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Finding school by accidentIt’s just after noon on a midweek summer day, and there aren’t many people around the house. Most of the boys work construction. The house is also home to one dog, a stray Chihuahua named Pepe, which one of the residents brought to the house.
Dixie High School sits about 4,000 feet from the house. Two of the house’s current residents, Hyrum and Bruce (who fear repercussions from the FLDS community and asked their last names be withheld) say they happened upon the school one day when they were bored. Now enrolled at Dixie High School, they are trying to get the kind of education that was foreign in fundamentalist FLDS culture. They take biology and earth science, read the literary classics and hear wide-ranging lectures on history and civics. Hyrum is 17. He wants to graduate next spring with a high-school diploma.
Hyrum’s journey started in the area known, historically, as Short Creek—famous for a controversial raid in 1953, in which law enforcement agents rounded up and imprisoned the men and left women and children behind. “The Creek,” as the boys call it, later became the towns of Hildale and Colorado City. Hyrum fled to St. George about two years ago, then moved on to California, then to Salt Lake City and back again to St. George. Hyrum had been living out of a truck, Benward says, and found his way to the house through word-of-mouth among fellow lost boys.
“I call Hyrum a ‘connecter,’” says Benward, who works for a social service agency called New Frontiers for Families. “He brings people around, he makes friends easily. Most of the boys aren’t nearly as outgoing. Hyrum has made a lot of high school friends. They come over to hang out in the back yard, or shoot pool. Just do what kids like to do.”
Sitting inside the house one day shortly before the new school year starts, Hyrum announces he may be the first of his group at the house to graduate from high school—not simply get his GED, as many of the others have. “It’s either going to be me or my brother,” he says, adding, “My brother’s smarter than me. It kind of pisses me off.”
At first glance, nothing betrays Hyrum’s origins. He no longer wears the long-sleeved, button-down work shirt and closely cropped hair of FLDS men and boys. Hyrum wears a T-shirt and worn jeans, and his shaggy brown hair is parted on one side. His look would be forbidden in his hometown, yet his manners remain strictly the product of an authoritarian background. Hyrum is soft-spoken and responds with a “Yes, ma’am,” or “No, sir.” His friend Bruce wants to know what kind of language they can use during an interview with a reporter.
Hyrum says he had to learn how people lived outside what was once his home community. “When I got out, I really didn’t know anything. I didn’t have a lot of social skills, and I thought everyone was out to get me. But I’ve come a long way in two years. I started getting more social and going to parties, and I realized people weren’t so bad.”
Free lunch, school fees and college advice
Incarcerated FLDS leader Warren Jeffs has been blamed for turning his young followers out to fend for themselves, but some of them say they left on their own. Those who were forced to leave were accused by the sect of engaging in what are typical mainstream teenage behaviors—watching TV or movies, listening to CDs, talking to girls or breaking curfew. Estimates of their numbers have varied widely and due in part to FLDS secrecy, are tough to confirm. Most estimates, though, put the number of boys at about 400, and ranging in age from the mid-teens to mid-20s. A few girls have left, too.
What hasn’t been so well documented is that, despite the odds of essentially losing their families and having to adjust to a new culture, some of the teens are gaining a formal education. Hyrum takes life a day at a time. He clearly enjoys being in high school.
“I love [school], at least the social part. The work’s kinda hard, but I might as well do some while I’m there.” He adds that, for him, the transition hasn’t been all that bad, “My first day, I felt kind of sketchy, but I got to know people and after the first day, I even had a couple of friends.”
He tries to stay open to people’s questions about his life. “People at school know who I am,” Hyrum says. “I always answer their questions. During an interview with a television station, “I brought the camera crews to school with me and told people I was in the middle of a crack intervention. I really don’t care what people think about me. Well, some people I care about, but for the most part, no.”
Guidance counselors help him with the minutia of school life—applying for need-based free lunch, fees, explaining attendance policies and the like. He’s no longer shy about expressing his needs. “I just ask, or I ask Michelle and she calls them and asks for it.”
Application of the federal McKinley-Vento Homeless Assistance Act has helped ease the way for the boys in public school. The law requires a free public education for all children in the United States—whether they have a permanent address or not. Under McKinley-Vento, school districts accept homeless youth who lack the requisite paperwork of children from permanent homes. And the boys at the house off Bluff qualify as homeless, says Washington County School District assistant superintendent Marshall Topham. Bob Greene, child services coordinator for the district, says about 27 former FLDS youths are currently receiving an education from the district. Of those, 17 are working toward a GED and 10 are trying to complete high school.
To supplement what the boys get in school, the house is stocked with adventure novels, school books and three computers. “I used to read a lot more, but now I mostly just do it in school. We have classes where we read books and stuff,” Hyrum says.
His education has big blanks. “The last real grade I was in was seventh,” he says. “When I came [to Dixie High], they put me in 10th. Hyrum wants to go to college, even if he doesn’t know yet what he wants to study. Again, normal teen stuff. “I didn’t really decide I was going to [apply to college] until I came here.” The next thing that comes out of his mouth is something of a surprise, “I dunno. I’ll probably fail, but it’s worth a shot.”
His friend Bruce shores him up—if the classes Hyrum takes in college don’t work out, he can always change his major, he says. Hyrum pauses briefly and says, “Yeah, I dunno. I still think I’ll fail.”
