I Speak of Dreams

On THE VOICE and how it is used

It's true, my voice changes depending on location, situation, company and mood. On approach to an OSH, it deepens and increases in volume. You don't f[you know--ead] with me while I approach a casualty, unless you can prove your qualifications out-rank mine, in which case they're all yours. Until then, it's loud, booming "back off bystanders, lemme at the leaking guy".

My 'approach' voice is remarkably similar to one of its cousins from my nannying days, it shares at least 98% of its genes with "Yes, I  can see you stealing those biscuits [American = cookie --ead]  I explicitly denied you 5 minutes ago. Go sit on the stairs."

Their similarity comes from their ability to assert myself as being absolutely the last word in the situation we're in.....until I'm happy with the end result, nothing's happening.

The mom voice, the female command voice, call it what you will, it does work.  But you have to believe in it. (from Doc Shazam's blogroll, I think)

List of Sites Opposing "Specialty Schools" "Therapeutic Boarding Schools" Bootcamps and the Like

It's only a partial list.  It might grow.

Therapeutic Wilderness Program, Bootcamp: What's the Difference?

This story focusing on one family's experience with one program has some good insights into the difference between a therapeutic wilderness program (think natural consequences) and "bootcamps" (think destroying the will).

If you got here looking for CEDU information, here's a list of posts from this site:

Brown Schools operate 11 boarding schools and educational facilities in Idaho, Texas, Vermont, Florida and California, according to its Web site. Facilities in Austin and San Marcos were sold to Psychiatric Solutions Inc. in 2003.

• RMA closing;
• CEDU shut down #1
• CEDU management notes
• A partial list of sites critical of "troubled teens" facilities
     
• Brown Schools, Parent of CEDU, Declares Bankruptcy;
• More on CEDU closing immediately
   
• A Parent's Plea: Don't Close CEDU
   
• An Alumni Pleads: Don't Close CEDU
   
• Bankruptcy Trustee Finds $1.5 Million Too Late to  Keep Schools Open
   
• CEDU Closing: Parents Out Prepaid Tuition, Employees Lose Retirement. McCown Deleeuw Still Solvent
• King George's Head Thinks on Feet, Keeps School Open
• CEDU Closing Stuns Struggling Teen's Len Woodbury

Margurite Sallee, The Brown Schools, and McCown, DeLeeuw

Oh, just some background.  It is tangled.  To the naive viewer, CEDU seems stand-alone.  It hasn't been for a while.  Marguerite Sallee was CEO of the Brown Schools from September 2001 to Spring 2003.

CEDU Is Closing Effective Immediately

"It's an outrageous thing to happen without any planning," one parent said.  "The way they did it showed very little concern for the students and their parents,"  Harvey  Baumol said.

It looks like what happened is that  McCown De Leeuw,  the big investor in Brown Schools, which owns CEDU schools,  got tired of the CEDU schools losing money.  They must have been a cash cow at some point for MDC to have invested....

On March 21, 2005,  Fenton "Pete" Talbott was named CEO of the Brown Schools .   Talbott's a finance guy, and came over from McCown De Leeuw--he has zero school experience.    Talbott replaced Bob Naples (2003-2005) who replaced Marguerite Sallee, who...

CEDU was stand-alone from 1967 (when it was founded by Mel Wasserstein), until  1998, when  The Brown Schools bought a controlling interest in CEDU.   At some point prior to September 2001,  the Brown Schools sold equity to McCown De Leeuw, which became The Brown Schools' largest investor (i.e., called the shots).    In 2001, George McCown became the Chairman of Brown Schools.

The first sign of trouble was when Rocky Mountain Academy closed abruptly Feb. 10, 2005.

 

Boarding School Announces Immediate Closure --Employees of a Idaho boarding school are out of a job.

CEDU  Educational Services couldn't make its payroll last week at a Bonners Ferry school.  The company blamed a lack of financing.  [What this means is that MDC cut off funding--ead]

Spokeswoman Julia Andrick says about 301 students -- mostly from out of state -- will be sent home. And Kathryn Tacke with Idaho Commerce and Labor says about 260 higher-wage jobs will be lost.

The organization, started as a charity by a Palm Springs, Calif. businessman Mel Wasserman, runs boarding schools and wilderness programs for troubled kids.

That's the problem with for-profit schools -- they can slam shut with no recourse.  CEDU was employing 300-400 people in Bonners Ferry.   In 2004, two of the CEDU entities swapped locations.    That didn't work and Rocky Mountain Academy closed in February 2005.

"This is a relationship-based program, and they closed this like it was a factory," a counselor at one of the schools told the Spokesman-Review newspaper in Spokane, Wash.

Brown Schools operate 11 boarding schools and educational facilities in Idaho, Texas, Vermont, Florida and California, according to its Web site. Facilities in Austin and San Marcos were sold to Psychiatric Solutions Inc. in 2003.

• News Articles On Cedu Closing
  
  • (republished as new information appears) Timeline of CEDU Closing a summary, link-heavy post in chronological order of CEDU history, from founding to the present time.
  • April 14, 2005: Class Action Suit Filed Against McCown deLeeuw by Suddenly Jobless Faculty, Staff -- suit alleges violation of WARN Act.
  • April 6, 2005: McCown deLeeuw spokesman and TIAA-CREF spokesman blame each other for the schools' sudden collapse.  An outbreak of integrity does not ensue.
  • April 6, 2005 What would a person of integrity do? More on the new tradition of responsibility from McCown deLeeuw: stiff the employees out of their paychecks.
  • April 7, 2005: The CEDU closing is a catastrophe for employees and for the local economy.
  • April 4, 2005 CEDU closing is also a California economic disaster -- CEDU owes local small businesses thousands.
  • Interview with Paul Johnson, CEDU : Why did The Brown Schools board, and their masters, MDC, treat us this way?  (MDC had not made 401K contributions, part of the staff compensation package, for 3 months.)
  • April 3, 2005 King George's Head doesn't close school, has parents who are helping.
  • April 3, 2005 Employees out Paychecks, Parents Out Tuition,  but McCown deLeeuw Still Solvent. I can't decide which is more outrageous, the parents who were billed for tuition, who won't be reimbursed, or the employees, who were robbed of three weeks' pay.
  • April 3, 2005 TIAA comes through with funding -- too late.  The primary creditor supplies a bridge loan, but it's too late: most of the kids have left, are finding other programs.
  • March 29, 2005 More on CEDU closing text of articles from the Bonners Ferry local papers, outlining the hardship on students' families and on faculty, staff, and the ecoonomies arouond the schools.
  • March 27, 2005:CEDU Is Closing --my first article on CEDU closing.
    
  • March 27, 2005 Austin Statesman article on Brown Schools bankruptcy filing.  Link to actual filing, which has details.
  • February 12, 2005: Rocky Mountain Academy Folds
• Commentary
  
  • April 6,
  • April 5, 2005 Save CEDU! an alumnus declares it should be saved.
  • April 4, 2005 A Parent Contrasts the Caring of CEDU and the Heartlessness of its owners,  MDC
  • April 12, 2005 A Faculty Member Reflects on her experience at CEDU and the meaning of the closing.
  • CEDU Closing Shocks One Industry Expert (I've also heard from others who are equally shocked and outraged by MDC's decision and lack of care for the clients and families.)
• Other Articles on Therapeutic Boarding Schools and Treatment Programs
  
  • The Lure of Treating Kids Roughly to "Improve" Their Behavior (April 15, 2005)
  • Why Parents Seek Therapeutic Boarding Schools Newspaper Article: Therapeutic education industry booms as parents seek help for kids.  (Published in the Chicago Tribune 1/20/2004-- by Bonnie Miller Rubin) Background and History
  • CEDU: Who are the principals -- the decision-makers in the wreck of an educational institution.
  • 1990 Fortune Article mentioning McCown deLeeuw, mentioning that the firm believes in the "new paradigm" of bottom-up organization:

target well-positioned but underperforming businesses and restructure them to stress empowerment of employees, creativity, and openness.

• March 31, 2005: The Wall Street Journal surveys the "struggling teen" Industry -- a rather hurried job.  One of the glossed-over questions is why are these facilities for-profit at all?
• March 27, 2005:Preliminary Notes on CEDU management -- I got confused about who was managing CEDU when, so this was a first go-round.

 

Skippy Skip Skip

I went to FeetFirst cause I hadn't visited for a while, and she pointed out that vomiting has hit the comics -- which  pointed me to The Comics Curmudgeon.

I've been touched by April's coming to realize that Shannon -- yes, Shannon Lake--- is a better person than Becky.  The foob.

And, OMG, April Patterson has a blog!

One out of 11 Residents of Greece an Illegal

California has a huge burden imposed upon it by federal policies: illegal immigration.  That's right.  The state isn't responsible, it is the feds...and the Mexican government, which is passing off its problems to us.  But it is true in Europe, too, as Phylax tells us.

Illegal immigration has already grown into one of the greatest scourges of the 21st century (and was a major scourge in the late 20th as well). Greece has an enormous illegal immigration problem, so initiatives like the one under way in Spain areonly one million (!) illegals in a country of some 10.9 million... and not two or three or more millions... That we have already buckled under the burden is another story.

I Shoulda Called This Blog "Sturgeon's Law"

Sturgeon's Law of Popular Art Forms:

Theodore Sturgeon once said "Sure, 90% of science fiction is crud.  That's because 90% of everything is crud."

Different than the  Pareto Principle which is that 80% of the (cost, significance, property) is produced by 20% of the (parts, content, owners) ..

, which extends nicely to XML (or any other) standards; it says:
[ ... ]
> If 10% (or even Sturgeon's 5%) of XML-based initiatives actually
> succeeded in any significant way, then XML would be an astoundi

I Have Been Neglecting Integry

I was busy a lot with integry, until...

Integry

Thinking this morning about the concept (from feminist economics) of "integry" : the work done that functions as social glue. It is an extension of "politics." This work can be gossip, conversation, building social networks and community, mediating, hosting, providing social space as at a party or dinner, what one might think of as emotional work (or in a different context, as therapy); experiencing emotions and expressing them; stuff like that.    Even smiling might count as this work; it's placatory behavior (work that supports patriarchy), true, as I just commented in Minnie's journal with a quote from Shulamith Firestone; but it functions as work that smooths sociality as well.

GMail Doesn't Work for Me

Back in the neolithic, I started using AOL.  I haven't a clue when that was, but probably 1994 or so.... as "ponytrax at AOL".  Ponytracks being the name of our ranch.      I started dating Wombat--the Batnet of my email address--when I bought a Macintosh in 1998 or so.   It was dial up, and I kept the ponytrax part.