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Mother Seeks Reimbursement of $36,000 From Son’s Special School

A Birmingham, Alabama woman who paid $36,000 to a special school in Wyoming for their courses, is requesting a refund. She paid this money to the Mount Carmel Youth Ranch in Clark County, Wyoming, a school for troubled boys, with the expectation of preparing him for the Marine Corp, which he desired. Now, she says the Marine recruiter explains that the school does not meet the required accreditation.

Dawn Cooper says she cashed out an annuity she was holding for retirement, and also borrowed funds to send her son, Mason Holt, to the ranch so he could get a high school diploma and qualify for enlistment into the Marines. This after they had visited the ranch and discussed their plans with the school director and other staff members.

In an article of the RUFFIN PREVOST Gazette Wyoming Bureau, the Youth Ranch Manager, Matt Schneider made the following remarks:

Schneider said parents are fully briefed on the two academic programs offered, Our Lady of the Rosary and Seton, a separate, nationally accredited Catholic home school program.

“We tell the parents the difference between both schools, and the parents choose which school,” Schneider said.

“She didn’t talk to me about it. She could have been talking to the school director we had at that time,” he said.

There are two facilities located at the ranch, the Mount Carmel Youth Ranch and their adult program, the Bear Tooth MT Ascent, both on the 40,000 acre cattle ranch. Holt was enrolled in their youth program and when it was completed, his mother was greatly encouraged at the progress he had made, as he also felt much more adapted.

She then enrolled him in the adult program and when he completed that, she was thoroughly dismayed:

“He was worse off when he came back the second time than when he went in the first time. I got so upset, I was just infuriated,” she said. (Billings Gazette March 14, 2010)

Holt said he basically spent the last program, working on the cattle ranch and only minimal time in classroom studies. After the recruiter informed him that the school he attended did not meet the standards of accreditation, he added that he felt he had wasted a year of his life.

According to a brief article in the AL Press-Register, Marine Recruiter Sgt. Thomas Rinehart says students must have a high school diploma from an accredited, traditional high school. However, the Marine Corp website states:

Men and women between the ages of 17 and 29 who are working toward, or have earned, a high school diploma may qualify to enlist.(Emphasis mine-JH)

In another article, Sgt. Rinehart is also quoted as saying that one may be accepted without a diploma if he has exceptionally high scores on his aptitude tests.

School director Schneider says he knows of no previous problems with their students being rejected for military service based on their diplomas.

The purpose of this ranch is actually for ‘troubled’ or 'at risk' boys and it is to be expected in such a setting there will be undesirable incidents. There is admittedly a large turnover in staff because the jobs are very demanding. A search of the archives of the Billings Gazette reveals a number of incidents over the years, yet considering the circumstances, they reflect a strong effort on the part of management to run a productive and disciplined school and training program.

For more reading concerning the ranch, check out these links:

http://www.mtcarmelyouthranch.com/

http://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/wyoming/article_49b5af07-2f7f-58c3-b92d-002572b3d0a0.html

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