When the discussion turns to drugs and alcohol in Rick Mattick's second-hour health class, most students have years' worth of war stories to tell. But these students at Baxter County's Alternative School are only teen-agers.
Kids respond more to personal experience than learning out of a textbook.
I tell them, 'If you think it's all fun and games, you might as well get it out of your system now. The farther you carry this into life, the farther behind you get. The alternative school, a branch of Baxter County's juvenile services department, opened in the spring of 1996 with 20 students, most threatened with expulsion from other schools. At the end of each semester, the school's population swells above 50. The reason we started this school is that some 70 percent of students expelled from school are from homes with no parent at home during the day.