Aid Troubled Youths, Judge Asks Schools

An Ann Arbor judge yesterday told the Ann Arbor Board of Education that "school is an essential tooi" for the rehabilitation of local youths in trouble with the law for truancy and other more serious offenses. Judge Francis O'Brien of the Juvenile División of the Washtenaw County Probate Court urged the Ann Arbor Public Schools to come up with special programs to help troubled youths become rehabilitated. He cited the Ypsilanti School District's Personalized Education Program (PEP), in which certain students are given individualized attention and instruction in a separate facilityj until they are judged ready to return to the class-l room. Judge O'Brien stressed that the schools must help him come up with a solution of what to do with these youths because his other alternatives (foster homes, training schools) were so limited. I School Supt. W. Scott Westerman Jr. told The News after Judge O'Brien spoke that it appears the schools have no alternative but to formúlate! special programs for these youths. Last week, Westerman blamed several emo-l tionally "troubled" youths for recent attacks andl incidents at two of the city's junior high schools.!