I recently had occasion to go to Canada and Northern Idaho twice in the last couple of weeks. We drove a looping vacation through the Pacific Northwest and came back through the Idaho Panhandle, on a horse-buying trip. The filly we bought was in Moyie Springs, ID, just 2 miles south of the Canadian border. So, in the last 2 weeks, I have stayed overnight a couple of times in Bonners' Ferry, ID, home of Lon Woodbury's educational consulting business.
Bonners' Ferry is a lovely little town of 2500, plunked in a small valley of the Kootenai River, full of golden aspens and rutting deer this time of year. On our "pick-up" trip with the horse trailer, we were staying at the Kootenai Indian Casino, a fairly big place right on the river. We needed grain and hay for the trip home, and went into town to the grain mill. [Like a lot of small towns, there is the "strip mall" end of newer buildings going out of town, and there is the nearly-dead brick center of Old Town.] There, two 10-story-tall galvanized metal buildings are busy creating animal feed from local grain, puffing and grinding away at opposite sides of a small square in town. As we waited for our product, I spy..."Woodbury Reports" on a building near where we parked. I was astonished at the tiny metal-roofed very shabby blue Victorian house squatting under the shadow of the grain elevator, without landscaping and with junk visible in the yard. The best part of the place was the wooden sign you see in the strugglingteens.com site.
Now, there is no rule that an Internet business has to look legit to amount to anything; I was just extremely surprised to find this business, which seems to get the most respect of all ed consultants (probably due to its forum pages) appearing like a place that I would think twice about entering. I bet a good many "customers" with the bucks to send their kids off for a "fix" expect the decision-maker in their consultation process to be something more like "artisan goat cheese on a sesame water cracker" when it really looks more like "Cheez-Whiz squirted from a can onto a Ritz."
We were there the day of the Rocky Mountain Academy bomb scare. We knew kids were being shipped here and there (the armory and the fairgrounds), and it was the talk of the staff at the casino. Surprisingly, the locals really don't know much about the "schools" right outside of town...even the 3rd generation local young person serving our drinks at the bar. The RMA does "adopt" a stretch of highway, so they apparently do let them out for clean-up duty. Our server also said the school had a prom at the casino this year, but "the kids were really weird". The prom-goers were notably silent, not talking much at all...the girls danced with the girls, and the boys stood off to the side. This person's relative even works at the school in a fairly responsible position, yet little or none of the goings-on makes it out of the facility.
The consensus of the locals? We didn't meet one who approved of the school, even though it meant jobs in this small town. Mostly, the kids and the parents who sent them from Manhattan, Miami, and other rich enclaves (to experience the beautiful remote wilds, more than 45 minutes down the only highway to Sandpoint, the VERY-tony ski resort where one's parents can stay and refresh themselves while "visiting" their incarcerated children) are disdained. The best quote was from one young person: "They're just a bunch of rich kids whose parents send them off to be trained like a dog."
The educational consulting business is certified by a shingle given by this group of self-proclaimed and self-regulated non-pros. Oh, that and $100. This is a very Mormom community, Woodbury's purchasable book has the back cover sold to WWASPS or Teen Help, and he accepts any advertising WWASPS wants to send his way. He says he does not recommend their "schools". Yet a parent would have to be sort of blind to think the expertise of this person is of a caliber and neutrality to really do the best for their child. Oh well, maybe doing the best for their child is not at all about why they are searching for a private prison in the first place.
