The DeSisto School is a pair of therapeutic boarding schools founded by Michael DeSisto, DeSisto at Stockbridge School in Massachusetts (operated from 1978 to 2004) and DeSisto at Howey School in Florida (operated from 1980 to 1988).
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The DeSisto at Stockbridge School is a private therapeutic boarding school for high school students in Stockbridge, Mass. Founded on August 18, 1978 by Michael DeSisto, closed in 2004, amid allegations by state authorities that schools jeopardize the health and safety of his students.
Michael DeSisto, after being discharged as director of Lake Grove School in Long Island, NY, collected $ 180,000 in tuition fees and donations from parents who supported his vision, and encouraged him to open a new school "where he could put his philosophy into practice". In 1978, Mike DeSisto was able to get about a third of all the student body of Lake Grove, and the faculty to go with him after he was fired by Lake Grove management. These original staff and students serve as the core of the new DeSisto st Stockbridge School. The school was later founded on a 300-acre (former 1.2 km 2 ) former Stockbridge School dead long school (aka The Hanna Estate and Bonnie Brier Farm), in the Berkshires area of ​​Massachusetts, near Tanglewood Music Center, and Stockbridge Bowl. The DeSisto school program places a heavy emphasis on discipline, structure, and psychological therapy.
On April 14, 1980, DeSisto opened a second campus in Howey-in-the-Hills Florida named DeSisto at Howey School . Once again DeSisto, as in Lake Grove experienced several years earlier, moved about a third of the student body and staff into Howey. This will have important consequences on the road. The DeSisto School lost its most experienced staff member, and the few remaining were split between Howey and Stockbridge. New faculty employees must sign a two-year contract. In practice, many live much less than that. Many "Grovers" have five years or more experience. They love the DeSisto School, and have a deep understanding of how the school's intricate system works. This is very different from the new employees who know about the work of The New York Times classifieds. DeSisto initially envisioned a series of national and international schools based on the principles of Gestalt Psychology, and his own therapeutic model. DeSisto states that the Stockbridge campus will be "its flagship". DeSisto once negotiated with the New York City school system to open a school in the Bronx. The DeSisto school will develop a reputation as a celebrity, wealthy, and political elite able to send their children who have trouble staying at home, and functioning in a conventional high school environment. However, about 20% of students are not from wealthy families, and receive funding from their local school district as special needs students, or their parents/guardians are having financial difficulties sending their children to school.
In the late 1970s, and early 1980s, DeSisto and DeSisto School were featured in articles in Life, Time, and People magazines. DeSisto made a number of appearances on national television with his students, including The Today Show . The DeSisto school is often mentioned on Joey Reynolds radio show. Michael DeSisto is a regular guest. Mr. Reynolds is also a fundraiser for the school, and has one of his children enrolled there.
In 1987 DeSisto opened a college on Howey's campus, named DeSisto College. The experiment was short-lived though when the local authorities objected. The DeSisto School, and some of its students, sued and appealed in federal courts unsuccessfully for college to continue its operations.
Although previously never included as a school campus, DeSisto runs a significant school program from his personal property in Italy, and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.
The annual school fees for The DeSisto School in 1978 were $ 10,000 for room and meals excluding therapeutic costs and miscellaneous fees, and fees. The DeSisto school is a 365 day program. Some students are offered travel during the summer both domestically and to Europe, as well as academic summer schools, performing arts programs, or manual work programs on campus. At its peak in the late 80s, DeSisto School had a combined enrollment of about 300 students on the Stockbridge and Howey campuses. In 2004 the tuition had ballooned to $ 71,000, and registration had dropped to below 30 students before school closure.
Controversy
Quite early, the school had a problem with the Commonwealth Department of Education that drew its accreditation after questions about the school's treatment of "special needs" students. School was sued in 1983, and won back his accreditation.
In 1986, DeSisto School received national media attention with the case of Heather Burdick, from Old Bridge, New Jersey, Burdick sent to Stockbridge campus, and escaped from school after just a few weeks. He tells people from his hometown mixed stories about his experiences at school; some are true, and others are not true. A group of parents from Burdick's hometown tie yellow ribbon around a tree, and start the "Free Heather" movement. They tried to sue DeSisto School for holding Heather illegally, but the action failed. Parents Heather Burdick then sued their neighbors for a privacy violation, slander, and slander. The DeSisto school was then successfully opposed, and after recovering $ 550,000 in legal fees was awarded $ 41,000 for damages. The parent group then tried to sue Heather for misinterpreting her situation. In 1990, Burdick's parents received $ 259,000 in damages due to emotional distress and privacy violations.
On November 15, 1988, The Boston Globe reported that Michael DeSisto, and The DeSisto School had been charged 23 times for breach of contract and fraud. The same Globe article also reported that Michael DeSisto denied falsifying notes on howey campus graduation rates.
In 1988 The Orlando Sentinel reported that the DeSisto School Accreditation claim by the National Association of Independent Schools was wrong. Michael DeSisto replied that, "Low-level staff members are responsible". Mike DeSisto rà © Ã… © sumÃÆ' © also claimed he was a lecturer at Elmira College, in Elmira, N.Y., and at Adelphi University, in Garden City, N.Y., when he was never a faculty member at one of the institutions. DeSisto also claims he has worked as a consultant for New York Free University at Stony Brook. According to Jeremy Weis, an official of the Academic Information Bureau and the New York Report, the state institution where all universities must register, "I have never heard of this university". Elmira Supervisor Supervisor Mary Fetyko said, "DeSisto never worked there." At Adelphi, Margaret administrator Elaine Wittman said, "there is no record of DeSisto being a faculty member, that man is completely unfamiliar to us, the fact that he will say this to his vita is amazing."
On November 15, 1988, Orlando Sentinel posted an article, titled Reports on Drug Policy About Desisto (sic) . The article alleges that, "critics say drugs have been distributed in an almost volatile manner". The school replied that, "that all drugs used are prescribed and carefully monitored and no problems arise". However, as early as, March 1981 the Massachusetts Office for Children quoted a school staff member at Stockbridge to allow untrained dorm parents to distribute prescription drugs.
In November 1988, The Orlando Sentinel held a three-part exhibition on the DeSisto School and Michael DeSisto, entitled Desisto (sic), The Far Above Counterfeit Credentials : "Who's Michael DeSisto? For years, The most controversial Howey has claimed many impressive academic and professional credentials, many of which are wrong. The real story is one of dismissal from the teaching post and the representational representation of his professional reputation. But the credential is a significant aspect of the almost positive publicity he receives - on Today's show, Life magazine, Time and People, and in newspaper articles - and the subsequent financial success she has accomplished with her personal prep school. "Responding to a complaint made by Michael DeSisto that the articles" which is not fair about him and his schools ". On October 7, 1990, Orlando Sentinel published an advanced article entitled New School Information In Desisto (sic) . It is Sentinel's policy to review all such complaints "in the spirit of justice". Sentinel found that, "the presentation of a single story in a three-day series may have led to an unintentional conclusion misleading that all his entire career was built on fake credentials." It is interesting to note, that about a year after the publication of this article with DeSisto's denial of his belief, it was discovered that Michael DeSisto did not have a Master degree as he had long claimed.
The DeSisto at Howey School is also not without problems. A group of students under the auspices of the DeSisto School sued Howey-in-the-Hills over a zoning issue associated with the newly established DeSisto College. The town of Howey-in-the-Hills was awarded $ 203,279.27 in attorney's fees and $ 17,194.12 in fees. DeSisto College, Inc. Case v. Howey-in-the-Hills Town, 718 F.Supp. 906 (MDFla 1989), and his appeal, is often cited and used as a precedent in which the plaintiff's claim is frivolous because it has no legal basis, the plaintiff rejects any reasonable offer to settle, the court rejects the case without trial. , and the plaintiff does not offer a new legal theory. In 1993, after years of chasing DeSisto who died at Howey School, the Howey-in-the-Hills city council agreed to accept cash and property payments worth about $ 80,000, far less than the total valuation of about $ 250,000.
In 1989, the US Department of Labor filed a $ 1 Million lawsuit against the school on behalf of former staff members demanding wage and damages repatriation.
One of the more controversial practices that Mr. DeSisto and schools are the use of regional "parent councils" that parents must follow. Missing one of these meetings resulted in certain parents being banned from visiting their child for a certain period of time. Other controversial rules prohibit parents from contacting their child, or allowing the child to return to their parents' home if the child flees from school.
In 1991, DeSisto wrote the only book: Decoding Your Teenager (How to understand each other during the turbulent years) . After publication, several journalists published an article questioning whether DeSisto holds a master's degree in psychology from the University of Massachusetts, as he claimed. Even the University of Massachusetts does not even offer a master's degree in psychology, and only has a doctoral program. DeSisto later claimed not to have a Master's degree, and said the mistake was due to "low-level assistant", who had mistakenly placed it in the rÃÆ'Ã… © sumÃÆ'Â ©.
In 1993 Alfonso Saiz a DeSisto parent boarder was sentenced to four to five years in state prison for sexually harassing six DeSisto students. A 1996 DSS investigation found three cases of abuses and neglect of nine students.
On July 6, 1996 The Boston Globe published an article entitled, "EXPECTED TO REBUILD, OLD PEOPLE SAY HIM HAS TIME IN RUN", the father of a former student said his son was raped and assaulted on the road during Hurricane Andrew, after his parents adopted the policy of " street therapy "school.
On January 29, 1999, two workers at The DeSisto at Stockbridge school were indicted in Berkshire High Court with a single count each due to the abuse or neglect of a disabled person resulting in bodily injury. This allegation came after staff members allegedly did not make sure patients taking Lithium drugs remained well hydrated. This resulted in a lithium overdose and student hospitalization. Investigations resulted in charges being dropped for these two staff members, and errors attached to higher ranking staff, and licensed medical personnel.
In 1999, DeSisto produced off-off-Broadway music titled Inappropriate with Lonnie McNeil and Michael Sottile based on students' life journals and experiences. The show was also held in Los Angeles in 2000 with the aim of turning it into a movie. This, however, did not go well. On December 6, 2004 an Inappropriate Composer Michael Sottile filed a lawsuit in the Berkshire High Court against DeSisto School requesting a recovery of nearly $ 350,000 in damages. Six months earlier an arbiter, in the default judgment, was found in favor of Sottile plaintiffs; that he has not been paid for his services.
The Culture Awareness Network places the DeSisto School on its cult list.
Author Roger Kahn reports in his memoirs Into My Own (2006) (p.226) that a harsh school love policy "causes at least one death, when a child postpones college in the middle of winter, dies in the cold The cold Berkshire Hill ". Her son Kahn committed suicide in 1987 shortly after leaving school without graduation.
Pinal County, Arizona Sheriff and Republican congressional candidate 2012 Paul Babeu was involved in the controversy over events that occurred at DeSisto School when he became executive director and principal of 1999-'01.
Demise
After a lengthy legal struggle with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts over licenses, allegations of child abuse, freeze registration enforced by the Commonwealth, and allegations of failing to create a safe environment for its students, DeSisto at Stockbridge School opted to close voluntarily in June 2004.
A month earlier, officials from the State Office of Child Care Services ordered DeSisto administrators to suspend their admissions process. In a letter, Commonwealth officials accused the school of having "an environment that jeopardizes the lives, health and safety of registered children."
Frank McNear, executive director of DeSisto, told the Boston Globe at the time, that the school could not go well without the process of adat acceptance. "They got us financially damaged when they closed our receipts," McNear said. "We can not fight this anymore, they have said they want to shut us down, and they succeed."
The DeSisto at Stockbridge School was renamed The Cold Spring Academy, and opened a campus in Sarasota, Florida. The Cold Spring Academy closed permanently in 2005.
Maps DeSisto School
See also
- Therapeutic boarding school
- Crazy Therapy
- Attack therapy
- Awareness Group Training
- Gestalt therapy
- The Human Potential Movement
- Psychobabble
- Group psychological harassment
- Family therapy
- Fritz Perls
- Groupthink
- Destructive cult
- Housekeeping center
- Bed Therapy
References
Further reading
- Roger Kahn (2006), Into My Own: Extraordinary People and Life-Enhancing Events . Macmillan. ISBNÃ, 0-312-37128-4, ISBNÃ, 978-0-312-37128-9
External links
- WHY GRADE 'A' EXECS GET AN 'F' AS PARENT Fortune January 1, 1990
- Desolate Metropolis DeSisto School
- MASSACHUSETTS OFFICE OF CHILD SERVICES v. DESERTO SCHOOL, INC and A. MICHAEL DESISTO
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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