it is also worth remembering that the "orginial owners' dont have an especially clean history
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/ ... 133634.phpBEND, Ore. -- A Central Oregon boarding school that frequently ran into trouble with state officials will close its doors for good, according to a report in The Bend Bulletin.
The president of Crater Lake School, which is on a Sprague River ranch in rural Klamath County, has informed state officials and former employees that she will not attempt to renew the facility's boarding school license, which expires at the end of the month.
"It looks like they are throwing in the towel," said Donna Keddy, manager of the residential treatment and licensing unit in the Department of Human Services. "They are voluntarily not going to reopen and that is great news."
The school has been closed since August and the state in October refused a higher-level license that would allow it to become a residential treatment center for severely impaired teenagers.
It marks the second closure of a youth facility for president Bobbi Christensen, who lives in Seattle.
In 1991, Christensen -- known at the time as Bobbi Trott -- agreed to close a California camp that experienced a rash of oversight problems, including the deaths of three teens and four would-be rescuers in an icy Sierra Nevada lake.
In that same legal settlement, she agreed to never operate a similar facility again.
Yet she opened the Crater Lake School in 1997 along with her now deceased-husband.
In the years since Crater Lake School opened, police and state regulators had recurring concerns, state documents dating back to 1998 show. Incidents included chronic runaways, mishandling of prescription drugs, food and heating fuel shortages, harsh discipline and a sex-related conviction of a staff member.
In August, a 17-year-old boy who was a student at the school made an eight-mile trip across Puget Sound in a kayak. He had been camping with other Crater Lake School students at Blake Island and slipped away in the middle of the night. He was found unharmed.
Last month The Bulletin and KATU-TV in Portland published a report on the school and Christensen. At that time, Christensen said she intended to reopen the facility as an academic-only boarding school.
After learning then about problems at the school and the history of its operator, Gov. Ted Kulongoski said people should not be allowed to run ventures in Oregon if they cannot do so in another state.
Keddy said her agency will re-evaluate the application process for residential programs in the wake of the Crater Lake revelations. In particular, potential operators may need to attest that they haven't been forced to give up a license in the past.
In a previous interview, Christensen said her legal settlement was binding only in California.
On another front, the Oregon Attorney General's Office is investigating the program because of allegations of misleading marketing and failure to make refunds. A proposed settlement that would change how the school is promoted has been sent to Christensen, but it has not yet been returned, said spokesman Kevin Neely.
Doris Hester, a former employee of Crater Lake School, said word of the permanent closure made for a gloomy holiday in Sprague River, an unincorporated community about three hours south of Bend. She said the job was the most rewarding she's ever had -- and provided much-needed paychecks for more than a dozen people.
Many parents say the Crater Lake program helped their petulant children, while others have complained about lack of structure and supervision.
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