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New Perspectives -
Feb, 2000 Issue #66
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Mace-Kingsley Ranch School
Sherry Faust, Ranch Director
888-284-5963
lanced2@juno.com
The Mace-Kingsley Ranch School strives to provide a “safe environment, away
from the influences that led the teens astray in the first place.” This privately funded co-ed boarding school, designed for adolescents
12 years and older, is located on 18,000 acres in the Gila Wilderness of southwestern New Mexico. They accept most adolescents, including
those on parole, unless they demonstrate mental instability to the point of requiring institutionalization. After admission each student
is observed to determine suitability for the program. Their primary goal “is to apply our successful program based on the workable
technologies of Dianetics and Scientology” so that the student “learns who they really are and can survive in an ethical manner.”
This school, recognized by the New Mexico State Board of Education, is “highly
recommended” by The State of New Mexico’s Juvenile Justice Division for their success in creating changes in adolescent behavior,
and their “very professional and clinically adept” staff. The Sheriff’s department from nearby Reserve, New Mexico (population 400)
wrote: “their students are well supervised and well behaved when they visit town and we never get called out to the school for any
kind of mistreatment…the program teaches these kids consequences and how to work.”
Their high school credit system is based on six hours of individualized instruction
per day, five days a week, ten weeks per quarter. In addition, three to five hours per day the students are instructed in life-skills,
vocational interests and elective subjects. Students are able make up credits from failed classes or to accelerate progress toward
an early high school graduation.
Generally they have between 20 to 40 students whose length of stay depends
on the “condition of the child when he or she arrives…if openly manifesting destructive intentions, running away, being cruel to other
children, adults or animals, being picked up by authorities, or into promiscuous sex or drugs, then that child will likely be here
for at least a year. The child manifesting less serious symptoms should have a shorter program, with average program time being 10
months.”
The parents are actively involved in the program, via phone contact and reading
assignments. Program staff attempts to surface and resolve all relevant family issues with the student before graduation. They also
help the parents recognize the ways in which their child has changed since first admitted to the program. According to their annual
survey of parents, 89% of the graduates are doing well, since graduation.
The ranch is located in a remote part of southwest New Mexico with the nearest
village of 400 people located 12 miles away. At the ranch school, students ride and care for the horses and the 400 head of cattle,
pigs, chickens and a goat.
Copyright © 2000, Woodbury Reports, Inc. (This article may be reproduced without
prior approval if the copyright notice and proper publication and author attribution accompanies the copy.)
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