If a student needs to use the rest room, the student asks permission in that manner. When granted permission, the student must ask, “Permission to carry on.”

There also is plenty of rigorous activity.

“Instead of having students go to the principal’s office, I may have them do push-ups,” Sams said.

As part of the Tahlequah Alternative School, the academy is in session whenever Tahlequah Public Schools are in session. The only times kids can get out of school are for doctors’ visits, with a note from the doctor, and for family funerals.

No extracurricular activities either, not even if a student is the best linebacker or best trumpet player in the county.

“That’s part of their ‘want-to’ to get them back in the regular school,” Sams said.

Students stay in the program at least a school trimester, or 13 weeks, he said.

Their maximum term?

“As long as it takes to get them straight,” Sams said. “This is basically their last chance to stay here in Cherokee County, their last chance to stay in school.”

Sams said the academy has had a 68 to 70 percent success rate.

He recalled one student who had gotten in trouble with drugs, and “they put her through the program.”

“She was a train wreck when she got here, but we kept messing with her and kept messing with her until she got better,” he said.

By “messing with her,” Sams said he means that he and academy teachers and counselors “stayed with her and would not let her quit.”

Tahlequah Alternative School Principal Sheryl Ridenour, who oversees the academy, said the academy has space for 20 students, but currently has nine.

Sams said one change he’s noticed in the past six years is that the students are getting younger.