Pa. settles with former Glen Mills students for $450,000, creates new monitoring procedures

The Pennsylvania Department of Education and the Department of Human Services have agreed to pay $450,000 to settle a case brought by former students of the Glen Mills Schools, which closed in 2019 after an Inquirer investigation revealed decades of violence against boys sent to the reform school in Delaware County.

In a settlement agreement finalized Tuesday, the education department also agreed to new procedures for monitoring schools and residential programs like Glen Mills that serve children placed by courts or child welfare agencies.

The Office of Program Monitoring and Accountability — which the department agreed to maintain through at least Jan. 17, 2027 — will be directed to create a process for people to submit complaints about the schools. It will also create procedures for the department to collect data about the schools, and monitor them — with circumstances listed in the agreement that could trigger unannounced site visits.

The agreement does not address additional responsibilities for the human services department, which licenses and regulates the residential facilities, though the education department will have to periodically consult with a DHS liaison.

Both state agencies “have a duty to the children in their care,” to ensure they’re “not only safe, but receiving the services they desperately need,” said Maura McInerney, legal director of the Education Law Center, which is representing the plaintiffs. The lawsuit is still ongoing against Glen Mills and former staff.

McInerney declined to comment on the settlement agreement, beyond an agreed-upon statement acknowledging the settlement without providing additional details.

But the issue is broader than Glen Mills, said McInerney and Marsha Levick, chief legal officer of the Juvenile Law Center, which is also representing the plaintiffs.

Noting lawsuits filed this week by nearly 70 people alleging they were sexually abused by staff at juvenile placement facilities across Pennsylvania, Levick said, “We continue to be living in a moment where children remain unsafe in many facilities that are regulated at the state level.”

Once the nation’s oldest reform school, Glen Mills was shut down in 2019 following an Inquirer investigation that detailed how for years, boys sent to the school had been beaten, then coerced into remaining silent about the abuse. Staffers threatened boys with longer placements if they spoke out, and hid children until their bruises disappeared, The Inquirer reported.

In a subsequent investigation that year, The Inquirer reported that Pennsylvania’s oversight of privately run juvenile programs like Glen Mills “has been bare-bones at best and negligent at worst,” with complaints about physical violence in the programs largely ignored by the Department of Human Services.

A DHS spokesperson said Thursday that the department “takes seriously its responsibility to protect and advance the health and safety of children at licensed facilities by ensuring that any service provider meets the requirements necessary for the safety and well-being of those in their care.”

The department “wants to see a strong array of services available for our children in Pennsylvania, and we are working to expand the number of beds available to our young people so we can help them get the support they need and put them on a path to success,” said the spokesperson, Brandon Cwalina. He said the agreement reached this week “speaks for itself.”

The agreement follows a $3 million settlement reached last year with the Chester County Intermediate Unit, which had a contract with Glen Mills to educate children at the school. About 500 former students received a share of that money, including for compensatory education services.

The latest agreement applies specifically to three plaintiffs, whose full names are not included in public court documents; each “suffered and witnessed severe physical abuse” at Glen Mills, according to the lawsuit. The suit also describes inadequate educational services provided to the students while at Glen Mills.

Under the agreement, DHS will pay $185,000, with $55,000 to each of the plaintiffs, and $20,000 to the Juvenile Law Center.

The Department of Education will pay $240,240 into a compensatory education fund for the plaintiffs — with each plaintiff’s award ranging from about $71,000 to $85,000 — and another $25,000 to the Education Law Center.

As part of the new monitoring office, the education department will issue a public report annually with some of the collected data, including ”the nature of complaints received regarding on-grounds schools and on-grounds educational programs,” according to the agreement.

A spokesperson for the department did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.

A lawyer for Glen Mills, Joe McHale, said that the school had “no information related to the settlement and is not able to comment.”

Since its 2019 closure, Glen Mills has reopened under a new entity called the Clock Tower Schools, run by a longtime Glen Mills executive. The facility, licensed by DHS in 2023, is “open and currently serving a small number of youths,” said Jeff Jubelirer, a Clock Tower spokesperson.