EPG Residential School organizational model proposal draft

EPG Academy Community Residential School for Exceptionally & Profoundly Gifted Students

What our School Offers:

Because the highly gifted students study and live together, our school will provide academic and social benefits that most traditional schools cannot. Budgetary constraints in some public schools limit the availability of advanced coursework that high-ability students need. In their home schools highly gifted students often feel isolated and have few intellectual peers with whom to share their interests.

Concentrated funding will allow our school to offer an array of advanced courses and educational resources in particular areas such as math and science or the fine and performing arts. Although academics are the focus, our highly gifted students will blossom into confident and independent individuals because they are educated with other students with similar abilities and passions.

Another benefit of our school is that the students learn how to live together cooperatively.

"Residential life requires compatibility, tolerance of differences, self-discipline, and responsibility. These traits are beneficial to students in college, in their careers, and in all aspects of their lives. The living/learning environment of the residential school provides students with a smoother transition from high school to college, because they have already adjusted to living away from home. Lisa Stamps, PhD

Points to Consider

WHY IS EPG ACADEMY OFFERING THE COMMUNITY BOARDING SCHOOL OPTION?

A community boarding school is, very simply, a school with a boarding program that is located in or near the student's home communities.

Children live on campus during the week, and those living relatively near the school may return home on all or some weekends. This makes it clear to those parents that the schools purpose is not to remove children from familiar surroundings.

Because school will be located in a geographic area relatively near the family home of many of the students, parents will be encouraged to be involved with their childrens education. For those students whose parents live very far, from the school, or live in other countries, every effort will be made to bring the child together with parents during extended holiday periods and vacation times. A program to pair students far from home, with local host/surrogate families, will be developed, so that the child will have a host family to provide home-like visiting and "outside" family activities

The school program will provide students with guidance and instruction in the acquisition of study habits and life and social skills and will be tailored to the unique educational needs of EPG kids (so as not to raise concerns around the usual disastrous study habits they may have fled), and offers enrichment activities in a safe and structured environment. Older students will be afforded the opportunity to travel abroad over the summer, and engage in service learning opportunities in the surrounding community.

Drawing on both gifted youth development and community development principles, our school approach is for the full-time-of-school benefits of a boarding school, as we will keep the schools open in the evenings and on weekends. Family and host families will be welcome at the school, and activities will be available to them as well as to the children. Such efforts demonstrate the fact that a longer school day offering a more enveloping and supportive school-based environment does not necessarily imply severing a childs connections to family and community.

Building on Extended School Days: A Continuum of Support

With the example of community schools in mind, we begin to understand our residential school as a new institutional form that emerges when we recognize that residential and community based are not mutually exclusive ideas. Instead, the availability of on-campus living acts as an affirmative support for children and families in the local community, as well as, for those students and parents that they may elect to use, or not.

Some Reasons for Choosing EPG Academy

1. It has long been known that highly gifted children of poor families often are relegated to underfunded and poorly-performing schools.

2. Families expressing dissatisfaction with their highly gifted childrens schools and seeking an alternative educational environment for them.

3. Some of the highly gifted children attending local public schools, and others h enrolled in private schools that, for one reason or another, are not meeting their needs or expectations.

4. Parents of highly gifted students wanting a stronger academic environment for their children.

5. Parents of highly gifted children who are struggling in school and feel that their childrens school is not responding adequately to their needs.

Extra Support and Supervision

Another group of children and youth who will benefit from attending our residential school, are those living in families plagued by serious problems such as drug addiction, homelessness, or child abuse and neglect.

The availability of on-campus living, in addition to benefiting highly gifted children and youth like those described above, may have implications for other highly gifted children currently in the social service system.

Our conceptual framework posits a distinction between local and distant boarding schools. The parent-child relationship is not compromised by the children living at school during the week, and staying with parents, or host parents on weekends.

Per-pupil costs for a boarding school are nearly three times that of a day school...to just over $20,000 per student per year. Our school will initially seek funding to underwrite the costs of students unable to pay costs.

...................