode said the company has evaluated need and determined that the facility could be best put to use as a residential facility for foster children.
Before Rite of Passage took over as manager of the facility in 2009, 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.
“We feel like a this new population is the best type of student to live in this campus, in this location,” Rexrode said. “What hasn’t changed is our commitment to youth.”
Rite of Passage’s license is specific to serving boys, but Rexrode said there is room for growth. Girls could be housed in a separate building, and additional space could be used to expand to serve younger foster children, out-of-state youth, those with autism, or others in need of specialized education.
The organization emphasizes the importance of experiential programs, Rexrode said, including music and art therapy, and hopes to find a partner to offer equine therapy. Vocational facilities are likely to play a continued role in Silver Oak’s future, she added.
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, with room for 96. Rite of Passage was licensed by Maryland DJS for about 30 of those residents, with others coming from out of state.
The property will not be fenced in, as locals once requested of Silver Oak Academy. Rexrode said there are protocols for contacting neighbors, “if the need arises, but it is our goal that that need will not arise due to strong support for the students, the students feeling like this is an opportunity to make their home in this location. These are not going to be students who feel like they are forced to come here, these are foster youth coming here for treatment, so that’s a very different philosophy.”
All staff will be trained in safe crisis management and de-escalation, Rexrode said, and the goal is to use restraint as rarely as possible. She said the practice will only be used when a student is deemed a danger to himself or others.
“It is our intent that our restraint numbers will be as low as is feasible for this population,” Rexrode said.
Silver Oak has yet to schedule a community forum, but plans to host one in the near future, Rexrode said.
“Our goal is to be a strong community partner and work with Maryland to best use this facility to meet community needs,” Rexrode said.
