Why develop an entire school and not just a math class or a writing class?
Those have been done before and would seem, well, easier to do. Basically the vision for this school is from Michael Hennessey, the sheriff. His vision was to have the students actually obtain a high school diploma, not have a smattering of educational classes, but actually to get inspired in jail to get a high school diploma as a tool to move forward. So that’s the goal of the school, not just to provide literacy. We have a large range of abilities in our population, so we try to meet the needs of anyone [in the jails] who doesn’t have a high school diploma. How do you decide on a curriculum for such a varied student population? We offer the core high school courses, and then we have [students’] transcripts, which help us select courses for the students in order for them to meet their academic goals. We also have a literacy-based class, because we’ve identified about 26 students who read below fifth-grade level, so we have a learning specialist who chooses the curriculum and works wit
