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Idaho Youth Ranch new Caldwell campus features a school accommodating, teaching kids dealing with trauma

The Promise Academy school will serve students at the Idaho Youth Ranch's new Residential Center for Healing and Resilience.

CALDWELL, Idaho — A new charter school aims to make sure local students who have suffered severe trauma can still thrive in the classroom. 

Promise Academy is under construction on the new, nearly finished Idaho Youth Ranch campus in Caldwell.

The Idaho Youth Ranch is a nonprofit that serves kids across the state who need mental and behavioral health services. They accomplish that through outpatient therapy and equine therapy. 

Soon, they'll be able to serve kids at a long-term Residential Center for Healing & Resilience in Caldwell.

"For these kids, they need an opportunity to kind of reset," Jeff Myers, VP of marking and communications for the Idaho Youth Ranch said. "So, the Residential Center is really designed to be what will be the leading facility in the country to serve Idaho kids that need longer residential care to get them on track."

The Idaho Youth Ranch's Residential Center for Healing & Resilience is designed to serve kids ages 11 to 17 who have experienced forms of trauma in their past.

"They come from significant trauma, dealing with mental health issues, sometimes very little access to resources - and that results in them being disengaged from school," Rick Hale, school leader of Promise Academy said. "A big part of what we do here is to get them reengaged with school, reconnect them."

Reengage and reconnect at Promise Academy - a charter school sponsored by the Middleton School District that's designed to serve kids during their three-to-nine month stay at the Youth Ranch's Residential Center.

Hale says the program is needed in Idaho, where 100-150 students are sent outside the state every year for residential care and therapy.

"Those are students that can now be here, be closer their families. The families can participate in their therapy, and we can get them a quality, highly engaging public-school education," Hale said. "Those things have all been missing for the students that are sent sometimes very far away."

Promise Academy will offer the same core classes and electives you see at other schools, but the classroom experience will be different to help accommodate students. The school will have smaller classes, direct care staff, different furnishings, and an emphasis on hands-on assignments.

"We can get the kids outside, they can experience things in the real world rather than just fill out a worksheet or read a chapter in a book," Hale said. "The typical type of educational experience hasn't always worked really well for our population of students. So, we are really coming down on a more experiential or more project-based type of learning for them."

The school will be able to serve up to 64 students in its 6 classrooms. Promise Academy will work up to that number as the Youth Ranch starts welcoming students to the Residential Center later this year.

"This is such an important mission that the Youth Ranch has," Hale said. "These kids just sometimes fall between the cracks. Teachers and schools work really hard, and we do the best we can. But this is a tough population of students. And it's a population that hasn't always had the resources that they need. But now, here we are."

Promise Academy will open alongside the Idaho Youth Ranch's Residential Center for Healing & Resilience in August. 

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