It was just too much. CHS is a work in progress. We want our students to be involved in problem-solving, to discuss options even with things like discipline. The goal is building a real sense of community. We've had to figure out how to do this as we go, but the great advantage we have is that as a private school we've got much more freedom.
Students understand and seem to appreciate the difference.
Money, as one might expect, is thus far tight. Still, the situation is far better than in the school's early days, when it was still part of Oasis Center and when the only staffers were Ide and counselor Andy Finch. It would not be unusual, Ide says, to have students in various stages of detox, in no shape for rigorous academics. Ide was teaching at the Oasis Center's runaway shelter, trying to help troubled teens keep up with their schooling. An area treatment center began sending high schoolers who had just gone through treatment to Oasis for a makeshift two-week cushion before sending them back to the social and academic pressures of regular high school.