Speculation that the state’s only school for kids recovering from addiction may close sparked a protest and community outcry this week, but Seattle Public Schools says there are no plans to shutter the campus.
The district said Wednesday that it had taken no steps to close Interagency Recovery Academy, a small school in the Queen Anne neighborhood that serves about 27 to 39 students each year and is part of the district’s network of alternative high schools. The School Board must approve any decision to close a school, and the district has neither recommended nor authorized closing Interagency Recovery Academy, said Bev Redmond, the district’s spokesperson and chief of staff.
Families and advocates of the school say the school’s leadership met early in the week; after the meeting, speculation that the school could be on the chopping block began to spread.
The school’s administrator sought to address “concerns and speculations” about the school’s future in a letter to its staff and families on Wednesday.
“I, nor anyone at Seattle Public Schools, have authorized or recommended the closure of Interagency Recovery Academy,” Sharonda Willingham, the school’s principal, wrote.
On Thursday, the district was more direct: “There are no plans to close the recovery academy,” Redmond said. “There are none.”
Seattle Public Schools is facing a $105 million funding gap, but district leaders say they don’t intend to close schools to address the shortfall; school closures and consolidations could be on the table for 2025-26, however. The deepest cuts so far have been made to the district’s administrative office, according to Art Jarvis, the assistant superintendent of academics.
But student enrollment decline continues to pose a challenge for individual schools.
Last month, the district sent schools projected student enrollment numbers for the 2024-25 school year, and school leadership teams have been discussing how to staff their buildings based on those numbers.
A school that is expected to have fewer students in fall 2024, for example, will likely have a smaller budget to work with. The school’s leadership team has to decide how to best spend that money and which positions to fund.
As the fentanyl crisis claims the lives of more and more teens each year — three times as many Washington teens died in 2022 relative to 2019 — advocates say Interagency Recovery Academy is a critical lifeline for youth. A Change.org petition circulated to save the campus for the 2025 school year and had gathered more than 3,000 signatures by Thursday morning.
“The recovery school is more than just an educational institution,” the petition read. “It offers specialized support that traditional schools can’t provide, making it indispensable in our fight against addiction.”
Teens who enroll are in recovery, and are committed to staying drug-free. Such schools are relatively rare: nationwide, just over 40 exist. And most are clustered in a handful of states such as Minnesota, Massachusetts and Texas, according to data from the Association of Recovery Schools.
Males and youth of color make up the majority of Interagency Recovery Academy’s student body, according to a recent report on the school’s demographics and outcomes. About a fifth of students are experiencing homelessness, and more than a quarter have individualized education plans for special education services.
Students are clear-eyed about the school’s purpose.
“The recovery school has saved my life many, many, many times,” said Sarah Hussein, a 17-year-old junior. Without the school, she said, “I don’t think I’d be alive today.”
Hussein enrolled as a freshman after several difficult years, including pandemic-era school closures.
When her middle school shut down, isolation gave way to depression and physical health challenges. At Ingraham High School, she’d begun using drugs, including pills that weren’t prescribed to her. One day, she was caught with cannabis and alcohol in her backpack. “It was definitely an addiction,” she said.
She transferred to Interagency Recovery Academy, where she says she built deep and trusting relationships with peers and staff. At a time when she felt suicidal, she told someone she trusted, and was admitted to a psychiatric ward for treatment. When she returned from a period at rehab, she felt welcomed back into the school community. “They continue to save my life every single day,” she said.
Families say they remain concerned about a potential closure.
“Based on the letter and information that I got last night, and the information I received from the recovery school, it just seems to me like this person [Willingham] is trying to cover her tracks,” said Hussein’s mom, Crystal Perry.
Redmond apologized for the confusion about the school’s future.
“It is not our goal to alarm families,” she said. “It’s a very sensitive time to talk about budgets and to talk about the future of our schools. … I want to make sure that we are giving them the best information possible, and certainly apologize for any confusion. They were hurt, and we are sorry for that.”
Filling gaps
Interagency Recovery Academy, which opened a decade ago, is housed inside a retrofitted gymnasium building that was once part of the former Queen Anne High School, which closed in the early 1980s after enrollment dropped.
Situated near John Hay Elementary at the top of Queen Anne Hill, the school divided public opinion among neighbors and elementary school families from the start. It was 2014, and Honna Kimmerer was living in a brick building next door to the school when, one day, she spotted news crews outside her window. “The neighborhood’s outraged,” Kimmerer remembers hearing. A campaign against the school argued it threatened the local elementary schoolers’ safety; neighbors and parents launched a petition and gathered more than 850 signatures.
Kimmerer, who was newly in recovery at the time, felt the opposite. She wasn’t alone: a counterpetition supporting the recovery school drew support from nearly 900 people.
“I just immediately felt compelled to be involved at whatever capacity I could,” said Kimmerer, who has volunteered regularly at the school for several years. “I would have loved [this school] when I was a teenager … my addiction was in high school, and I knew that it was such a crucial time in life to have support from people who understand.”
Located far from the district’s other high schools, the recovery school was intended to give youth a safe space away from peers who were actively using drugs or drinking alcohol. It has served as a haven for teens who exit residential or inpatient substance use programs and face reentry into regular life, advocates say, by filling a gap in an otherwise desolate treatment landscape. Few outpatient substance use programs for youth exist here, and teens sometimes struggle to access treatments that help them stay sober, like prescriptions for gold-standard medications such as suboxone.
At the school, Kimmerer helps host recovery support meetings, which are scheduled alongside students’ daily academic activities. The get-togethers allow students to open up about what they’re struggling with, share advice on staying sober or share anything else on their mind.
“They’re only going to listen to adults as much as they want to,” Kimmerer said. “To have seniors who have two years sober helping sophomores navigate this addiction life and recovery life — and how to overcome what they’ve gone through — it’s so major.”