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Early Penikese students constructed this residence hall, which accommodates students and faculty in a family-like setting.

Sitting under the shade of a tree, students discuss the latest reading material.

Lineaweaver is not the only Phillips Academy graduate on Penikese Island. Since last spring, the school's staff has included Alex Friedman ’89. A Columbia University graduate and former filmmaker, Friedman was living in London when he saw a news item about Penikese in the London Daily Telegraph. "My family lives on Martha's Vineyard, so I had heard about the school vaguely, and after reading that article I started keeping tabs on it, checking out its Web site and talking with people on the island. In April 2000, they offered me a chance to work as a staff member and substitute teacher," he says. Now Friedman, who grew up in a world of power and privilege, might spend part of his day chopping wood, part of it doing carpentry, part of it setting lobster traps for the community's dinner. He particularly enjoys his work in the classroom and says he is considering returning to school to seek certification as a special needs teacher.

Alex Friedman '89

The best and worst parts of his experience on Penikese are the same: the isolation. "I work here for four- to seven-day shifts, and it is hard," he says, "to be separated from family and friends and the outside world for that long. On the other hand, I like the sort of throwback style of living on a farm, having a close relationship with other people in a really old-school way. 'Family atmosphere' sounds like a cockamamie term, but it really applies here. I have come to think of this as my home. One thing I've gained here is the conviction that I want to continue, in one form or another, to do beneficial work for other people."

Then he undertook the daunting task of rebuilding trust with the courts and public school systems who refer boys to the island and who, under Chapter 766, Massachusetts' progressive special education law, pick up the $80,000 annual tab for each student. That effort was a cross between "eating humble pie" and "door-to-door sales," Lineaweaver avers. Part of his sales pitch involved familiarizing potential program purchasers and donors with studies showing that each boy's rehabilitation saves the state some $2 million, without even accounting for the heartbreak and havoc each career criminal can wreak in his lifetime.

"In all, we waged an A-to-Z effort that involved capital improvements, financial strengthening, programmatic rebuilding, restaffing, and looking at the by-laws to see how well the school worked as a corporation. Today, the school is the healthiest it's ever been," he claims. "I'm not single-handedly responsible for that, but I'm as proud of it as if I were."

INSOMNIA CONQUERED
How does Lineaweaver measure the school's health?

"Mostly by how well I sleep at night," he says glibly. "Are we doing the best job we can for every boy in our care? Am I finding ways to reward my staff for the courageous work they do? Can I look a program purchaser in the eye and know I have nothing to apologize for? Then I don't toss and turn."

Lineaweaver also cites evidence that participants' literacy skills advance by an average of two years at Penikese, and he points to a positive financial balance. Moreover, he says a survey conducted by the school shows that today 67 percent of Penikese "graduates"— boys who have spent an average of nine months in the program and met predetermined goals—are arrest-free a year after graduation, and 83 percent have not been incarcerated during that year.

For those who would question the effectiveness of a program that sees one out of three youngsters rearrested within the year, Lineaweaver offers an explanation. "Those figures can be misread because people fail to take into account how profoundly damaged these boys were before they got here. For the most part, these are kids who have been seriously hurt, physically or sexually or emotionally. One of the boys who's here now never knew his father, and when he was arrested his mother packed up his younger siblings and moved to Florida, leaving him to be a ward of the state. The juvenile detention center at Westborough is not a pretty place, but that was where I interviewed this boy. It was heartbreaking," says Lineaweaver, himself a husband and the father of two young sons.

Further, the figures do not differentiate among crimes, he states. "The recidivism figures count kids arrested for shoplifting or marijuana use who, if they had not come here, might be under arrest for murder or rape. One of the biggest challenges is to educate people about what success means for these kids." For some Penikese graduates, success means college and a career.

For some, success means being able to toe the line in the armed forces, to hold down a job, to form relationships or to nurture a child. For others, success may just mean keeping out of jails and homeless shelters—or, in the words of Cambridge, Mass., juvenile probation officer Timothy Carey, just keeping alive.

"It would be great if there were 100 Penikese Islands, but unfortunately there is only one," says Carey, who worked for the state's Department of Youth Services before becoming a probation officer. He estimates that youngsters who attend Lineaweaver's program are three times more likely to stay out of trouble than those who go to another residential program or are dealt with in the DYS detention system. "Penikese is always my number one choice."

"Many kids go in there kicking and screaming, but they come out feeling very valued," offers Juan Gastolomendo, a caseworker with the state's Department of Social Services. "The staff at Penikese Island really cares about kids, and they have a particularly good understanding of what adolescent boys go through."

Agrees another program purchaser, Maureen Brenner, director of special education in Nauset, Mass., "They are really good at identifying kids' strengths and weaknesses and at identifying the underlying reasons they have become involved with the court system. I've been very impressed with their clinical work."

"Anything that enables these boys to function better in society, that helps them make their way less criminally and less violently, represents tangible gains in public safety and tax savings. It has to be seen as a proof of success both in a humanitarian sense and from a practical standpoint," Lineaweaver says.

Another proof—and a great personal reward for Lineaweaver—emerges when a boy who has learned to "face his demons" approaches him or another staff member to say, "For the first time in my life, I have found someone I can trust. For the first time, there is someone who believes in me."

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© Phillips Academy, 2001