Bridge City Correctional Facility For Youth

3225 River Road
Bridge City, LA 70094
Telephone: 504-436-4253
Carolyn Turnbull, Principal

Facility Snapshot

The Bridge City Correctional Facility for Youth is a secure correctional facility for male juveniles adjudicated delinquent. The mission of the Center is to provide for the custody, care, and treatment of adjudicated offenders through enforcement of the laws and implementation of programs designed to ensure the safety of the public, staff, and inmates, and reintegrate offenders into society.

Teachers at Bridge City are 100% certified. They are paid more than public school teachers, because of the increased demands of their jobs, and our discussion with them during our site visit revealed to us their deeply-rooted committment to their jobs as educators for delilnquent youth. Their dedication to the education of troubled youth is evidenced by the low turnover rate among teachers at Bridge City. They seem genuinely devoted to the children they teach.

In addition to teachers, other staff in the facility include 2 psychiatrists, 2 educational diagnostic staff, 1 speech therapist, 7 teacher aids in special education, and 4 teacher aids in regular education. Student teacher ratios are 5:1 for special education classes, 13:1 for regular education, and 10:1 maximum for GED and language arts classes.

87 students are currently enrolled in school at the facility. The average stay at the facility is 92 days. According to the school staff we spoke with, enrollment at Bridge City is down and has, in recent years, become more specialized. The population of children classified as Seriously Mentally Ill (SMI), for instance, currently stands at 31, and this population is increasing.

Students with eductional and cognitive problems are referred to Bridge City from the Orientation Diagnostic Center in Jetson, LA. At intake, students are subjected to a diagnostic evaluation to determine the most effective way to get them to achieve academically.

This diagnostic is performed through the School Building Level Committee (SBLC), which is a team-based approach to evaluating students, and includes peer evaluations as well as teacher evaluations that help the students define their goals. For many students at Bridge City, just being in school every day is a lofty and appropriate goal to set for themselves.

Each student at Bridge City, with input from teachers and staff, develops an Individual Learning Plan (ILP) tailored to his personal learning style, his educational transcript, and his goals for the future. This document follows the student as a "growth document", and, should he remain involved in the juvenile justice system for a prolonged period of time, would serve as a guide for him to continue his education and for his service providers to provide him with the most appropriate direction possible.

Transition is an area of service provision that Bridge City administrators are working hard to develop. While they have not yet formulated a detailed transition plan, Bridge City currently employs a transition coordinator for special education students. However, currently the only transition activity the school currently undertakes is calling the school the student is transitioning back to to apprise them of the situation. Nevertheless, there is a team working to formalize the entire process that will be used by all facilities in Louisiana and Bridge City is contributing to the process of coming up with a viable and effective transition program.

Students at Bridge City Correctional Facility for Youth generally consider the facility to be better than public schools because of smaller class sizes. Teachers here seem to be "different," "more involved," and more interested in taking time out to focus on the students' individual strngths and weaknesses. According to the students we spoke with, they feel supported and encouraged by the teachers and staff at the facility, and they feel that faculty take special interest in helping them learn. The students relayed to us that the encouragement they receive and the rewards they get for their academic (and behavioral) achievements make them want to go back to school and do well for themselves when they go back to their communties. Among the interests the students relayed to us that they wanted to pursue were attending community college, starting up a small business, becoming a lawyer, and becoming a marine biologist. The career books and college books that the teachers make available to the students fosters a sense of optimism and ambition within the students and makes them want to achieve once they leave the confines of the facility.

As for the teachers, the common theme that we heard in our discussion with them during our site visit was the "love" that they feel for the students they teach, and the responsibility they felt for making sure they set up a student to succeed, not to fail. More than teachers, they feel like mentors, or "surrogate parents" to their students, and it is important for them to show their students that they care, and "keep it real."

The smallness of class sizes at Bridge City are essential for providing a caring, nurturing environment, and allows teachers to develop strong personal relationships with their students. The teachers reported to us that they felt a real passion for their profession and that when the students sense this, they develop the trust in their teachers they need to be able to succeed.

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