{"id":302191,"date":"2026-06-10T04:25:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T04:25:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/302191\/"},"modified":"2026-06-10T04:25:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T04:25:13","slug":"florida-youth-challenge-academy-holds-final-graduation-after-25-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/302191\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida Youth Challenge Academy holds final graduation after 25 years"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">STARKE, Fla. \u2014 Cadets at the Florida Youth Challenge Academy graduated for the final time as the program closed its doors after 25 years.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The Florida National Guard-operated alternative program for youth held its last ceremony for Class 50, the final residential class based at Camp Blanding in Starke.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The Youth Challenge Program trained and mentored at-risk 16 to 18 year old high school dropouts.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Earlier this year, officials said the increased demand on the National Guard led leaders to decide to end the program and refocus resources.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wcjb.com\/newsletter\/\" title=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Click here<\/a> to subscribe to our newsletter.<\/p>\n<p>Copyright 2026 WCJB. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"STARKE, Fla. \u2014 Cadets at the Florida Youth Challenge Academy graduated for the final time as the program&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":302192,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3412,36226,30186,28,30,29,126796,15817,58761,126795,87750,164],"class_list":["post-302191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-academy","tag-camp-blanding","tag-challenge","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-florida-youth","tag-graduation","tag-guard","tag-last","tag-starke","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/302192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}