{"id":13686,"date":"2016-08-23T12:58:04","date_gmt":"2016-08-23T19:58:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/?post_type=films&#038;p=13686"},"modified":"2025-10-14T15:41:57","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T22:41:57","slug":"bad-kids","status":"publish","type":"films","link":"https:\/\/dipsy.pbs.org\/independentlens\/documentaries\/bad-kids\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bad Kids"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Located in an isolated and impoverished Mojave Desert community, Black Rock Continuation High School is one of California\u2019s alternative schools for at-risk students. Every student there has fallen so far behind that they have little hope of earning a diploma at a traditional high school \u2014 Black Rock is their last chance. But tireless Principal Vonda Viland and the teachers at Black Rock are on a mission to realize the potential of students who were deemed lost causes by the system. Powerful and inspiring, <\/span><b><i>The Bad Kids<\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> follows Viland and her staff over a year as they coach at-risk teens with compassion, respect, and a seemingly endless supply of patience.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The film, which won the 2016 Sundance Film Festival Special Jury Award for V\u00e9rit\u00e9 Filmmaking, focuses on three students \u2014 Lee, who has the additional pressure of now trying to support a child that he co-parents with another Black Rock student; Jennifer, a young woman grappling with sexual abuse; and Joey, a young man with a talent for music but who comes from an unstable home with a history of drug addiction \u2014 as they work through the traumas and obstacles that threaten their spirit and futures.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Located in an isolated and impoverished Mojave Desert community, Black Rock Continuation High School is one of California\u2019s alternative schools for at-risk students. Every student there has fallen so far behind that they have little hope of earning a diploma at a traditional high school \u2014 Black Rock is their last chance. But tireless Principal [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":13823,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"topic":[1246,1293],"class_list":["post-13686","films","type-films","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","topic-education","topic-youth-and-family"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Bad Kids | Last Chance School for At-Risk Teens | Independent Lens | PBS<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Coming-of-age story about Black Rock Continuation High School where teachers inspire the lives of so-called &quot;bad kids.&quot;\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/dipsy.pbs.org\/independentlens\/documentaries\/bad-kids\/\" \/>\n<meta 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