Keep Glen Mills Schools closed | Editorial

Gov. Josh Shapiro should reverse the decision made by his predecessor’s administration to reopen the troubled Glen Mills Schools just three years after it was closed in response to complaints that students were beaten and abused.

Even barring the school’s controversial history, research shows youth incarceration is costly, does not improve public safety, and fails to set kids on a positive path to adulthood. Other states have closed reform schools and moved to a less punitive approach.

Pennsylvania should do the same rather than risk repeating its disturbing past.

In April 2019, then-Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration rightly shut down Glen Mills after The Inquirer exposed decades-long child abuse and cover-ups at the Delaware County reform school.

At the time, Wolf said, “revoking the license at Glen Mills Schools was the only acceptable action in response to the horrific and inexcusable mistreatment of children at the school.”

Then last month — with just one week to go in Wolf’s term — the state Department of Human Services granted Glen Mills a provisional license. Just nine months earlier, DHS denied the same request to reopen.

Glen Mills will have a new operator known as Clock Tower Schools, but the name appears to be the only thing that’s new. Clock Tower was formed in 2021 and lists the same address as Glen Mills. Clock Tower’s director is Christopher Spriggs, who was the acting executive director when Glen Mills closed.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

» READ MORE: At Glen Mills Schools, boys are beaten, then silenced

Spriggs is not the only holdover from the bad old days. As part of the agreement, seven other Glen Mills staffers can return. The staffers swore under oath they knew nothing about any abuse at the school. Call it the Sgt. Schultz defense.

The settlement also calls for Clock Tower to pay an independent monitor to oversee operations. How independent can a person be if they are paid by the place they are monitoring?

DHS likewise said it is “committed to close and thorough monitoring” of Clock Tower. But the agency’s record here hardly instills confidence. DHS was told of the ongoing abuse at the school but did nothing until The Inquirer’s report.

Former students and staff members told the newspaper that counselors routinely choked and punched boys, breaking bones and knocking some of them unconscious. Incident reports showed one student’s jaw was broken and another was shoved into a cabinet headfirst.

The story detailed how staffers threatened the boys, saying they would be sent to worse facilities and forced to restart their sentences if they reported the incidents.

The abuse was such an open secret that a bartender at a local pub told an Inquirer reporter that counselors bragged over beers about punching students. The abuse was also discussed on online forums, message boards, and Facebook.

» READ MORE: New version of troubled Glen Mills reform school gets licensed to care for 20 youth with extra oversight

For the returning staffers to say they were not aware of the abuse is absurd. Same goes for Spriggs, who was hired at Glen Mills in 1994. Ditto DHS, whose shoddy oversight borders on willful incompetence.

Five years before The Inquirer story, a postdoctoral fellow at Pennsylvania State University who interviewed inmates at a state prison alerted DHS that six of them told her they had experienced or witnessed violent abuse while at Glen Mills.

A subsequent Inquirer story detailed how DHS ignored warnings from students, family members, and professionals about violence against young men at Glen Mills and other facilities.

After the initial Inquirer report, DHS launched an investigation that corroborated the newspaper’s account and led to the school’s closing. Glen Mills claimed there was “no credible evidence” and appealed. The school then launched a charm offensive. Between April 2019 and September 2021, Glen Mills spent more than $160,000 on lobbying.

Was the full-court press about helping vulnerable boys or making money? Before it closed, Glen Mills’ annual revenues were around $40 million. About 40% of the students came from Philadelphia, which paid the school $52,000 a year in taxpayer money for each student. The executive director before Spriggs received $336,000 in total compensation in the 2017 fiscal year.

Now the school is suddenly back in business with many of the same people in charge. What could possibly go wrong?