MADISON, Wis. — Tiah Meigs is a senior at Horizon High School, which is the Midwest’s only recovery school.
“My dad’s side of the family, none of them are really sober. None of them are in good places in life and they think sobriety is just a big joke,” said Meigs.
Before finding Horizon, Meigs was living in Mississippi with her mother and father. During that time, Meigs started regularly smoking marijuana.
“I was getting high at school or getting high and then coming to school, getting high after school,” said Meigs.
The environment in her dad’s household was one she said left her feeling mentally drained.
“I just didn’t have the support I needed. I don’t even remember there being a counselor,” said Meigs. “I met with the principal a lot.”
During Meigs’ freshman year, she said she attended school 15 times and most of those days she left early.
She and her mother knew something needed to change, and that’s when they found Horizon High School.
“We came here for an interview and the second we walked out the door, I was like, I am coming here,” said Meigs.
Horizon only has 15 students.
Director Traci Goll said the school is not small because the need isn’t there, it’s small because the funding and resources aren’t there.
“These kids are as wonderful and amazing as they are, they are complex,” said Goll. “Many of them have specialized education plans as well, so not only are we dealing with addiction and depression, they also have learning disabilities.”
Horizon is one of only 34 recovery schools in operation in the U.S. and it runs completely off of funding from the community.
“It has been around since 2005 and we have grown and come a long way and it is a miracle that we are still here,” said Goll. “There used to be one in Waukesha, there was one in Rockford, there was one in Janesville — they all lost their funding.”
According to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, 66.7% of youth in Wisconsin have consumed alcohol by 12th grade.
It also reports that 11.4% of all youth have misused prescription pain medication.
When it comes to mental health, reports of anxiety, depression and suicide among Wisconsin youth have been on the rise.
An annual report released by the Wisconsin Office of Children’s Mental Health compared data from 2021 to 2022 to show that the number of students feeling “sad and hopeless almost everyday” increased by 10%.
“If you are high all day or drunk or so depressed that you can’t get out of bed, it can be hard to learn,” said Goll.
With a full-time therapist on staff, Horizon hopes to not only lead students down a path of sobriety but also teach them how to achieve their goals as they graduate from the school.
Before coming to Horizon, Meigs said she was lost and did not know what she was doing with her life. Now, she is a senior, and she has someone to look up to.
“I am actually really scared. I don’t know what I am going to do not being here every day,” said Meigs. “I do know I want to do something in social work, like what Traci does.”
Goll said she and many others in Dane County are working on getting funding for more schools like Horizon to meet the growing need.
“We have worked really closely with Senator Jesse James and we got a bill and it is on Gov. Evers docket right now,” said Goll. “We are really hoping we get the funding so we can have recovery schools on every side of Madison as well as other areas of Wisconsin.”