BEVERLY — Northshore Recovery High School now has a new name and a new home.
When about 40 students returned last Tuesday morning, they arrived at Northshore Phoenix High School inside the 100 building at Cummings Center. Along with the new name and location is a rebranding model and new overall program.
An accredited recovery high school operated by the Northshore Education Consortium, which is headquartered on Sohier Road where the school used to be, Northshore Phoenix High School serves Massachusetts students ages 14-21 who are navigating mental health challenges, struggling with substance use, or at risk of developing substance use disorders.
For more than two decades, the school has served as a vital resource for North Shore students as they continue to grow, develop, and become more self-aware on their path toward returning to their district schools or remaining at the recovery school to earn their diplomas.
The rebrand represents a deliberate, forward-looking shift to respond to the ever-changing landscape for local youth, school officials said.
“This is a profound pedagogical evolution that bridges two critical state systems,” said Michelle Lipinski, the longtime school principal. “We are reimagining what recovery education looks like by blending top-tier Massachusetts … state standards with sophisticated … public health frameworks.”
The current changes were put in motion about three years ago when enrollment began to decline, going from typically 30-37 students down to 24. That trickled into some financial issues.
“There have been many funding issues over the years,” said Fran Rosenberg, the consortium’s executive director. “State funding has been stagnant over the last 20 years, and the costs of running a school with high school students have risen exponentially; the funding model hasn’t kept up with the needs. The needs were changing, and the kinds of students we were taking changed.
“People didn’t understand the program, and there was a lot of confusion about who the program served. We were reluctant to invest in a new space for a long time because of all the uncertainty.”
That uncertainty began to resolve as ideas for change emerged. Over the past year or so, those changes have come together with the new name, new location, and new philosophies, which Rosenberg explained kept people outside the school community interested in keeping the doors open.
She went on say the program changes include modernizing curriculum, expanding trauma-informed learning models, and strengthening individualized student support systems. From flexible pathways that let students demonstrate mastery in meaningful ways to data-informed interventions that improve real-time collaboration between educators and clinicians, the blueprint integrates public health and educational support to help students build resilience, connection, and long-term success.
Over the past two decades, Rosenberg has witnessed many students not only conquer their substance abuse issues but go on and thrive in life. She knows that will continue at the new location.
“I think these young people sometimes fall through the cracks. Many of them are students who are identified with special educational needs, substance abuse, or multi-generational substance abuse, and that’s not technically a disability, and trauma isn’t technically a disability,” she said. “Our goal is to work with young people before they really develop a serious, life-threatening addiction and really address the underlying mental health needs as well as the substance abuse education.”
A ribbon cutting for Northshore Phoenix High School is planned for Oct. 8.