"oliverian school"

[Anonymous]

who knows anything about it?? hyde knockoff right? anyone been therE?

[Anonymous]

anyone

[psy]

certainly has an ironic name.

Please sir... I'd like some more...  information about this place.  where did you hear of it?

[Oscar]

They are an ISPA member (our datasheet has nothing much to tell about them)

Beside Discovery and Red Cliff Wilderness they have some of the soft programs.

When we have the time we will investigate the programs further. Here is a link to their present membership list.

They dont call themselves therapeutic. You can look at their student handbook here

They go home during holidays. The family can visit after 4 weeks. Not a lot of red lights. I could properly find a boarding school or a continuation school here in Denmark almost as strict, if I looked around.

They are low priority for us to investigate them. If they were not a member at ISPA, we wouldn't have found them. Maybe they are meant to be a stop between program and the home. Teens who have been broken down in one of the other programs being member at ISPA could be warehoused here in a not to strict structure until they are adults for a lesser fee than a full scale program.

[Ursus]

Well...it is not a Hyde knockoff, though some of the terms are similar. (Hyde has tremendous disdain for professional psychs, so there ya go.)

At first glance on the homepage, it seems somewhat benign... very little mention of anything other than mainstream background in most faculty/staff profiles; but.... Lon Woodbury seems to like it. And Peter Stevens, Dean of Academics, is formerly from Academy at Swift River. On a re-read, I see several more experiential and therapeutic teaching stints mentioned amongst notes on the faculty, although none are as explicitly referenced as Mr. Stevens'.

The "caring culture" seems artificially imposed and discussed a little too extensively; never a good sign. The counseling environment also appears to be a major part of student life there.

All in all, possibly not as coercive as most programs on fornits, but one that I'd definitely keep my eye on. It hasn't been around all that long. Former students haven't had enough of a chance to speak up, in case there have been incidents of abuse... And for all we know, the flowery language on the website could be more than a little misleading, when it comes down to actually experiencing the place.

[Anonymous]

Looking for information about Oliverian School

[cmack]

They've made a few changes to further separate themselves from the TBS/BM mold. Students are now allowed to have their own cellphones, although they are collected by dorm parents at 10:15 PM each night and returned to students following academic classes the next day. Students are allowed to call, text, email anyone they wish.

Here's a copy of their new Student/Parent Handbook: http://www.oliverianschool.org/document ... ndbook.pdf

According to this site: http://www.boardingschoolreview.com/sch ... ool_id/350 they have about 50 students and annual tuition is $61,950.

Here's a poorly written review by a consultant: http://wwwboardingschoolplacement.blogs ... chool.html . It says:

We found. while there are certainly no perfect students at Oliverian. Many students do come from wilderness progams before coming to Oliverian. The school is less restrictive in rules and expectations are simply to help student achieve sucess and being responsible. Barclays says: " if a student does not want to be here, they can leave". "We do not believe in making kids come to here, nor do we want them here if they don't want to be here". At Oliverian, we simply want our students to want to be here". The most interesting part of coming to Oliverian is their sucess rate. The campus is absoutely beautiful, simple natural, very much like living in a home setting, but very nuturing, to students.

A student who might be choosen to come to Oliverian might a student not as sucessful in a restricted residental treatment program. The student certainly need to be somewhat mature, but has direction in being more accoutable, and enjoys being in the outdoors.

There don't appear to be any kind of LGAT seminars and while all students meet with their adviser/counselor each week, group therapy doesn't seem to be required of all students. Groups seem to be based upon the individual needs of students such as: substance abuse, adoption issues, etc.

Here's a silly student made video of an Oliverian student and the Dean of Students dancing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RpfVexmxME

Oliverian facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/OliverianSchool ... ?sk=photos

Oliverian homepage: http://www.oliverianschool.org/

[Ursus]

Here's a poorly written review by a consultant: http://wwwboardingschoolplacement.blogs ... chool.html . It says:

We found. while there are certainly no perfect students at Oliverian. Many students do come from wilderness progams before coming to Oliverian. The school is less restrictive in rules and expectations are simply to help student achieve sucess and being responsible. Barclays says: " if a student does not want to be here, they can leave". "We do not believe in making kids come to here, nor do we want them here if they don't want to be here". At Oliverian, we simply want our students to want to be here". The most interesting part of coming to Oliverian is their sucess rate. The campus is absoutely beautiful, simple natural, very much like living in a home setting, but very nuturing, to students.

A student who might be choosen to come to Oliverian might a student not as sucessful in a restricted residental treatment program. The student certainly need to be somewhat mature, but has direction in being more accoutable, and enjoys being in the outdoors.

This "educational consultant," Kenneth Davis, has also seen fit to give laudatory reviews to Diamond Ranch Academy, Oxbow Academy and Copper Canyon Academy, all of which are pretty widely recognized as major hellholes.

Moreover, despite allegedly visiting and investigating all of these close to two dozen schools on this so-called blog, Mr. Davis is apparently hard pressed to find the correct spelling for Massachusetts, or Connecticut, let alone the city with the tongue-twisting name of Hartford, CT. There are also a surprising number of facts that he simply has flat out wrong, e.g., the capital of Utah is not "St Lake City," there is no such place as "Williamstown College" located in or near Williamstown, MA, etc. etc. So... I'd say his credibility factor is pretty close to zero.

Mr. Davis has even written a book, probably self-published (spiral bound) and using the same grammatical expertise, no doubt, given the sole (and laudatory) review by someone who is clearly in the same profession and/or a close personal friend of his. Conveniently, that book seems to be no longer available, and hopefully never was for any substantial period of time.

[cmack]

This "educational consultant" has also seen fit to give laudatory reviews to Diamond Ranch Academy and Copper Canyon. Uh... believability quotient? Zero.

He has even written a book, probably self-published and using the same grammatical expertise, no doubt, given the sole (and laudatory) review by someone who is clearly in the same profession and/or a close personal friend of his. Conveniently, that book seems to be no longer available.

I wonder if English is a second language for this guy? The syntax is terrible, and in the age of spell-checker there's just no excuse for the spelling errors. He portrays himself as a professional educational consultant, but he looses all credibility with the grammatical errors.

[Oscar]

The facility has a department hunting down negative testimonies, I will secure some here before they gets deleted.

January 02, 2021

My son attended Oliverian for 6 weeks this fall, and they provided no academic rigor and no therapeutic support. In a school full of kids with mental health and academic challenges, classes had zero assignments or academic challenge and zero homework (their new policy, they said). Half the kids didn't even show up to class, with zero consequences, and kids were totally left to their own devices (literally - they claim that they turn wifi off but all the kids know the code and can use it all night long). Their counseling program has no clinical supervision and sees itself as simply helping kids address day to day problems - but if your child doesn't proactively seek them out, they are basically ignored. Drug use and truancy was rampant. There were no personalized education or therapeutic plans, and no indication of any future attention to individual needs. Other than (usually) attending class, my son spent all day every day playing video games, and after a few weeks of learning nothing and seeing most other kids skip class, told us that he was "demoralized" and wasn't going to bother going to class anymore. He told us that all the kids said that the school leaders didn't care about anything except money, and this seemed plausible to us as our pleas for more support and structure were ignored. After pulling him out, the school has refused to refund any of our tuition, and after we noted that we would write reviews to inform other parents, they pretended they had just been about to implement an "education and wellness strategy," despite never mentioning anything about this in all the time we asked how they would be meeting our son's needs. To showcase their success, they offered a story of a kid who attended no classes and did no work for 3 years, and then in his senior year, he started doing well - that seems a very clear indicator of the school's philosophy - they will happily take $86K a year for 4 years with the hopes that, by the end, your kid will be motivated to engage.

February 07, 2020
absolutely the worst school i've ever been to in my whole life, and i'm a senior.
Teachers
Are teachers at this school effective?
there's probably one teacher that has actually been able to assist me in getting any of my academics completed, and/or has made me feel like this school is a good learning environment.
Character
Does this school develop strong character in its students?
there's nothing/nobody at this school that helps integrate any of these traits into any of the students or staff.

We sent our son to Oliverian after pulling him out of an abusive residential boarding school, promised that it would provide rigorous academics and ample therapeutic support while honoring his autonomy. In fact, it was academically inadequate - zero rigorous assignments, no consequences for skipping class (which led to half of students missing class on a daily basis) - with no therapeutic planning or big picture view (we were told by the counselor that they just "help kids with problems they might face day to day", and were reluctant to do any deep work). They take "autonomy" to a new level, letting the kids do anything they want and hoping to "encourage" them to step up over the course of 4 years. Lots of drugs! Our son spent 6 weeks in his room, leaving only to attend classes, otherwise playing video games non-stop. The administrators are totally uninvolved or worse. Our pleas for more support were ignored. After pulling him out, they refused to refund any of our tuition.

This school has kept me going through some hard times, but I would not call it perfect and it does not suit everyone. The administration is very close to the student body, and thus, has the power to micro-manage students' lives. The school has much to improve in terms of clubs, activities, and sports. It is very hard to come by resources at times - an Oliverian student needs to be self-sufficient. Students are punished with detention, withholding allowance, and "campus restriction" where students are not allowed to leave campus. Students without allowance and on campus restriction are unable to buy toiletries or snack food for at least a week. This is a relatively new school with a good-hearted mission, but it has yet to figure out many aspects.

My son went to Oliverian and had very little academic support and even less Therapeutic support. Although staff were nice they were inefficient. He had ample access to drugs an juul and consequences were minimal
And inefficient. Should have pulled him out sooner. He never even read a book. Very little supervision and even less communication with parents. Do not send your kid here especially if he has addiction issues.