Carroll County Youth Facility Faces Scrutiny Over Repeated Violence, Emergencies

Carroll County Sheriff Jim DeWees has kept a precise count of what his deputies have dealt with since Silver Oak Academy quietly reopened in Keymar in late 2024: more than 100 emergency calls in roughly 15 months, 35 of them generating incident reports for arson, assaults, property destruction, escapes of at-risk juveniles, and stolen vehicles. At least eight involved assaults.

The most recent flashpoint came on March 24, when Carroll County Sheriff's Office logs classified the evening's events as riot, malicious burning, arson, and second-degree assault. A staff member told deputies that students had thrown a flaming book at him during the confrontation. Dana Rexrode, executive director of Rite of Passage's eastern district, which oversees Silver Oak, offered a different framing, calling the incident a matter of "three students who became escalated and elevated" who were returned to their dorms within 45 minutes. "I'm not sure three students constitute a riot," Rexrode said.

That gap between what police documented and what facility management acknowledged defines the central dispute over Silver Oak Academy, a privately operated campus at 999 Crouse Mill Road in Keymar run by Rite of Passage, a Nevada-based organization. The facility operates without fencing, locked doors, or mechanical restraints. "They move freely with direct supervision around the campus," Rexrode said. "We don't use any sort of mechanical restraints."

Silver Oak's 23 students, 95.65% of whom are youth of color, are placed through state contracts with the Maryland Department of Human Services and the Department of Juvenile Services. Baltimore City consistently accounts for the largest share of children in Maryland's foster care system, and the facility's demographics reflect a population largely drawn from Baltimore's neighborhoods. The campus school runs grades 9 through 12 with six teachers for those 23 students. When violence erupts, that schooling stops; for students carrying individualized education plans or working to accumulate credits before aging out of foster care, each campus lockdown carries consequences that follow them long after calm returns.

Dispatchers have documented the chaos in real time. During a February 2025 emergency call obtained by reporters, a female staff member told a 911 dispatcher that students were "overtaking the campus." "They have rocks," she said. "They're breaking windows." In a separate incident that ended in three juvenile arrests, students came armed with fire extinguishers, rocks, and chair legs; a 13-year-old assaulted a staff member badly enough to require medical attention, while a 14-year-old and a 17-year-old were arrested for fighting each other. DeWees said the March 24 incident was the second major fight in just two weeks and that at least eight assaults have been tied to the facility since January 2025.

The Maryland Department of Human Services confirmed Silver Oak is on its "hot list," a designation for providers flagged for heightened state monitoring. DJS declined to grant an interview.

The facility's history offers little reassurance. The original Silver Oak Academy opened at the same Crouse Mill Road address in 2009 under a DJS contract and expanded to 96 beds by 2013. It was shut down in May 2022 after state agencies cited staff supervision failures, youth safety concerns, and problems in the education department. DJS pulled all placed youth that spring. Carroll County's commissioners and sheriff jointly opposed Rite of Passage's proposal to reopen the campus in 2024. Silver Oak opened again anyway.

Baltimore families with a child placed at Silver Oak can request a placement review through the Maryland Department of Human Services or through their assigned DJS caseworker. Under federal education law, families are entitled to copies of current IEPs and educational records directly from Silver Oak's school administration. Carroll County Sheriff's Office incident reports from the campus are public records, obtainable by written request to the sheriff's office at 100 North Court Street in Westminster.