A Dayton Daily News investigation found this is at least the seventh time in two different states the academy’s founder has attempted to open such a facility. Previous tries, dating back 22 years, ended in failure and often litigation.
The project is currently privately funded. The founder of Griffin Academy — a for-profit LLC — says she is in contact with state officials and government agencies to access public funds, though some of those agencies dispute her version of events.
The Englewood building is fully furnished, with a lush library, a stock of specialized tools and workforce development materials, and school supplies arranged atop desks, each with a reusable water bottle bearing the Griffin Academy emblem.
A small Griffin Academy bus sits outside the 702 Albert St. location.
As of the time of this report, no students have been enrolled in the program. Griffin Academy Director Tari Darr says marketing the program has been a challenge.
“There needs to be a paradigm shift,” she said, referring to the way communities prepare vulnerable foster care youth for emancipation.
Darr spoke to the Dayton Daily News recently with hopeful anticipation about the school she envisions — a safe place where older foster kids who are due to age out of the system in a year or two can earn their GED while learning a trade and basic life skills.
“How can we expect foster kids aging out of the system to be successful if we’re not preparing them for the real world?” she said.
‘For the kids’
Montgomery County offers programs for transitioning foster kids. This includes a 10-week independent living program that is mandatory for teens nearing emancipation from foster care, according to the county’s website.
The county-led program involves education about finances and budgeting, building healthy relationships, health, housing and home management, career and employment preparation, and strategies for academic success.
Following emancipation, the county’s after-care coordinator visits emancipated youth on a regular basis for up to six months while they adjust to adulthood. As students near the end of high school, foster youth are assisted in obtaining any grants they are entitled to, or with FASFA and educational training voucher paperwork.
As a precursor to the independent living program, foster youth aged 14 to 16 are offered a personal responsibility education program, focusing on prevention of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.
The Griffin Academy would add to these efforts. Darr’s work to open a foster child-focused facility stretches back much further than 2023.
Records dating back to 2003 show a trail of real estate transactions and land use requests in Ohio and Virginia, all involving small businesses associated with Darr, and all with the apparent goal of opening a facility for foster children.
Several of these high-dollar property purchases landed Darr in court, most often for unpaid loans, while other initiatives foundered following unsuccessful rezoning attempts.
“Is this a rags to riches story? Only for the kids,” Darr said. “Did she (I) keep trying? Yeah. Did she keep trying to change paradigms? Yeah. And is she going to continue to do that? Yeah.”
Virginia beginnings
In 2003, under a company called Futures Academy Inc., Darr attempted to open a private residential school for foster care youth on a more than 200-acre property in Southampton County, Virginia.
This project never got off the ground, as Darr was unable to get the agricultural site rezoned to facilitate construction of a school.
“Zoning out locations for foster care youth services is common,” she said.
The following year, in 2004, Darr tried to rezone a 220,000-square-foot industrial building in Radford, Virginia, for the same purpose.
The project, proposed under the name Concept 1, received the necessary zoning approval, but was ultimately hindered.
“Negative community pushback squashed that option,” Darr said. “(They didn’t want) foster care youth in their backyard.”
Darr had better luck with her third attempt, if only slightly, this time in Victoria, Virginia, with the launch of Concept 1 Academy in 2005.
There, Darr purchased a former middle school building from Lunenburg County for approximately $555,000.
With the goal of employing more than 100 people and investing $4 million into the community through the program, Concept 1 Academy received a $125,000 project grant from the Virginia Tobacco Commission.
Darr claimed the program ran for two years before it was forced to closed around 2008 due to legislative red tape. The facility closed before contractual grant obligations were met, prompting the state tobacco commission to demand reimbursement of the funds.
The tobacco commission sued Concept 1 in 2010 after multiple failed attempts to collect the monies, records show.
History in Dayton
Darr moved to Dayton in 2008, created a business called Transitions 1 LLC, and acquired a property at 1039 Salem Ave., a four-unit apartment building, from the Dayton Metropolitan Housing Authority. She hoped to open a private residential facility for foster youth.
Zoning hurdles again prevented the program from getting off the ground, Darr said.
Darr sold the property, but was sued in Montgomery County in 2013 by the purchaser, who accused her of breaching the sale contract. This lawsuit was settled out of court.
Darr’s next attempt was in Huber Heights. In 2015, her for-profit Concept 1 Academy purchased the former Lamendola Elementary School at 5363 Tilbury Road from Huber Heights City Schools at auction for $19,000.
Darr planned to open a residential facility for 32 male students ages 16 to 18 years old. But these plans were denied by planning commission and Darr withdrew the project proposal prior to a council vote.
Concept 1 sold the building in 2016 for $98,500, according to Montgomery County property records.
Darr was taken to court in 2016 for default on the Lamendola property’s mortgage loan. Again, this issue was settled, court records show.
In 2018 Darr’s company 4 The Kids LLC bought a long-vacant building that was built to be a nursing home on Blackwood Avenue in Dayton from an investment group for $85,500. But the city of Dayton denied a zoning request to create a residential facility for up to 16 male foster children.
4 The Kids sold the building to a sober living LLC in 2020 for $335,000, according to county property records.
Property records show 4 The Kids LLC then purchased a former school at 184 Salem Ave. in Dayton, once operated as Sowing Seeds of Knowledge and Richard Allen Academy, for $500,000 in February 2021.
In October of that year, Darr and 4 The Kids LLC purchased an industrial building at 325 Carr Drive in Brookville for $770,000.
On June 10, 2021, Darr and 4 The Kids LLC entered into a $1.4 million mortgage agreement with GOF Finance in Dayton in relation to the Salem Avenue property.
Just one day later, on June 11, 2021, court records show Darr and her businesses 4 The Kids Inc. and Griffin Academy entered into a similar agreement with Balaji USA Business Lending LLC for $160,000.
GOF Finance sued Darr for loan default in Montgomery County Common Pleas Court in 2022 and the parties settled the following year.
Balaji USA sued Darr and her companies in December 2022, with a default judgment issued in January 2023.
Funding and endorsements
Darr said she’s been busy reaching out to legislators, eager to share program details and seek out any potential funding or endorsement initiatives that could assist the program in getting off the ground.
Darr asserts former Lt. Gov. Jon Husted was a supporter of the Griffin Academy program, and that he was set to visit the Englewood location last year to give his official endorsement. His appointment to the U.S. Senate in January prevented the visit, she said.
A spokesperson for current-Sen. Husted’s office declined to comment for this story or to confirm whether a visit to the academy was ever scheduled.
A spokesperson for Gov. Mike DeWine’s office said they could not confirm any such visit was ever on then-Lt. Gov. Husted’s calendar prior to his appointment to the Senate.
Darr said in April she was “in the process” of instead coordinating a visit with current Lt. Gov. Jim Tressel, who was appointed in January.
But the governor’s office spokesperson said no such meeting is in the works.
“We can confirm Ms. Darr requested a meeting with the lieutenant governor, but we could not fulfill that request,” the spokesperson said. “Lower-level staff had a phone call with her that was informational in nature. I am not aware of any projects proceeding or commitments made at this time.”
Darr said the office of Children and Youth Services and its director Kara Wente are “looking into a combination of (funding options)” for the program.
But a spokesperson for the Ohio Department of Children and Youth Services denied this.
“DCY is not working with Ms. Darr and Director Wente has not spoken with her,” the spokesperson said.
Ron Todd, who serves as chief of Social Impact & Opportunity at the Ohio Department of Development, visited Griffin Academy in May.
Todd’s office confirmed the visit, but did not give details as to the outcome of the meeting or the nature of any discussions.
“Ron Todd met with Griffin Academy leadership earlier this month,” a spokesperson said via email. “Ron regularly travels across Ohio, connecting with individuals and organizations.”
Darr said she’s hoping some funding and other assistance for Griffin Academy’s future students can come through Ohio’s workforce development initiatives.
“This is all to get the word out, get everybody on board, get initiatives in place; I’d like to see what workforce development (assistance) can do, not just for the funding stream, but what it can do for the kids,” she said.
Griffin Academy
Darr says her mission to help foster care teens dates back to 1996, when she began developing independent living training programs while working for social services in Norfolk, Virginia.
Her current project is the culmination of decades worth of work to shift how communities care for foster children, she said.
Griffin Academy is located in the former Englewood Elementary School, which C1 Resources, a company working with Griffin Academy, purchased at auction in 2023 from the Northmont City School District for $155,000.
Darr said the property, school supplies, tools, and furnishings throughout the building were purchased with investor funding.
Payroll for the three employees recently hired by Darr is also being covered by investor funds, she said, as the school currently has no students registered and therefore no revenue.
“At this point, the investment into this program is $1.26 million,” Darr said, adding that she’s put any money and savings she had into the project.
Darr hopes to have a total of 30 kids enrolled in her education courses at any one time.
Classes at Griffin will be held from 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, at a cost of about $60 per hour for each student.
Darr believes these fees could be subsidized by state funding like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and Chafee funds, which support youth in or formerly in foster care transitioning to adulthood.
Darr pointed to a national study from 2017 by the Casey Foundation, which reported that for every young adult that ages out of foster care, a $300,000 annual societal cost is imposed on communities and taxpayers through things like public assistance and incarceration.
“So, we have the cost to send them to Griffin Academy where they can get a GED, trade certification or get enrolled in college, and learn independent living skills, all of which will cost a third of what the taxpayer burden may be without that education,” Darr said.
For now, Darr said her focus is on getting the word out about Griffin Academy, reaching out to local skilled-trades companies to gauge workforce needs.
“If we get over this paradigm of, ‘Oh, this is how we’ve always done it,’ we can ensure these kids are prepared for the real world in a way they currently may not be,” Darr said. “... I still believe that those of us who are willing to risk everything for the right reason will change the world.”
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