|
Stewart Cairns for The New
York Times
Jason Finlinson, director of
the Academy at Ivy Ridge, a disciplinary boarding school near the
Canadian border that is under legal scrutiny.
By KIRK SEMPLE
Published: June 8,
2005
OGDENSBURG, N.Y. -
The melee at the Academy at Ivy Ridge, a boarding school here for
troubled teenagers, began at about 10:15 p.m. on May 16 when someone
pulled a fire alarm in the boys' dormitory.
Within moments,
students were smashing windows, overturning furniture and fighting,
with some trying to help the academy's security guards squelch the
disturbance. Eleven students fled the campus, near the Canadian
border, and bolted into the night.
Ogdensburg police
officers, state troopers, St. Lawrence County sheriff's deputies and
the United States Border Patrol were called in and the uprising was
quickly put down. Those who escaped were rounded up, and the police
arrested and jailed 12 students on rioting, assault and other
charges; the academy expelled 48.
Administrators say
the uprising was not a result of systemic problems in the academy
but of the mixture of combustible characters in a severe
disciplinary environment meant to rehabilitate teenagers who have
run afoul of the law and their parents.
Jason Finlinson,
33, Ivy Ridge's director, said in an interview at the academy last
month that with the expulsions, the school had shed its most
troublesome residents.
Still, the violence
brought more unwanted attention to an institution that, since
opening three years ago, has drawn the scrutiny of state
investigative agencies and attracted a loud chorus of critics,
including former students who have accused the school of
mistreatment.
The office of Eliot
Spitzer, the New York State attorney general, is investigating
whether Ivy Ridge violated state law by issuing diplomas, since it
is not accredited by the state. The state police are investigating
two cases involving allegations of child abuse and one case stemming
from the riot.
Mr. Finlinson and
other administrators say all allegations of abuse are false and the
invention of disgruntled former students and competitors in the
potentially lucrative industry of so-called specialty boarding
schools.
Mr. Finlinson said
the school was offering a valuable service for parents who feel they
have run out of ways to help their children. It's also an expensive
service. Tuition and fees are about $3,500 per month.
"We're in a pretty
controversial industry," said Mr. Finlinson, who oversees about 500
students and a staff of about 230. "When you're trying to change
people's lives, there's controversy. If I didn't want the
controversy, I'd go wash cars."
Ivy Ridge comprises
a cluster of nondescript brick buildings and a playing field on the
campus of a former junior college overlooking the St. Lawrence
River. The campus is on the outskirts of Ogdensburg, a small town
set amid farmland, about 128 miles northeast of Syracuse.
Its white
cinder-block hallways and classrooms are remarkably quiet, and the
students - the boys, with close-cropped hair and uniforms of khaki
trousers and white shirts; the girls in plaid skirts - move around
the building in single file. The children, who are high school age,
come from all over the country and abroad and arrive with records of
drug and alcohol use, tangles with the law, truancy, domestic
violence and splintered families. But they share one thing in common
- parents who, at wit's end, have decided that the academy's steep
tuition is a small price for a last-ditch effort to straighten out
their children.
The academy is
affiliated with the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs and
Schools, a chain of six behavior modification programs in the United
States and abroad run by a small group of businessmen in St. George,
Utah. In recent years, local governments and the United States State
Department have investigated allegations of physical abuse and
immigration violations leveled against World Wide-affiliated
programs. Affiliates in Costa Rica, the Czech Republic and Mexico
closed under pressure from local authorities, and one in Western
Samoa closed for "business reasons," according to James Wall, a
public relations representative for World Wide.
Ivy Ridge's
program, which Mr. Finlinson said was based on a plan developed by
World Wide, is highly regimented and emphasizes discipline. Students
try to progress through six levels based on a system of merit
points. Privileges are granted at each level. Residents are not
allowed to receive telephone calls from their parents until they
attain Level 3, which can take several months.
The program
includes an academic curriculum, though it is primarily
computer-based and self-directed: students spend several hours a day
in front of computers working silently on programs.
In the days after
the disturbance in May, Mr. Finlinson said, a few parents withdrew
their children. But he said that the school was now stable and
running smoothly.
Nevertheless, his
troubles - and the threat of more damage to the academy's reputation
- have not disappeared.
Mr. Spitzer, in his
investigation of the academy's status as an accredited school, has
forced Ivy Ridge to stop issuing high school diplomas. The academy
was accredited until recently by the Northwest Association of
Accredited Schools in Boise, Idaho, which is not a registered
accrediting organization in New York State. As a result of the
investigation, Northwest Association suspended the academy's
accreditation.
The New York
Department of Education has determined that it does not have
oversight of the academy. "It is a behavior modification center,"
said Jonathan Burman, a department spokesman, "and not a school."
The state police
are also investigating three cases involving the academy, a state
police spokesman said. He declined to reveal the nature of the
cases, except that one was concerned with the May 16 disturbance.
Mr. Finlinson said
he believed the cases involved allegations of child abuse.
On Internet sites
that criticize Ivy Ridge and other World Wide affiliates, abuse
allegations abound, including charges that staff members punched
children and deprived them of food as punishment.
Mr. Finlinson and
other administrators deny all the allegations. "We go to great
lengths to make sure it's a safe environment," the director said,
listing a number of precautions, including staff training, security
cameras throughout the school and a rule that forbids private
one-on-one interactions between adults and students.
He pointed out that
no criminal charges have ever been filed against the school in spite
of numerous police investigations into abuse allegations.
Leah Swigert, 20,
of Eastin, Md., was a student at two World Wide-affiliated programs,
including Ivy Ridge, which she left in 2002. Her parents committed
her to the program because, she said, she had become unruly and was
smoking a lot of marijuana.
On some level, it
appears, the program worked. Ms. Swigert is about to graduate from
community college and is working as a paralegal. But her memories of
Ivy Ridge are entirely negative. She called the program "a scam,"
noting particularly the academic curriculum.
"I'll still have
bad dreams and wake up sweating and crying," she said in a telephone
interview. "Nothing really terrible happened. But I think that just
about every single day I wanted to run away."
Still, Ms. Swigert
says that she never once witnessed any of the kinds of abuses that
are regularly posted on the Web. "I never saw anything like that,"
she said, speculating that many of the allegations probably came
from former or current students "who are mad and are trying to get
the place shut down."
In interviews at
the academy last week, six students - four selected by the
administration and two randomly chosen by a reporter, said, in the
presence of other students, that they had never been victims of
physical abuse or witnessed physical abuse of any kind. They said
the staff was allowed to use force on residents only when they
became violent and, even then, they used a restraint technique
resembling a bear hug.
"I heard about the
investigations, but I think it's ridiculous," said Houston Woolery,
18, of Cottonwood, Calif., who has been at Ivy Ridge for nearly nine
months and was one of the students selected by the administration
for the interviews. "This is the best thing that ever happened to
me."
Five of the
students said they had initially hated the academy but eventually
came to appreciate and, to a certain degree, embrace its tough-love
approach.
The sixth student,
Gabrielle Sorenson, 14, of Ava, Mo., had been sent to the academy
only three days earlier. With her eyes lowered, she said, "This is
probably the best choice for me."
|
