We are passionate about early intervention and prevention and do not want to expose our students to older troubled teens who are often more entrenched in their negative behaviors and have been involved with more serious acting out behavior.  Younger students often look up to older students and are much more susceptible to peer pressure.  Troubled teens often bully younger and or smaller students and we want to protect our students from being bullied, harassed, hurt, etc.  Younger adolescents differ developmentally from older adolescents in terms of their difficulties, interests, stressors, cognitive abilities, psychosocial maturity, attention span, self-esteem, and brain development just to name a few of the differences.