From the Burlington Free-Press in Vermont:The headmaster of Pine Ridge School in Williston confirmed March 20 that the private boarding school for dyslexic students will close after graduation, June 5.
The closure will put 20 people out of work and force the school's 22 students to make other plans in the fall. The 136-acre campus, appraised at $5.1 million in 2003, is in limbo and might be sold.
Dana Blackhurst, the headmaster who saw the school through a controversial restructuring that resulted in a dramatic drop in enrollment, said one of his immediate goals is to help place students at other schools and get them through the transition. "They are outstanding," he said. "They can handle it."
He would not comment on the future of the campus, other than to express hope that a buyer might emerge that would start a new school there.Rumors that the school might close have circulated for months, and a few weeks ago
Blackhurst acknowledged that the school was on the edge. In January, 16 people were laid off in a move that the Pine Ridge board and Blackhurst defended as necessary for the school's survival.
Critics said Blackhurst was mismanaging the school, and a breakaway group of parents and staffers formed a new school in Rhode Island.March 20 Blackhurst blamed the closing on two primary problems -- an economic recession that has made recruiting students difficult and a $1.6 million debt he inherited when he came to the school two years ago.
In retrospect, the school's financial problems were beyond repair, Blackhurst said. "You have people that say you were given a dead body -- you can't even resuscitate it."
Students found out the school was closing at an assembly Wednesday, and parents learned by letter that day and the next. It was a sad moment, said 16-year-old Kelsey Jacobsmeyer, a Pine Ridge sophomore from San Francisco. "I'm trying to keep on the positive side but you know, I'm upset that the school is closing. I consider it my home. I've learned a lot here."Matt Needles, an 18-year-old senior from West Hartford, Conn., feels lucky that he is graduating this year and heading to college, so he won't need to transfer high schools. He's sorry to see Pine Ridge die. Teachers there convinced him he could learn -- in contrast to teachers at his former school who had given up on him. "They pushed everyone but me because they didn't think I had any potential."
Pine Ridge was founded in 1968 to serve students with dyslexia and other language-based learning disabilities. The cost of attending is high: $56,035 this year for tuition, room, board and fees. About half the students are attending on public dollars, sent by school districts that concluded they could not serve the students properly in their home public schools. Four students at Pine Ridge are attending on Vermont public funds.
The school has capacity for 100 students and a little over a year ago had 78 students. At that time, the school had strayed from its core mission by accepting many students with behavioral and emotional problems without providing the psychological services they needed, Blackhurst and Chairman of the Board Mitch Roman said.
They attempted to return the school to its original focus on students with dyslexia. Blackhurst expected a drop in students but had hoped to build back up to at least 35 students next year. The economic recession made that impossible, he said.
Blackhurst portrays the school he arrived at two years ago as a disorganized institution where at least one staffer brought students to Hooters, homework was rare, and students faced few consequences when they swore, walked out of class and disrupted the learning environment.
His efforts to require study hall, homework and lesson plans were unpopular, he says. John Thomas, registrar and director of admissions, agrees that reforms were badly needed and blamed former faculty and staff for rejecting Blackhurst on face value. "It was, you are a Southern, male, Republican talking to us? Go away."
Blackhurst has been sharply criticized by some former employees of the school and some parents. Patrick Dally, former food service director, worked at the school for 16 years before he was let go in February. He was sorry to learn Pine Ridge will close.
"It was a wonderful school that helped a lot of children, and it's just very sad," said Dally, who lives in Essex.Whatever financial problems the school had, Blackhurst did not help matters, he said. "You don't get out of debt by just turning the place upside down," Dally said.
Last year, he wrote to the Pine Ridge board and the Vermont Education Department to complain about Blackhurst's disciplinary tactics. The headmaster acknowledges that several times he asked misbehaving students to carry bricks across a courtyard as punishment.
Blackhurst said Thursday that the brick routine was taken out context. Parents in each case agreed to the punishment, and kids carried the bricks one at a time for roughly 30 minutes, Blackhurst said.
He now says he won't discipline students this way again. The Vermont Education Department found no wrongdoing.Dally feels he did the right thing in bringing the information forward. "I did my best, I wrote to people who I thought could help. And I brought up issues that I thought really needed to be brought up, and nothing happened and now it's done."
Pine Ridge should be remembered for what it accomplished over the decades, and not for its rocky recent years, Dally said. "It helped so many hundreds of children throughout the years and now it's just gone."
