In 1995 Congress went to the National Guard and said, “There’s an epidemic of students dropping out of high school, fix it.”  Today there are 39 Youth Challenge Academies across the country.

The Grizzly Youth Academy is a free, quasi-military residential accelerated high school credit recovery charter school patterned after West Point and Annapolis. It’s designed to do what Congress asked of the National Guard.

In 1998 the first three National Guard Youth Challenge programs began. They were the Grizzly Youth Academy, located on camp San Luis Obispo, the Oklahoma Youth Academy, and the Alaska Youth Academy. At that time their motto was: “Intervene in and reclaim the lives of at-risk youth.” An at-risk youth is defined as a 16-to-18-year-old who has dropped out of high school or is about to drop out. The current updated motto is “Intervene and reclaim the lives of at-risk youth, producing program graduates with the values, life skills, education and self-discipline to become productive members of society.”

Cadets are sequestered on Camp San Luis Obispo for 5½ months, followed by a 24-month follow-up mentoring program. Two classes per year have resulted in 400-plus graduates per year.

A program available to all National Guard Youth Challenge programs is a 5½ month program at the Joint forces training base near Long Beach called the Job Challenge Program. Cadets can learn trades such as carpentry, auto repair, welding, security guard and certified nurses’ assistant.

Grizzly Academy is not a court mandated program for juvenile delinquents. Nothing could be further from the truth. Cadets must have a clean record and demonstrate a strong desire to turn their lives around.