like and it s hard. they ll say, samantha, how do i get through it when someone has killed my brother? that s deep. reporter: what s also deep is a memory of how this school began. it s where samantha herself was incarcerated when she was 15 years old. when i first came here, it was 1996. it was dirty, unsafe, physical assaults. you get restrained. you get down in a room with shackles. reporter: and those detained rooms are still here as a constant reminder just down the road on the same property as the academy. oak hill was finally shut down five years ago and replaced by the maya angelou school. one of the neat things about this place that people don t understand reporter: it was started by david demenchi and james foreman, jr. they had different ideas about