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CEDU School Bankruptcy
and Closing
March 28, 2005
To the Editor:
As I write this, I reflect on the labors of a multitude of
incredibly intelligent, sensitive and insightful people, whose
help in the education and socialization of my son have led
to me being on the northern Idaho panhandle, at a family ranch,
at 3:00 AM, scribing a letter-to-the-editor.
CEDU, the vaunted, specialized educator of 'troubled teens'
has abruptly closed its campuses nationwide. Citing the inability
of the collective schools to maintain commercial viability,
the board, whose fiduciary responsibility lies with stockholders,
not students, chose closure as the solution to the ineptitude
of their financial oversight.
I write now, with sorrow, anger, pity and disdain as my driving
force, rather than the joy, hope, admiration and gratitude
that was my expectation.
The folly of small-minded, greedy people to treat fine-tuned,
specialized education as a simple cash-flow resource is in
actuality the trigger for the atrocity perpetrated on the
lives of the hundreds of staff, students and parents whose
plans and goals were to turn the pained and misdirected acts
of these 'troubled teens' into meaningful achievement.
CEDU was a stockholder-owned organization. As I write my
letter, there is no doubt in my mind that lack of understanding
of teaching, learning and learning systems, by those who analyzed
the nature and quality of this investment led to decisions
that created unreasonable cash-flow demands and subsequently
resulted in this travesty. The true cause of this business
failure is failure to know this business.
In support of my observation that especially in the Idaho
panhandle the CEDU schools were vibrant and viable, I offer
the current condition of the marketplace of student education,
supplemental educational resources and the growing number
of private study and learning enrichment and remediation centers
nationally.
The current demand for individual and small-group tutoring,
selected subject, and course review, and carefully focused
teaching methodology among students in all grades (regardless
of whether 'troubled' or not) has led to the proliferation
of these financially successful education outlets. In one
region of the country, a teacher-owned education-enrichment
group will soon be expanded into all locations of a well-known
supermarket chain. This 'cross marketing' is, of course, not
like a CEDU school, but rather, shows the strength of the
concept of specialized learning, beyond the model used by
the famous SAT test preparation groups. Right now, there are
a lot of people paying out a lot of money for specialized
education.
In the case of the unexpected closing by CEDU of the campuses
at Boulder Creek Academy and its neighbor Northwest Academy,
both in Bonners Ferry, Idaho, the ownership displayed heartless,
self-serving, selfish and callous behavior when it phoned
notification of the 'right-now' status of the closure to executive
staff members who were conducting a specialized workshop series
designed to promote better parenting and more dedicated-to-achievement
students just prior to their scheduled student visits. The
ax fell as staffers struggled to sob out the words of the
story while several hundred parents and students neared the
final moments of an already emotionally charged week of training.
The ensuing anguish, hysteria and panic among parents too-stunned-to-believe
that the wrenching decision to place a child into an emotional
growth school a thousand miles from home had been suddenly
rescinded and similarly among young men and women only recently
coming to accept personal responsibility for scholarship and
citizenship is unforgivable.
The CEDU corporate concept of continuity and caring most
closely resembles a military hostility against an unarmed
civilian population, and embodied all the compassion of an
assault with fragmentation bombs. The carnage was horrifying.
I was there, I saw it.
So as I write, I reflect on the decades of compassion administered
by the generously nurturing staff members at the schools that
have helped return hundreds upon hundreds of very loved children
to the mainstream after the misfires of well intended parenting
and the impacts of unthinking peer pressure conspired against
still-developing personalities to misdirect the energies of
youth.
And I compare the inestimable value of compassion against
the incalculable destruction done when absentee ownership
spreads the pollution generated by uncontrolled money-lust
into the frail ecosystem of childrearing and education.
However harsh a punishment it may seem, to say that the names
of those responsible for shutting the schools in the manner
they did should be remembered forever as having undone four
generations of progress in emotional growth education is to
let a gutless evil slink away enjoying undeserved mercy and
forgiveness with the Bankruptcy Acts as its protector.
And my reflection now includes my growing concern… my trepidation,
facing a future of possibilities and uncertainties I thought
were settled when I opened a pathway that included Boulder
Creek…Yet, as I sit here in a snug cabin in a mountain forest,
amidst the cold rain of early spring, in a darkness not quite
broken by the pale suggestion of the light of dawn, I think,
"Do as they would have done. Remember the lessons and
use the tools… honor their love and dedication…" And
I am filled with gratitude for those men and women who poured
their lives into these schools so that children such as mine
could blossom and grow and fulfill the 'great perhaps' of
youth.
George F. Gowen III
13 Chip Lou Lane Scotch
Plains, New Jersey 07076
(Former) CEDU Parent
908 668 6831
george@gowen.com
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