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Dear friends,
Yesterday, I walked onto the Union County Vocational-Technical School campus for a very special day.
I stepped into a room full of faces. Parents, family members, loved ones, students, colleagues, administrators, supporters. All of us there for the same reason: to celebrate four extraordinary young people who accomplished something remarkable.
They graduated high school in recovery.
While managing one of the hardest things a person can face, these students showed up - for their education, for their families, and for themselves, every single day. This courage is not something you can fully put into words, but you could certainly feel it in that room.
Recovery is never done alone, and nowhere was that more visible than yesterday, and every year we celebrate the Raymond J. Lesniak ESH Recovery High School graduation. Behind each of those four graduates was a whole community of people who believed in them and walked alongside them - teachers, counselors, peers, family members who never gave up on them.
We also had the honor of recognizing Sanford Starr, Assistant Commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Children and Families, for his championship of NJ4S, the program bringing behavioral health support and early intervention into schools across New Jersey. His work reflects something we believe deeply: young people should not have to reach a crisis point before help becomes available.
Leaving that campus yesterday, I felt something I can only describe as gratitude mixed with urgency. As I write this, the proposed state budget eliminates all funding for New Jersey's three recovery high schools, including ours.
These schools are small. Their impact is life-saving. They are the reason those four students were in that room yesterday. They give young people in recovery a place where their experience is understood, where their education stays within reach, and where a future that may have once felt impossible begins to come into focus. For some students, that is the difference between staying connected and falling through the cracks entirely.
We cannot celebrate recovery and then defund the places where recovery happens.
Senator Raymond Lesniak — who founded our school, the first recovery high school in New Jersey, and has never stopped fighting for these students — recently wrote about the urgent need to restore this funding. Read his op-ed in NJ.com. He and I also spoke about it on New Jersey Politics with Laura Jones. Watch that segment here.
If this moves you, please contact your state legislators and tell them that recovery high schools save lives and deserve to be funded. And if you're able to support our work directly, a gift of any size makes a difference.
Yesterday, I watched four young people cross a stage that not long ago may have felt completely out of reach. I watched their families cry and I watched their teachers beam. I was reminded of exactly what is at stake if we stop fighting for these schools to stay open.
The next student who needs that school is out there right now. Join us in making sure the doors are still open.
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