FORT KENT, Maine — Michael Robertson had trouble in school almost from the start. But it was seventh grade — when he began smoking cigarettes and drinking — that made simply showing up feel impossible.
"There was always an excuse for why he couldn't go to school," said his mother, Danielle Forino. "Every morning, he would say he was too tired or didn't feel good."
At 13, Robertson was prescribed Vicodin after dental work and quickly began abusing it, according to his mother. By his sophomore year in 2017, he couldn't get through a school day without nicotine. By junior year, he was addicted to oxycodone. His senior year, he enrolled in the district's alternative education program — which offers students greater scheduling flexibility — but was removed for vaping. Throughout this period, he fell increasingly behind academically and withdrew from school, his peers, and activities he once enjoyed.
Nationally, the picture is mixed. The share of young people using substances such as cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana, and harder drugs has declined in recent years — but unintentional overdose deaths among children and teenagers have surged.
In Robertson's hometown of Fort Kent — a small community pressed against the Canadian border — educators have watched students arrive hungover, fall asleep in class, and show up on Monday mornings clutching weekend drug summonses, unsure what to do next. They've also seen rising rates of chronic absenteeism, late arrivals, poor concentration, restlessness, and disengagement — trends that local staff say have grown more pronounced in recent years.
This August, Fort Kent will deploy new funding toward an unconventional response: a public boarding school designed specifically for high schoolers in recovery. Educators are betting that a structured environment centered on abstinence and mental health can help students reclaim both their sobriety and their education — if they can first persuade the teens who need it most to walk through the door.
"Addiction doesn't mean a student stops being a learner," said Tammy Lothrop, who has worked as a school social worker in Aroostook County for 25 years. "When we separate the two, students fall behind academically, fall behind their peers, which leads to more shame. For the first time, we're not asking students to choose between recovery and education."
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Substance use is especially damaging for adolescents because their brains are still developing. Drugs and alcohol disrupt that process by releasing chemicals that interfere with normal brain communication — potentially heightening anxiety and irritability while impairing attention, impulse control, and problem-solving.
In the classroom, those neurological effects translate into chronic absences, slipping grades, and, in the worst cases, dropping out entirely. When use becomes compulsive or crosses into addiction, the academic toll deepens further.
"Substance use interferes with kids' learning," said Sharon Levy, a pediatrics professor at Harvard Medical School and chief of the Division of Addiction Medicine at Boston Children's Hospital. "Substance use knocks systems out of balance."
Adolescent substance abuse cuts across race, income level, and geography — but how it unfolds, and how it's addressed, depends heavily on what resources are available locally.
Maine, a largely rural state, has only one inpatient treatment facility for youth struggling with substance use and addiction, with few outpatient alternatives to fill the gap.
Aroostook County — a vast region of 67,000 people with above-average poverty rates and below-average educational attainment — has even fewer options. Preventive programs and mental health services for young people are scarce across the county.
When Brooke Nadeau arrived for her first teaching job at Fort Kent's high school in 2020, she was largely unprepared for what she would encounter. She recalled being caught off guard when a student casually mentioned taking hallucinogens on weekends. In the years since, her concern has only grown.
Nadeau, who is completing a Ph.D. in criminal justice, began researching youth substance use and addiction services in Aroostook County for her dissertation — and found almost nothing.
The school district does offer some preventive programming: health class lessons and assemblies in middle and high school address coping strategies and the risks of substance use. Students who may be struggling can also work with the district's social worker, who provides short-term counseling and can refer students to outside services.
But the district, which serves roughly 800 students from pre-K through 12th grade, has limited bandwidth. When Nadeau encountered the recovery high school model in her research, she immediately recognized its potential for her community.
"With the recovery high school, we can help students get into recovery and build coping skills early on," said Nadeau, who grew up just outside Fort Kent. "If we stop the cycle at a younger age and give them the supports they need, they might not end up in jail — they can go to college and become functioning adults."
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Recovery high schools have existed for several decades. Today, 46 operate across the country, serving students with substance use disorders and co-occurring conditions such as depression and anxiety, according to Andrew Finch, who leads the nonprofit Association of Recovery Schools. Research on their effectiveness remains limited, but available data suggests that students in recovery who attend these schools are more likely to remain abstinent than peers at conventional high schools.
"Recovery schools can be really helpful for kids who need a place where triggers are managed," said Levy.
The Upper St. John Valley Recovery High School will operate as part of the Fort Kent school district, run by the Valley Unified Education Service Center, which serves three area districts including Fort Kent. It will be the first recovery high school in Maine, the only one in a rural setting nationally, and — to accommodate Aroostook County's widely dispersed population — the first to include a residential boarding component in approximately 30 years. The school has capacity for 14 students at a time, eight of whom will board on-site during the school week. Students are expected to remain enrolled for anywhere between 90 days and a full academic year.
Enrollment is voluntary, with students entering the program alongside a parent or guardian's support.
The district is leasing dormitory space from the University of Maine at Fort Kent, which is expected to provide classroom space and common areas — including a kitchen and a living room with a working fireplace — at no charge during the school's inaugural year. The program will be staffed by a social worker with specialized training in substance abuse and addiction treatment, an academic teacher, a paraprofessional, and a dorm supervisor.
On weekends, boarding students return home equipped with structured sobriety plans — a deliberate design that lets them practice abstinence in short stints away from school as they build confidence in their own recovery. Peter Caron, the alternative school coordinator who developed the program alongside Nadeau, said relapses are anticipated, not stigmatized. When they happen, the school works with students to reinforce coping strategies and develop new ones.
"We see that with adolescents in recovery facilities, they do well because of the structure, but when they return to their home communities, they fall back into old habits," Caron said. "We need to give them more time and the opportunity to develop transitional skills."
Caron had never encountered the concept of a recovery high school before Nadeau brought it to him in 2023. But when she proposed launching one in Fort Kent, he agreed without hesitation. "We have not been able to effectively address the issue of substance abuse in our students' lives," he said.
Once they secured approval from their superintendent, Caron and Nadeau turned to the question of funding — and their timing proved fortunate. Maine had begun receiving tens of millions of dollars from settlement agreements with pharmaceutical companies accused of driving the opioid crisis. The pair applied to the statewide council responsible for distributing a portion of those funds and were awarded $616,000.
Many in the region hope the school will help students stay rooted in their communities while working through addiction recovery. Youth treatment options in Aroostook County are scarce, and students who need care are often forced to leave home — sometimes leaving the state entirely. That displacement compounds trauma and isolation, said Lothrop, the Aroostook County school social worker.
"Throughout my years, I've often felt the heartbreak of knowing a student needs more support than we have for them locally," Lothrop said. "With the recovery school, they can continue to heal without being disconnected from their roots."
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Still, the school faces real obstacles. Chief among them is stigma. In a tight-knit community like Fort Kent, many teenagers are reluctant to disclose a struggle with substance abuse — and the school's supporters worry that even students who could benefit may be too afraid to enroll.
"We know there's a need," said Caron, who was born and raised in Fort Kent. "But we need to demonstrate there's a demand."
So far, one student has directly expressed interest, Nadeau said. Caseworkers from across the county have also begun reaching out about teenagers they believe could be a strong fit for the program.
The window to prove the school's worth, however, is narrow. Funding from the state's opioid settlement, combined with tuition payments from the school districts that send students, is expected to sustain the program for two years. Recovery high schools elsewhere in the country draw on a mix of state and local funds, donations, and tuition to stay afloat.
Caron and Nadeau are pursuing an additional $1 million from the state legislature to extend the pilot to five years. They are working with a local legislator on a bill to request the money, slated for introduction next year. But first, Caron must demonstrate the school can fill its seats. "This is a use it or lose it proposition," he said.
Danielle Forino isn't sure whether a program like this could have saved her son, Michael, who died of an overdose in 2023 at age 22. Enrollment requires students to be in active recovery — sober for at least 30 days, with some exceptions — and genuinely committed to long-term sobriety. Forino isn't certain Robertson would have been ready. Though he mentioned during his junior year of high school that he might need suboxone, a prescription medication used to treat opioid addiction, he didn't make a sustained effort to seek help until he was 19.
For Caron and others at the recovery school who knew Robertson, he is precisely the kind of student they set out to reach. "We didn't have an answer for him," Caron said. He hopes the recovery school can be that answer for other young people wrestling with substance use and co-occurring mental health disorders.
Ultimately, Nadeau and Caron envision the school as a beginning — one that could normalize youth recovery and inspire the creation of similar programs across Maine. But for now, their sights are set closer to home.
Success, Nadeau said, would be "if one life is saved."
Contact editor Caroline Preston at 212-870-8965, via Signal at CarolineP.83 or by email at [email protected].
This story about substance use disorder was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.
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