The US Department of State is quite a cushy employer when one is posted overseas. Education for all children is paid for in full until the age of 21. My parents contacted an educational consultant (surprised?) by the name of Ann(e) Weiss (a personal friend of Jayne Longnecker), who recommended Benchmark Young Adult School.
Many students were sent to benchmark because their values clashed with those of thier parents. One kid i knew was sent there since his parents were going through a nasty divorce and didn't want him to bear witness to it. Another was sent there for asburgers. Other reasons:
ADHD (a sizable portion of the students)
bulemia / anorexia
learning difficulties
being socially a bit slow
mild autism
The reasons posted in my above post (from their NATSAP entry) are actually fairly accurate, though many of the problems were greatly exaggerated. For example, i would fall under the category of "Distressed family relationships." While that was true at the time, we found a way to get along eventually.
For the most part, the kids were normal and would have done just fine anywhere else (though the staff would undoubtedly dispute this.) The program did not care if a kid was normal. As long as the parents were willing to pay, they were willing to torture the kids psychologically. There were kids there with drug and alcohol issues but i would estimate the percentage at somewhere around 30% to 40%.
As you can imagine, someone who was shy, suffered from depression, or had any number of the listed issues, would not be helped at all by the program. They claimed a 97% success rate when we toured the program. I don't know how they got that number. Maybe they count "success" as eating out of a dumpster on the streets.
According to their private school
Affadavit (excel format. go to cell B2436) they employ 10 full time teachers. This is fradulent unless they count the teachers at Redlands Adult School (even then i don't think it would add up to 10, and they are most definately not full time teachers at Benchmark young adult school). You should know, Jayne, that lying to the feds can get you in big big trouble.
here is the Educational staff listing on their website. I count four.