The educational processes for youth who participated in a county-run correctional facility for juvenile offenders were studied. The county's Leadership Academy, a 48-bed correctional treatment center where juveniles are placed when ordered into direct care, is designed to divert repeat male offenders from the state-run correctional system. The public school district for the county's major city has over 90 schools and serves more than 74,000 students. One area in the school district has a direct relationship with the correctional facility in terms of the flow of residents from the correctional facility to the public school system. The relationship between the two systems and interagency coordination were studied through a qualitative design. Twelve urban school district personnel and 8 correctional facility personnel were interviewed. Both correctional facility personnel and school system personnel indicated concerns about the lack of collaboration and the ineffectiveness of the current system of communication between the two organizations. It appears clear that specific activities are needed to increase trust and communication for both agencies. Little appears to be done to prepare facility residents for the transition from the correctional facility back to the public school system. The education program at the correctional facility seems to focus on independent and self-paced learning of the basics, but formal assessment procedures to determine the appropriate level of instruction are not used. An area of strength in the work of both systems is the sincere interest in facility residents expressed by representatives of both organizations. Recommendations are made to improve coordination between the facilities. (Contains 1 figure and 42 references.) (SLD)