To get back to the original premise of this thread...
Casa by the Sea costs $1990 a month. Add to this the huge initiation fees, which means you pay more than $5000 the first time to get your kid going. Additional costs are $95 a month for personal items (like soap, shampoo, things that should be covered by $2 Grand a month), a "personal allowance fund" (required) of $100 a month, which usually gets eaten up by consequences and infractions, unconsciounably-inflated medical fees of up to 5 times the costs of US office visits, with an additional $75 transportation fee to take your kid the 3 miles into Ensenada (if you can get your kid to a doctor, dentist, or orthodontist at all), laundry and uniform fees (shouldn't this be included for $3K a month?) and any other incidental fees they may be able to "make up". Add to this the long-distance calls; all calls (if there are any) from child to parent are collect...at exhorbitant operator-assisted international rates. If a parent tries to call on their appointed day, the Family Rep is frequently/usually not available, requiring several other attempts. [Each completed call, even to a machine, constitutes an international long-distance call.] A parent can usually expect to shell out between $2500 and $3000 or much more per month for the "greater value, due to the foreign location" Mexican variation of WWASPS.
Multiply that by the 570 kids that were there 2 months ago. That is equal to (at the $2500 average) $1.425 Million. At the high end, $3000, that is $1.71 Million. The percentage going to Utah?
Purported to be 75% from foreign locations, this equals 1.07 MILLION DOLLARS per month, just from this one location.
The impact of these fees depends on who the parents are. If they have their accountant make out the checks, so what? If they are making payments on a second mortgage on a house they hoped to pay off by retirement and now face payments until they, the parents, are 87 years old...that is something else. Hey, it's their choice, and they think somehow that this phantom stranger with underpaid, untrained, downright dangerous and sadistic employees will fix what they, the parents, cannot...then caveat emptor (i.e., tough shit).
Obviously, there should be some of those fees directed to therapists, etc., but in Mexico, it costs $950 for a preliminary placement interview with Dr. Chappius, and any additonal time with him is charged at $150 an hour (often charged; seldom really materializes). Chappius apparently spends 2 weeks a month at TB, leaving 2 more weeks a month to travel and attend to all the other 1500 or so kids at other WWASPS facilities. Three and a half minutes of quality psychiatric time...that'll fix everything.
These Utah guys have a lot at stake. Be careful. They obviously know how to play hardball.
