Before we retired And used to work with a large volume of kids. Where we averaged anywhere from 200 and 600 kids per school. We had extensive boarding school campuses where we would house and feed a great number of students; in 2012 we retired and only work with a total of 16 students in Costa Rica typically and four students in Idaho.
Obviously we don’t need extensive campuses for those reasons and for this purpose. So our students live in a study abroad, like foreign exchange living arrangements with our staff who’ve been with us for 20 years.
These staff are all bilingual and also are able to administer the Spanish immersion specifically in Costa Rica, which we do the first three months when they’re there. These students in 3 months automatically become conversationally fluent In Spanish, while we knock out their A.P Credits needed for college entrance. There’s also a problem that this addresses very well, in that you don’t want to put a bunch of bad apples in one barrel because they will feed off each other and your student will end up with bad habits that they didn’t have before they went into the program.
This is typically the problem that we have when students go into juvenile justice system or Juvie they pick up bad habits that they would’ve not had or literally learn how to be a criminal. So we really like this option; where the student has this foreign exchange student experience, one to a family staff member and lives in a family type setting which allows us to control their interaction with the other students. They interact with other students only in Controlled environments such as activities and only with students that’s already working with the program.
It’s a fact that everyone around effect us and that extends to their behavior think of their behavior right now with their present peer group. you don’t want to send them to environment where they’ll be exposed to more kids with more habits where they live with them daily… We solve this in our Costa Rica in that there’s typically only one student to a family and this is all of that family does is take care of your student. They make sure your student get their attention and are not distracted by other students or other issues and we have found a greater level of success through process, this also this is one of the reasons that we are able to do our scholarship program and be so cost-effective if we had to pay for the utilities and the cost of a campus that can hold 200 to 600 kids we would be charging at least $70,000 per year whereas right now we’re charging less than half of that.