NY Removes Most Troubled Children From Pleasantville Cottage School

MOUNT PLEASANT, NY — New York’s child welfare officials have removed 15 children with severe psychological/behavioral issues from the JCCA Cottage School, Mount Pleasant town officials announced.

Mount Pleasant Supervisor Carl Fulgenzi said the state’s representatives recently informed him that they had been reassigned to facilities better equipped to handle them.

Town officials said they also learned that the JCCA has revised its intake procedures under the guidance and oversight of the State Office of Children and Family Services, which will make more visits.

Fulgenzi and Mount Pleasant Police Chief Paul Oliva said the next step in bringing order to the school is to create a secure campus so that the children living there cannot readily leave at any time.

“The open campus model goes back to an earlier era and is simply no longer viable today," Oliva said. "Virtually every public school today operates on a secure campus model. Students can’t simply walk off campus at any time, nor can people enter without checking in. It’s time for the Cottage School to shift to a secure model campus for the safety of the children it serves.”

The JCCA’s open campus encourages runaway incidents, Mount Pleasant officials alleged.

From January 1 to July 20 this year, Mount Pleasant police said they received 911 emergency calls involving 184 runaways. The missing children ranged in age from 12 to 17.

“Some people continue to maintain that the town’s stance on the JCCA is a political issue, but the very real problems at the facility that our first responders are confronting should alarm everyone with oversight responsibilities,” said Fulgenzi.

The JCCA is a New York City-based child welfare and mental health service provider serving New York’s most vulnerable children. The Cottage School campus was founded in 1912 as a residential program for orphans. It was the first cottage-style center in the nation. Today, family courts or mental health agencies typically place children at the JCCA.

Problems led in July to calls from Mount Pleasant officials to close the facility entirely.

The issue has to do with the growing child mental health crisis, and the need for state agencies to respond appropriately, said New York's State Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, who asked the state Office of Children and Family Services and the Office of Mental Health to stop placing children and teens with significant mental illness in residential treatment centers such as the JCCA.

SEE: Child Mental Health Crisis Causing Crisis In Westchester

"For over a year, JCCA has been raising the alarm at every level of government about the growing level of needs among young people with complex psychiatric and behavioral diagnoses that cannot be addressed in our campus setting," said Ronald E. Richter, Chief Executive Officer of JCCA.

The problems at the Cottage School stretch back many years and have been escalating with the state assigning more youths suffering from serious emotional and behavioral problems that have led to violent encounters on the JCCA campus, Fulgenzi said. In 2022, the Mount Pleasant police and the Pleasantville Ambulance Corps. responded to more than 760 calls at the campus, he said. Based on the first six months, this year’s call volume is projected to exceed a record 1,000. Of the calls in the first half of this year, 459 involved assaults, violent altercations, missing persons, and vandalism.

"For over a century, JCCA has been dedicated to caring for youth in need, including those with acute behavioral and psychological needs on our Westchester Campus. Supervisor Fulgenzi's comments are not new, and we remain focused on creating a safe and supportive environment. We are licensed by the New York State Office of Children and Family Services, and our program model adheres to state guidelines. The data that Supervisor Fulgenzi provides continues to be misleading," Richter told Patch. "We remain committed to collaboration. JCCA aims to work with all stakeholders, including state and local authorities, to improve safety and services for New York's most vulnerable children."