21 hours ago
At Tampa Bay's Victory High, newly sober students get a second chance
TAMPA — What do you want? the counselor asked the teens.
Not today or tomorrow.
For the rest of your life?
It was a dreary January morning, the start of a new semester. The students had slid chairs into a circle in the windowless classroom. Their experimental school was renting space in what used to be a funeral home, off a busy corner of Nebraska Avenue, where truck horns pierced their morning meditations.
'I want to be a therapist,' offered a boy in a backwards ballcap.
Another longed to travel. 'Like, go to Alaska or maybe Hawaii.'
A girl cocooned in a blanket stayed silent.
'OK,' the counselor said slowly. 'And getting there all depends on …'
The students studied the floor, then one spoke softly.
'Staying sober.'
• • •
Victory High is the only school in Florida where students have to have done drugs to get in, said its founder.
Most come right out of rehab, after becoming addicted to alcohol, overdosing on fentanyl, shooting heroin. After passing out in parking lots and waking in emergency rooms. Trying to kill themselves.
All before they were old enough to buy a beer.
Tina Miller, 50, had seen too many teens suffer. As a counselor in youth detention centers, she watched them get treatment and detox in jail — then return to their high schools and relapse. When your dealer is in your calculus class, it's hard to keep clean.
Miller thought she knew what they needed. She imagined creating a space where teens could come to nurse their sobriety, regain their self-esteem and earn a high school diploma. Where listening would be as important as learning. Where drumming and painting could help them heal.
But she didn't know anything about recovery schools.
In 2017, while working for the state's Department of Juvenile Justice, she started researching curriculums, private vs. non-profit models, different forms of therapy and financing. She reached out to community groups involved with addiction and recovery, emailed elected officials: 'We're a supportive, positive peer community that helps teens ages 14-19 by rebuilding their lives and reviving their futures.'
She decided to pursue a private, nonprofit model so the school could create its own programs.
Then she set out to raise the money.
In Oregon and Virginia, millions of taxpayer dollars support sober schools. Florida turned down Miller's first request.
So she asked friends to help, not only with donations, but by making connections. A tattooed, energetic activist, Miller speaks passionately, cries easily. She moonlights as a sober Christian comic and knows how to work a room.
She reached out to people at child welfare and health agencies, to police groups and drug courts, sharing the teens' needs and her vision — asking for hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding for something that didn't yet exist.
But few wanted to support 'troubled' or 'at-risk' teens — labels she hates. 'The hardest part was the stigma,' she said. 'It was like, these are the bad kids.'
She believed they deserved a second chance, surrounded by classmates and teachers who understood.
By 2021, when Pasco County was suffering the most teen opioid overdoses in the state, Miller had raised enough to rent a room in a New Port Richey church and hire a part-time teacher. Parents of two teens who had been in foster care and battled addiction saw a TV feature and enrolled them as the first students. In a classroom behind the sanctuary, Miller set up a folding table.
She named the school Victory High after her teenage son, Victor, and for victory through God. And, of course, the students' own achievements. 'They're survivors.'
Two years later, when the teen suicide rate in Pinellas County tripled, Miller opened a second campus in a Pinellas Park church, in the back of a thrift shop, where students play pool beside a life-size cardboard Jesus. This year, she expanded to Tampa, for a total of 17 students and seven teachers.
The Tampa Bay Times spent spring semester with the teens. The students and their parents signed consent waivers with the school allowing them to be photographed for this story, but the Times is using only their first names to keep their full identities private.
Eleven students were on track to get their diplomas in May — the largest class ever.
If they could stay focused.
• • •
'I want to switch to another subject,' Evan told his teacher one winter afternoon.
He and the three other teens at the Tampa campus were scrolling on school laptops, working through a site called Grade Results. Students at Victory High spend up to four hours a day on academics. They might study passages about economics or watch videos about the Supreme Court.
They seldom have class discussions or know what their peers are working on. They don't read books or write essays. Instead, they proceed at their own pace, taking quizzes across a variety of subjects. They also attend in-person classes on life skills, self-care and financial planning. There are snacks so they're never hungry, bean bags if they need a nap, noise-cancelling headphones and sleeping masks to block out the world.
'We find out the things they love, help them get re-engaged, open their eyes to opportunities,' Miller said.
Staff work with probation officers, plan family outings, host online parent support groups.
Unlike at public schools, students at Victory come and go, sometimes returning to hospitals or rehab. Some stay days, others more than a year.
So far, of 152 students who've passed through, 23 have earned diplomas. Eight have gone on to college.
Evan had seven classes left. He's 16, with expressive eyes and tousled sandy hair. Like his classmates, he wears Crocs and oversized hoodies he can hide in. He had been looking at a lesson on Martin Luther King Jr. that day but couldn't concentrate.
For the past week, he had been slugging 5-hour Energy shots and downing three cans of Celsius, trading one addiction for another. He hadn't slept in forever.
'You've still got a lot to get through,' the teacher said.
At Robinson High, Evan had been a good student, a star swimmer, until he started sneaking shots from his parents' liquor cabinet, meeting friends with stolen bottles beneath a bridge.
He loved slipping away, dulling the angst about becoming the adult everyone expected him to be. Soon, he was drinking vanilla extract before school. His grades started falling. He insisted he was fine.
Then, at a swim meet, he added 13 seconds to his 100M breaststroke. 'Are you drunk?' his mom asked. He'd chugged a bottle of rubbing alcohol.
Later, after he overdosed on Xanax and Oxycontin, his parents sent him to an inpatient program, where he spent 50 days. When he got out, Evan cleared all the contacts from his phone and signed up for virtual school, so former friends wouldn't tempt him. But he hated being alone all day.
When his mom saw the ribbon-cutting for Victory's new campus on TV, she enrolled Evan as the first Tampa student.
Others learned about the recovery school through guidance counselors and therapists.
Adam Schwartz has sent 16 teens to Victory from a Westchase treatment center called The Insight Program. Teen addicts, he said, need to focus on staying sober before working on academics. At Victory, they can do both.
'Kids are getting high at school 90 percent of the time. It's hard to get treatment while that's going on,' Schwartz said.
'If a kid doesn't feel comfortable in their environment, or believe in themselves and see other people believing in them, they're not going to get through school.'
Evan was reserved when he arrived, Miller said, watchful and wary. But he works hard, takes lots of notes, doesn't blow through the lessons like some of his classmates. He is becoming a quiet leader.
After isolating for so long, Evan said, his goofy, enthusiastic side was finally starting to come back.
He couldn't wait to go to college — and planned to graduate early.
'My parents are going out of town for the weekend,' he told his classmates that afternoon. It would be the first time they left him alone since he got out of rehab. 'I've been working hard to build that trust.'
'How long did it take you?' asked a new girl.
Evan smiled. He kept a nine-month sobriety coin in his wallet. 'Only 229 days.'
'I'm thinking of going to Gasparilla,' he said. Last year, when he went to the rowdy pirate parade, he and his friends were high. He barely remembers it.
A classmate's eyes grew big. 'Dude, seriously?' he asked, shaking his head. 'That's not the best place for sober people.'
• • •
'OK, phones off. Get water if you need it,' Miller called at the end of January. 'Then come sit in the circle.'
Students from all three campuses had gathered in New Port Richey, a dozen teens slumped into chairs. They'd chosen wristbands to represent their moods, as they do each morning: green for good, blue if they're down.
Evan took a seat between his Tampa classmates.
He hadn't gone to Gasparilla, he told them, and had spent his solo weekend hunkered at home watching SpongeBob. He had quit caffeine. Finally, he had slept.
'Good for you, dude,' said his friend, who had worried. 'You got this.'
Miller scanned the room, marveling at how the students were supporting each other. Most were wearing green wristbands, feeling good, for once.
Instead of honoring birthdays, people at Victory High recognize rebirths: The day they got clean. Today was Miller's turn.
'So my sober-versary is Friday,' she told the room, beaming. 'I got sober before you guys were born.'
All of the instructors at Victory High have struggled with addiction. Many were abused, abandoned, adopted. They understand.
Like Laurel Minthorn, 40, who had seen a news story about Victory and called Miller to volunteer. Both of her parents had been alcoholics, and she had grown up doing Xanax and Vicodin. By the time she was a teen, she was selling meth. She wanted to help kids like her.
She had been sober for years but had never gone to college. While she was volunteering, she earned a bachelor's degree so she could become a teacher. Now, she's Miller's 'right hand and foot woman,' and the students' beloved confidant.
Some of the students had heard Miller's story before. All of them leaned in to listen. Even the girl wrapped in a blanket poked out her head.
'I grew up with an abusive, alcoholic father,' Miller said. 'My mom was depressed and slept most of the time.' Miller started drinking in high school, like them.
'I lost jobs, my house. My car got repossessed because of alcohol. I didn't want to live. I just wanted to get high.'
She was failing out of the University of Akron, barely getting out of bed, when her dad got sober. He took her to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. If he could do it, so could she.
There, amidst a community of strangers, she found a kind but stern sponsor, a deep faith and, for the first time, the will to face the future.
Everything she went through, she said, was so she could be here, with them.
'Today, I don't have to escape,' she told them. 'Life is good.'
There isn't a 27-year sobriety coin, so a teacher gave Miller two 10s, a 5 and a 2.
As students passed them around, each told Miller how she had inspired them. Even saved their lives.
'Thank you for all you've done for us, for me,' Evan said. 'The world needs so many more of you.'
Miller's phone rang with a FaceTime call: The first graduate of Victory High had remembered. The young woman is in college now, studying to become a counselor. When Tina saw her smile, she wept.
'Congratulations!' shouted a girl in a pink tracksuit, who was usually quiet. 'Slay, queen!'
• • •
Her name is Samarra. She's 17, the only girl at the Pinellas Park campus.
She ties her long hair into a knot or tucks it under a shower cap. Frames her sky blue eyes with false lashes. And likes to paste sparkly stickers on her cheeks.
After six months at Victory, her shyness was shifting to sass.
Samarra's mom had left on her 11th birthday. Dad had gone to prison when she was 13. She had been living with her stepdad's mom, she called Nana, and going to Boca Ciega High, where she started vaping weed, then popping pills.
Being buzzed helped cushion the rejection, dull her rage. She mostly got high in the graveyard beside her school with drugs classmates sold her. She had worked at a dentist's office but got fired when she showed up stoned.
Last year, on Mother's Day, Samarra ate gummies she didn't know were laced with fentanyl. Her world started spinning. She fell into the tub and threw up. She couldn't move — or scream.
Her stepdad found her, no one knew how long later. Somehow, he shook her awake. He started searching for help.
But Samarra didn't want to get better.
Someone told her Nana about Victory High. At first, Samarra refused. Then agreed to at least meet Miller.
When Samarra got to the Starbucks that morning, she squirmed in her seat and wouldn't make eye contact. She kept excusing herself to go to the bathroom.
Of course, Miller knew Samarra was getting high. But she didn't call her out — not then. She told her about the recovery school, how the students hold each other up, about the art and music and horses. Samarra was scared of horses. But she liked the idea of taking classes online, surrounded by peers who wouldn't think of her as an outcast.
Her stepdad helped her get sober and let her move in. She enrolled at Victory in August.
Teachers try to hold the teens accountable, but it's almost impossible to get kicked out. If Miller suspects someone is using, she drug tests them. She offers second, third, even fourth chances. 'We want them to know we're here for them no matter what, even if they take a step back,' she said. 'We want them to be alive.'
There, on the thrift shop couches, amid secondhand lamps and board games, Samarra has learned that people really do listen.
The plan, she said, had been to drop out and sell drugs. Now she wants to become a cosmetologist, or maybe a nurse. Help people.
If she worked hard, she could catch up on two years of high school and graduate with Evan in the spring.
• • •
Miller wakes up agonizing about money, wondering what source she hasn't tapped yet. The school has no permanent source of funds. Every year, every grant and donation has to be renewed. It's like playing a high-stakes game of Jenga, she said. You piece together different blocks, build up while things keep falling out below, knowing everything could topple.
It costs about $700,000 annually to run all three campuses. Florida's Step Up for Students program covers scholarships for each teen, worth about $7,000 per year. Parents don't need to have insurance or exhaust savings. Teens drive themselves or take buses.
But the math is tricky. The more students who enroll, the more teachers are needed, and the more money Miller has to find for zip-lining, visiting job fairs and museums.
Some funds come from the Department of Children and Families, Central Florida Behavioral Health Network, Pasco County's opioid fund, the United Way. But all that is not enough to cover even half the costs.
Miller saves some by hiring college interns, who don't have to be paid, working with volunteers, getting food donated.
This year, she drove a van to Tallahassee with four teens to tell legislators about Victory High. Wearing T-shirts that said 'Hope Dealer,' they shared how the school helped when they had nowhere else to go. Miller distributed cards: Students had passed 619 classes and attended school 90% of the time.
She asked Florida for $300,000 — enough to pay next year's rent.
Miller is all too aware that other recovery schools in Florida shuttered because they ran out of money. Freedom Springs High in Orlando closed in November, Jacksonville's River Oaks in December.
She's always on her phone, trying to find more grants, more donors to tap, always half-listening and worrying about something, especially the students.
She couldn't let them down. She wanted to be their lifeline. She asked God to help them see themselves the way she sees them: compassionate, caring, worthy of love. She prayed that they would be safe — and want to live.
In February, Miller applied for accreditation through the national Association of Recovery Schools. She spent weeks filing reports, gathering data on how many kids stayed out of rehab: 95%. If the school met the standards, it would be eligible for federal funding — an enormous opportunity for more resources.
A panel came to assess Victory in April. Miller showed them the three campuses, introduced them to staff and students, invited them to sit in on therapy sessions. She tried to sound upbeat about money.
She needed to hire an in-house counselor but couldn't afford to. She could barely pay the teachers she had. What if she had to let one go? Worse yet, what if she had to turn down a new student who was trying to recover?
Victory High's finances are as precarious as its students' sobriety.
Miller wrote a dozen more grant requests. And repeated the Serenity Prayer.
• • •
'You see that O word?' Evan asked, pointing to a poster in the Tampa classroom.
A counselor had listed 'positive personal attributes' in magic marker, one for each letter of the alphabet.
'Optimistic,' Evan grinned. 'That's how I feel today.'
In the last month, he had gotten his driver's license, scored interviews at Dunkin and Smoothie King and had been talking to a girl he met at the library. He was closing in on the last few credits for his diploma.
'I'm a finalist for that camp counselor job,' announced the boy who wanted to travel. He was hoping to spend his summer working at a BMX camp, far away, in Pennsylvania. He also picked Optimistic.
The girl hiding in her hoodie didn't answer.
Recently, one of their classmates had stopped coming; they heard she was in the hospital, trying to adjust her mental health medications. Another had joined halfway through the semester, right out of rehab.
With a patchwork of grants, Miller brought in therapists to teach ways to cope without substances. Students learned that humming helps calm the nervous system. Breathing through a straw brings down blood pressure.
'What ways have you found to feel good, to get the rush or escape, without getting high?' asked the counselor.
Roller coasters. Skateboarding. Swimming. 'It's taken a lot of time to get that back,' Evan said.
The girl in the hood pushed it back and leaned forward. 'I went to the mall the other day and looked up, and the sun was so beautiful coming through the doors,' she said softly.
'I don't think I would've noticed that if I hadn't been sober.'
• • •
Spring brought a slight sense of security — at least for the short-term.
Miller got grants to pay for a prom and summer camp, to continue art and music therapy. Hillsborough's opioid fund kicked in $480,000. To her surprise, the state came through with $300,000.
State Sen. Darryl Rouson said he championed the request because the schools 'give students a supportive, nurturing, understanding environment, tools to work with that can sustain their recovery.' A former addict himself, he said newly sober teenagers need a place where their classmates won't bully or ostracize them. 'There's still a stigma,' he said. 'It's macho to be able to swig down a six-pack of beer.'
With the county and state contributions, Miller could almost cover next year's payroll and rent at all three campuses.
Victory High also got accredited, making it one of a dozen nationally recognized recovery schools. That might make federal funds available and could draw more attention, maybe even more donors.
Miller was starting to feel hopeful — when another Jenga block fell. The Tampa teacher told her she wouldn't be back for the next school year. Then the landlord of the building that housed the Tampa campus raised the rent, way beyond what Miller had budgeted.
She had to scramble to find an instructor and lease a classroom she could afford.
Two more students had already signed up for fall.
• • •
The day before graduation, a teacher drove Samarra and two other students to a therapeutic horseback riding farm in Clearwater called Inspired Acres. The teens had been working with horses every month, all year. They had learned to feed and groom them. But they had never ridden one.
The arena smelled like hay and manure. The barn manager brought out a hulking horse named Rascal whose mane was zebra-striped. Samarra hugged his neck. She had gone from terror to baby talk. 'Who's my big boy?'
The barn manager handed Samarra a saddle. Samarra stared at her. 'Go on,' the woman urged.
Working with horses teaches teens trust, the manager said. You learn to bond and build mutual respect. They read your mood.
Samarra was so much less resistant than when she had met the horses. She didn't shy away, seemed stronger.
Her cat had died recently, then her granddad, and teachers worried she would start doing drugs again. But she didn't.
Her stepdad had adopted her, and she finally felt like she belonged.
Sliding an Air Jordan into the stirrup, Samarra hoisted herself onto the horse's back. 'He's too tall,' she said. 'I don't know.'
The barn manager handed her the reins. 'Aren't you going to hold them?' Samarra asked. The woman shook her head. It was time for Samarra to solo.
• • •
'Our students blow my mind,' Miller told the crowd on graduation day. 'They'd lost their innocence, their way,' and struggled so hard to stay clean, to shore each other up.
'I am so proud of you all,' she said, blinking back tears. 'You did it!'
More than 100 people had poured into the sanctuary at Calvary Chapel in New Port Richey. Teachers sat up front. Graduates wore gold gowns.
Evan's parents filmed on their phones. Samarra's stepdad, whom she had come to call Papa Bear, cradled red roses.
Miller talked about taking the teens to a car museum, Jiu Jitsu training, a garden where they planted tomatoes. 'We restore lost childhoods,' she said.
When a slideshow started, two photos of a student named Zack popped onto the screen. The first, after he overdosed: disheveled hair, sunken eyes, zombie stare. Next to that was a photo from last spring: with a haircut and bright eyes, grinning in his graduation cap.
Someone in the crowd gasped. Miller smiled. 'We do recover.'
After getting his diploma, Zack had come back to guide students as a mentor in the first place he had ever felt safe.
Of the 11 students who could have finished in May, nine were graduating. The other two — including the girl who hid in her hoodie — had paused to focus on their mental health.
'I feel like this is where your life finally starts,' Zack told his classmates from the stage. 'We all have so much more to do.'
One of the graduates was heading to Virginia Beach to play baseball. Another had gotten a football scholarship at a small school in Ohio. Someone was going to a beauty academy and had already started a nail business.
Evan was working at Smoothie King. He'd signed up to start community college in the fall. He planned to study psychiatry, become a counselor.
Beneath her gown, Samarra was wearing a dress one of the teachers had given her: black with a long side-slit, and pink platform heels, a gift from her Nana. Watching her teeter to the stage, her stepdad sobbed. Samarra was the first person in her birth family to finish high school.
If she hadn't found Victory High, he was sure, she'd be dead.
'We accomplished something we never thought we could,' Samarra told the audience, hugging her diploma, then Miller. 'Because we had people who believed in us and encouraged us. Thank you.'
• • •
The next Monday, Samarra could have slept in, gone to the beach, anything. But she got up early and caught a ride with her Papa Bear to Victory High. She spent her first week of summer vacation playing foosball with teachers, watching Madagascar with Zack, not wanting to face what came next.
She wasn't ready to leave the little classroom behind the thrift shop, the first school she had loved, where people trusted her more than she trusted herself.
She didn't want to be home, alone. Wasn't ready to fly on her own.
Could she stick around? she asked Miller. Be a mentor?
Not for the rest of her life, but for today, tomorrow?
2021: Opened first campus in New Port Richey
3 campuses in Pinellas, Pasco and Hillsborough counties
7 teachers on staff
152 teens have attended
17 students enrolled in spring 2025
$700,000 annual rent and salaries for three campuses
$7,000 per year state scholarship funds each student's tuition
619 classes passed
95% of students have remained in recovery
32 students have earned diplomas
For more information about Victory High, or to refer students, go to
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