When students are out of the building, a staff member always escorts them, Phillips emphasizes. In Phase 4, students have nearly the same privileges as students in a regular school. For example, they are allowed to go out alone for lunch two days a week. Midway through the fall semester, Phillips says all of her Phase 4 students have returned on time from their outside lunches. Students who land at Crawford because of repeated Discipline Code violations rather than because of expulsion must reach Phase 4 before the staff will recommend they return to their home schools.
Expelled students attend for a set period of time.
Fowler, the English teacher, taught two years in a parochial school in Ohio and three in a school in suburban Cleveland, which had a similar student body. Initially, she dreaded teaching Emerson and Thoreau. I thought it would be way over their heads. The students were able to draw parallels between the themes of the writings, which dealt with conformity and non-conformity, and their own lives. They were so open.