Desisto School

[Anonymous]

I agree.  I can honestly say that I have no qualms about DeSisto.  In fact, it taught me so much that I can't believe it at times.  I went to the school from '87-'89, 9th and 10th grade basically.  I learned how to hear my voice and use it.  I got to travel all over the world and experience things I'm sure I wouldn't have otherwise - Mexico, the Keys, USSR.  I performed in plays, dances, dinner theatre.  Most of all, which I'm sure for many, I found I had some self worth which I lacked completely prior to going there.  The experience is different for everyone (as is everything in life) but I can speak for myself and say that I got a lot out of it and thank goodness I got sent there because I can't imagine what or where I would have wound up.  

Because some people hated it, doesn't mean everyone did.  I don't know what the school turned into but there does seem to be a lot of negativity about it in the years after I was there.

[Anonymous]

So did you run away or not? If DeSisto was such a great place for you, why didn't you stay longer?

[cherish wisdom]

A fine school isn't closed by the state for massive violations. They also have a BM in Mexico.  Thank God - another one bites the dust.  

For three days after death, hair and fingernails continue to grow but phone calls taper off.  
-- Johnny Carson

[cherish wisdom]

Special-needs school rapped by state plans to close
By David Abel, Globe Staff, 4/13/2004

Amid state allegations that it did not create a safe environment for its students, the DeSisto School for emotionally troubled children yesterday announced that it would close its 26-year-old program in Stockbridge at the end of this academic year and send many of its students to a program it runs in Mexico.

Last month, officials from the state Office of Child Care Services told DeSisto administrators to suspend their admissions process. In a letter, state officials charged the school had "an environment that endangers the life, health, and safety of children enrolled."

Frank McNear, Desisto's executive director, said in a telephone interview yesterday that the school could not run properly without its customary admissions process.

"They did us grave financial damage when they closed our admissions," McNear said. "We can no longer fight this. They've been saying they want to close us, and they succeeded."

Blaming state officials, McNear said the school's enrollment has dropped in the past two years by more than half, to 30 students, 18 of whom are being sent to the school's program in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. The rest will remain in Stockbridge until graduation on June 6.

State officials, however, said they did their best to keep the school running.

"We wanted the school to succeed," said Dick Powers, a spokesman for the Office of Child Care Services. "But rather than making the school safe, they're presumably packing their bags and going to Mexico. It's disappointing -- it's really a shame."

In a letter to DeSisto officials dated March 12, the Office of Child Care Services had chastised the Stockbridge school as having failed to protect residents with self-injurious behavior. State officials later said the school had failed to follow through on changes it promised in February. Last month, state officials said they were reviewing seven complaints against the school, including one regarding a student whose hand was injured when she was placed in restraints and another regarding a student who swallowed razor blades and was not immediately provided with hospital care.

McNear said the school, which costs students $71,000 a year in tuition and therapy expenses, plans to reopen a campus elsewhere in New England. "I promise you our program will reopen in another state -- without out-of-control bureaucrats," said McNear.

Some parents of former students applauded news that the school is closing.

"I'm glad it's finally over," said Amanda Rhael, who withdrew her son, Karl, from the school several years ago after she complained the staff was improperly trained. "There were people working there who weren't qualified to work with emotional children. A lot of problems ensued."

Other families, however, lamented the loss of a school that served such needy children.

"Any time a program closes, it could never be a good thing," said Andrea Watson, coordinator for Parents for Residential Reform, a project of the Federation for Children with Special Needs. "We always hope for the best. I'm not sure they have the same standards in Mexico as they have here, and that's concerning."

© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.

The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0140440607/circlofmiamithem' target='_new'> Tacitus, Roman senator and historian (A.D. c.56- c.115)

[Anonymous]

Parents say school saved their children
By Ellen G. Lahr
Berkshire Eagle Staff


STOCKBRIDGE -- DeSisto School students and their parents are angered and disillusioned that the program they say has saved hundreds of troubled lives has no option but to shut down its local campus.

For many students, the school on Route 183 was the last stop in a line of programs that could not help them resolve severe drug and alcohol abuse, eating disorders, self-mutilation, depression and other severe problems.

According to parents and school officials, the parents of nearly all the 37 students showed up at a mandatory meeting at the school on Saturday. They learned that the state's admissions freeze, related to student safety issues, was crippling the school's finances.

Drop in enrollment

Enrollment had dropped since February from 54 to 37 after the state raised complaints about the school's management of self-injuring students.

Parents were told they could either remove their children or allow them to finish out the school year at the DeSisto campus in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where groups of students have gone for years to study Spanish.

A small group of older students will remain on campus until May, when they will graduate.

Despite a long history of controversial ap-proaches to treating troubled teens -- isolating students for days at a time, for instance -- and documented histories of medication errors, improper use of restraints and a stream of lawsuits from angry families, parents and students who spoke to The Eagle this week were upset about the pending closure.

'She'd be dead'

"You can't believe the damage done to these families on Saturday," said Stephen Gertler of New Jersey, whose daughter Devin, 21, will graduate in May. "If it weren't for that school, she'd be dead. It's a flat-out tremendous program."

Gertler said it's been evident for months that the state Office for Child Care Services "has a stranglehold and won't let go."

Many parents outraged

Alan Schwartz of Randolph, N.J., the parent of an 18-year-old student who will go on to Mexico, said the reaction at Saturday's meeting was mixed.

"I think some people kind of expected it, some people were scared, but the consistent reaction was one of outrage at what OCCS had done. They wish things had been handled differently," he said. "In my opinion, OCCS has had a pattern of harassment since the school was licensed."

Gertler has paid $78,000 per year for his daughter to attend DeSisto School, after spending thousands more on programs that failed to help his daughter, he said.

He said "It's the "best thing that's ever happened to me and my wife. We saved our daughter."

Devin Gertler said she was injecting heroin and cocaine into her veins by age 14, and concealed her behavior from her parents for two years. When she turned 18, the DeSisto School was the only place that would take her.

"I think if I didn't come here I would be dead," she said, attributing her recovery to consistent, dedicated staff and the fear, once she was sober, of destroying her own life and her family's as well. She eventually took charge of her life, she said, and knows how to care for herself and reach out for help.

Ally Schwartz, 18, was addicted to heroin when she came to the school last year. She's not ready to leave the program, which helped her older sister, Diane.

Diane Schwartz spent four years at DeSisto while overcoming a severe eating disorder. She graduated in 2001, with a scholarship to New York University, and is now transferring to Concordia College in Montreal to obtaining training as an art therapist, she said.

She remembers when OCCS began making visits to the school, she said.

She said inspectors took a direct path to the newest students, the ones most angry, resistant and spiteful about the residential school for troubled teens and its unorthodox ways.

She and other students, the ones who had made such dramatic progress, were not heard by the state investigators, she said.

"We would cut school just so they could interview us, but instead they interviewed the kids who didn't want to be there," she said. "OCCS did talk to us, but we never hear anything about it. They only looked at the defects when they went there."

Pamela Friedman's daughter, Hilary, 18, will go to Mexico. She had a severe eating disorder and was kicked out of four programs before finding DeSisto School, which her mother said "was the last shot for us."

"DeSisto is the only place that stuck with her through all of her issues, they never asked her to leave," said Friedman. "The staff is conscientious and loyal. She was frequently in and out of the hospital and they always sent staff to be with her. They helped us deal with our issues as parents so we could deal with hers."

Faced her demons

She credited her daughter with the hardest job of facing her demons.

"She's so amazing now, really together, smart, pretty healthy kid," her mother said. "She's really turned a corner."

[Anonymous]

Same song and dance heard by other brainwashed and manipulated parents and students - "chiild would be dead" - all those who complain have an axe to grind or the kids who complain are manipulative etc etc, yada yada yada.....

[Rainman]

It amazes me how the experiences of former students varies so much.  There are students who believe that DeSisto School saved their lives.  While other believes that their lives were ruined because of their time spent at DeSisto.  Why is it that most of the students who are now having some degree of success in life believe that their time at DeSisto were well spent.  While almost all the students who hated their time at DeSisto, are still struggling with life issues that are seriously hindering their progress in life.

[Anonymous]

On 2004-05-12 07:07:00, Rainman wrote:

"It amazes me how the experiences of former students varies so much.  There are students who believe that DeSisto School saved their lives.  While other believes that their lives were ruined because of their time spent at DeSisto.  Why is it that most of the students who are now having some degree of success in life believe that their time at DeSisto were well spent.  While almost all the students who hated their time at DeSisto, are still struggling with life issues that are seriously hindering their progress in life.   "

False dichotomy.

And confusion of cause and effect.

If you had a surgery for paraplegics that would let 50% of them walk and make 50% quadriplegics, it would be *legitimate* for 50% to say the surgery ruined their lives *and* be struggling and for 50% to say it "saved" them *and* be okay.  It would also be *stupid* to assume the quadriplegics were quadriplegics just because they were bitching about the surgery.

The false dichotomy part is assuming that people either have fabulous lives or terrible ones.  You're argument also presumes that all the inmates had identical problems and that the program was identically, universally effective for all problems---a sort of "Lydia Pinkham's" for the psyche.

And your argument presumes that all people report *either* a universally good or universally bad program experience, and that you have a tally of *all* of their program experiences and current life state, and that their self-assessment of their current life state is as you say it is and is accurate.

You're extrapolating a huge global conclusion from a paucity of evidence--and shaky evidence, at that.

In other words, you're talking out of your ass.

[Timoclea]

That was me.

It has ever been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues

--Abraham Lincoln

[Anonymous]

In my unscientific observation the people who now think TDS was such a positive development in their lives, were either willfull collaborators or have very defective memories of the atrocities that took place there.

[Anonymous]

On 2004-05-16 10:48:00, Anonymous wrote:

"In my unscientific observation the people who now think TDS was such a positive development in their lives, were either willfull collaborators or have very defective memories of the atrocities that took place there. "

You make the place sound like a Nazi concentration
camp. I don't know what happened at Desisto School. I graduated from the Lake Grove School when Desisto was the principal. There was nothing like the farm or having to stand without talking or eating for days. The worst that every happened was being in a long dorm meeting be cause someone stole something or someone ran away. If someone ran away and came back, they needed the dorm's permission to be let back in school. I was there for my junior and senior year of High School. What people have described was not my experience. The idea then was that we were a community. It was very regimented . You knew where you were supposed to be every minute of the day. It was not a year round program though there was the option of a trip with the school in the summer. Last half of senior year, we did volunteer work in the community. We set these up on our own( I worked at a newspaper) and we worked away from the school unsupervised from noon to 6pm. It was a nice transition for life away from school. I did not have much personal contact with Mike but I certainly was aware that the school was his vision and I was grateful to be there because it allowed me to get through high school and into college which I was unable to do in public school. While I liked the school I was certainly ready and happy to graduate .

Mike was certainly a strange and sometimes difficult person . he could turn on a dime. However I will always think warmly of my time at Lake Grove and the environment that he created.

I did visit Desisto School once in 1988. I talked to Mike briefly and got a tour of the mansion
by one of the students. It wasn't a friendly experience and that was a disappointment.

[Anonymous]

DeSisto is his dead. His school bankrupt. His methods throughly discredited. I'm sick of hearing about the day over 20 years ago when things were cooler. TDS became a torture chamber/hellhole with no dedeeming merits whatsoever--- except the people-- that's always the last one--- all the beautiful people we met--sometimes it makes me want to puke :cry2:

[Anonymous]

Is anyone familiar with the case of Heather Burdick about twenty years ago?  She was in Desisto, ran away and tried to have herself made a ward of the state when her parents wouldn't take her back.  The judge sent her back to Desisto and her friends and neighbors were going to bring legal action.  I saw that much in the newspapers but never found out how it all ended.  Anyone know?

[Anonymous]

I read something about it in the paper.  Her neighbors rallied to get Heather out - I don't know how it ended but I heard that Heather's parents ended up suing the neighbors.

[Anonymous]

I believe one of her parents wanted her there and one didn't. I do remember the news stories with yellow ribbons on trees in her hometown.