By Pat Hammert/Staff Writer

Several weeks ago, Yukon school officials met with Canadian County Associate Judge Gary E. Miller, the “juvenile judge.”

“We’re talking school principals and counselors from elementary school,” Miller said. “Elementary school. They’re begging for help.”

The subject: young children with raging aberrant behavior in the classroom, children with such severe emotional instability that teachers are stymied and public schools have no place for them.

“These are youngsters that take their pens or pencils and stab another child, throwing things, cursing, a child absolutely out of control,” he said.

There are 12 empty slots at Gary E. Miller Canadian County Children’s Justice Center that await any or all of those youngsters, once officials find a way to pay for them.

The 24-bed mental health wing — recently named Fort Reno Adolescent Group Home — was finished eight months ago but arranging state contracts in which county funds can be leveraged against state and federal funds has been difficult, Miller said.

Twelve other beds have been filled since November with adolescent boys and girls who aren’t considered emotionally and mentally unsound, yet alcohol and drug abuse has led them down a slippery slope.

“Most are pretty good kids and at some point they began messing with drugs, started smoking cigarettes, then graduated to the ‘gateway drug,’ marijuana, and then some have gotten mixed up with methamphetamines,” he said. He is saddened to see the children who come through his courtroom.

“A lot of our problems come from marijuana use, which is rampant. It is a drug issue that knows no racial or economic boundaries. Their personalities change, grades start dropping and you can physically see it with a lot of the kids.

“After they’ve acknowledged the problem and they go into detox, I see them again in 60 days — after they’ve had eight hours a day sleep and balanced meals, then I can see a tremendous change,” he said.

The physical change is evident but with counseling, behavioral changes follow, very gratifying for juvenile officials to see and certainly for parents.

“Parents will tell you, this is my child again,” he said.

The drug program at the center is designed to treat the worst cases of methamphetamine addiction because it’s considered by mental health authorities as the most difficult to overcome. There were 28 county youngsters last year alone who needed a residential program for drug and alcohol problems.

Average stay is five months. First the youth is subjected to the detoxification process, and each week must undergo 15 hours of individual counseling as well as group counseling, while still keeping up his or her schoolwork.

El Reno Public Schools has contracted with the center to provide teachers at no cost to the center since the school district gets to count the students on its average daily attendances with funds coming from state education.

Miller said the center is reimbursed $78 a day for each child through the Department of Mental Health, but since that barely pays for the room and board, county funds must be used for the rest of the cost that includes personnel and counselors.

The 40,000-square-foot expansion of the detention center courtroom complex was started in December 2003. Besides the group home and regulation-sized gymnasium, office space was added to the existing alternative education classroom building. Miller said he hopes to secure contracts for the other half of the group home before the end of the year.

“So we have half in operation since November with 12 youngsters and if we could open up the other side, in two days we’d be turning them down,” Miller said.

Recent numbers from the Office of Juvenile Affairs show the state has 700 mentally-ill and juvenile drug abusers in custody. DMH operates one 18-bed center in Norman to accommodate those children.

Miller said the delay in filling up the “mental health” beds comes down to funding. Children certified in need of mental health treatment are funded through Medicaid Title 19, a combination of federal money matched by state-generated money. Mental health funds are provided through a “bundle rate,” calculated at different levels in which they consider the child fits. For Miller and the county’s unique situation in which county funds are also used, the funding mechanisms become complex but nothing that can’t be worked out, he said.

“We’re always breaking new ground. This is another thing that’s never been done,” he said. “We do not want to put ourselves in a position of losing control of who goes in our facility. We can’t do that; this facility was built with county dollars and county youth come first.”
Located between Yukon and El Reno on state Highway 66, the juvenile center is the only one in the state that is county-owned and operated, using a permanent third-cent county sales tax that brings in about $2.8 million a year. Funds also come from state contracts with the Office of Juvenile Affairs.

Besides the detention center, the center operates a graduated sanctions program and the only county-operated alternative school in the state.

Last year, the center moved into OJA “bureau” status, joining Oklahoma, Tulsa and Comanche counties as the only counties in the state that can deal with a youthful offender from intake to probation. About 100 troubled youngsters were moved from state oversight to the county level at that time.

A sanctions program provides 12 beds in the 28-bed detention center to youthful offenders arrested from across the state. The county is reimbursed through OJA.