BEVERLY — Connor Darcy paced a narrow hallway at the Northshore Recovery High School, passing the science and music rooms before returning to the classroom where he takes English.

Pacing helps calm Darcy when he feels jittery. At 16, he already has been through detox several times.

Here, in an old Beverly office building, teenagers like Darcy who have battled drug and alcohol addiction get the chance to rebuild their lives.

They spend six hours each day in the alternative school and start each morning with a group therapy meeting. Students are encouraged to attend 12-step meetings. Hugs, taboo at many traditional schools, are welcomed here.

Darcy is one of 31 students who attend the Northshore school, created 10 years ago by the state to support youths addicted to drugs and alcohol. There are now four other free schools across the state, in Boston, Brockton, Springfield, and Worcester, that have been hailed by students — and politicians like Governor Charlie Baker — as places where teens can learn in a sober environment that includes group therapy, 12-step meetings, personal counseling, and drug testing.

As Massachusetts grapples with an alarming opioid crisis that is gripping younger and younger victims, the recovery high schools are seen as one of the last landing spots for teens who have burned nearly every connection to family and friends.

But shifting drug trends — such as heroin becoming more accepted among youths — coupled with inconsistent enrollment and funding issues are presenting new challenges to school administrators.

Some of the schools fall into a gray area — they each receive an annual $500,000 grant from the Department of Public Health but are not overseen by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. In Beverly and Brockton, the schools are run by educational consortiums which set policy but adhere to state educational frameworks for core subjects.

“We are saving lives, but more people need to know about us,’’ said Michelle Lipinski, the principal at Northshore Recovery, who gives out her cellphone number to students when they enroll.

For the last decade, she has provided a 24-hour support system to hundreds of students at the school. And her personal touch has helped pay dividends: Over the last decade, 71 percent of the students have earned a high school diploma. Throughout the day, students approach her to talk, or for a hug.

“The power here is compassion and love, and 365 fresh starts,’’ she said.

Lipinski also has made sure that some students attend school every day. Almost all live outside of the host district. Although neighboring districts pay about $12,000 annually for each student, they are not required by law to provide transportation costs for them.

So every weekday, Lipinski drives a student, Haley Conley, back to Newburyport, where the 17-year-old lives with her infant child.

“Transportation is a huge issue,’’ Lipinski said. “I think a lot of the students don’t come to school because of transportation because the district is not legally responsible to provide it.’’

That could change later this year. Legislators are debating two bills — including a measure presented by Baker to stem the opioid scourge — that would call for the state to develop a transportation plan for students at recovery high schools.

“Governor Baker values recovery high schools as one of many important tools to help combat the state’s opioid epidemic,’’ said Lizzy Guyton, a Baker spokeswoman.

Tom Scott, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents, acknowledged that transportation has been an ongoing issue with recovery schools, but also called for better communication between superintendents and recovery school leaders.

“The district superintendents are not opposed to the concept; I think there needs to be more collaboration and understanding of what these schools do,’’ Scott said.

Brockton Mayor Bill Carpenter served on Baker’s Opioid Working Group, which recommended last year that the state solve the schools’ transportation problem. He believes the state should pay for the students to get to school.

“This is short money compared to the alternatives,’’ said Carpenter, who leads a city where 123 people died of drug overdoses last year and where 45 people overdosed on opiates during a four-day stretch in January.

Inside Independence Academy in Brockton, group therapy and individual counseling are part of each student’s week. On Mondays, students start their mornings with a group session to discuss how they got through the weekend. And, like the Northshore Recovery school, students face regular drug tests and are required to attend at least two 12-step meetings a week.

Students who are anxious and want to attend a group therapy meeting outside of school are driven to those meetings by school staff.

“When they’re committed to being in recovery, but struggling, we’ll move walls and mountains for them,’’ said Ryan Morgan, the school’s principal, who said he is seeing more teenagers who are addicted to multiple substances, with marijuana and alcohol the most popular combination.

In the main hallway of the Brockton school, Haley Smith joked with classmates and cradled her textbooks. She has come a long way.

Smith, who is 17 and lives in Duxbury, began smoking marijuana and drinking vodka every day when she was 13. The combination numbed her depression: Smith emptied out water bottles, filled them with vodka, and drank every day in school. When she was 15, she began to shoot heroin in the bathroom of her school and last winter, she became homeless.

“I slept outside during the snowstorms in Quincy,’’ she said.

On her eighth trip to detox, she vowed to stay sober and says she has been clean for seven months. She enrolled at the school last September and credits the support she’s received from faculty, students, and her 12-step meetings for her sobriety.

She said the small school environment has made her feel human again. “This school makes me feel like I’m a person here, not a number,’’ said Smith, who has grown closer to her mother since she started the school year. “It makes me feel like I’m not a drug addict; like I’m an actual person who just has a problem.’’

Steven A. Rosenberg can be reached at srosenberg@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @WriteRosenberg.