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Politics & Government

Lincoln Hall Changes Course And Raises Concerns

The school plans to partner with the Office of Refugee Resettlement to temporarily house teenage refugees.

Following a tumultuous two years during which riots and runaways made regional headlines, Lincoln Hall Boys Haven plans to change course and house underage illegal immigrants without guardians while reducing its population of troubled teens.  

Lincoln Hall, a school for troubled boys, is partnering with the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) to shelter and provide services to approximately 60 boys ages 12 and 17 at any one time, according to LoHud.com. 

After one-to-two months at the Route 202 campus in Lincolndale, the teens, who are part of the Unaccompanied Alien Children Program, will be reunited with family or returned to their home country, according to LoHud.com. The ORR is part of the Administration for Children & Families (ACF).

Find out what's happening in Yorktown-Somerswith free, real-time updates from Patch.

News of the program has underlined questions about Lincoln Hall's safety record and lack of communication for Somers town supervisor Mary Beth Murphy. The tonight during its 7:30 p.m. meeting. 

According to Murphy, Lincoln Hall said the ORR program will reduce the number of juvenile delinquents on campus and that the undocumented teens will have no AWOL or criminal history.

Find out what's happening in Yorktown-Somerswith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Kenneth J. Wolfe, the ACF's deputy director of public affairs, told Patch in an e-mail, "We don’t comment specifically on locations," when asked how the program would impact Lincoln Hall.  

A fact-sheet on the ORR program described the undocumented teens as typically being from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Mexico, and usually apprehended while trying to cross the border.  

"Over the last few years relationships with Lincoln Hall have become strained because of criminal activity that occurs on the Lincoln Hall campus, the concern that this activity will spill over into the surrounding community and the number of youth who run away from Lincoln Hall," Murphy told Patch in an e-mail interview.

Just a few weeks ago,  from Lincoln Hall and it wasn't the first time the school garnered unflattering attention. According to a news report, in October 2011, Somers Middle and Intermediate School students were placed on "lock out" by state police after a Lincoln Hall student left campus without permission and was found on Somers school grounds.

The Yorktown Examiner reported in April 2011 that three Lincoln Hall boys were arrested for assualting a fourth student. And in December 2010, state and local police responded to a 30-person riot at the school that took an hour to get under control, according to WestchesterNewsOnline.com. The Office of Children and Family Services began a review of the school's operations following the riot, according to LoHud.com, because of a spike in runaways and other incidents. 

Somers town officials have met regularly with Lincoln Hall to determine how best to keep the surrounding community safe, according to Murphy.

"Despite these meetings Lincoln Hall made no mention of this new program until rumors were already circulating in [t]own," said Murphy. "This lack of communication does not foster confidence in Lincoln Hall. Somers residents want to feel safe in their homes and their community." 

Patch contacted Lincoln Hall Executive Director Jack Flavin for an interview and was referred to the ORR. However, Flavin told LoHud.com that, “Our mission hasn’t changed. It has always been to help support the welfare of needy children, and in most cases, reunite them with families.”

Flavin told LoHud.com that The Children's Village in Dobbs Ferry, a school that caters to troubled youth in grades K-12 and also works with the ORR, runs a similar program to the one proposed for Lincoln Hall.  

Teens in the ORR program must be provided with classroom education; mental and medical health services; case management; socialization and recreation; and family reunification services.

According to LoHud.com, Lincoln Hall's population has fallen from 240 in 2009 to 120 in 2012. Changes in the New York Family Court system to keep troubled youth closer to home will further reduce the school's population to as little as 30, reports LoHud.com.

Conversely, there has been a 77 percent increase in the number of children in the ORR program during the first three months of 2012, which previously served 7-8,000 children annually. 

Check in with Patch on Friday for an update following the July 5 Town Board meeting.  

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