Children find success at Glenwood School

ST. CHARLES – David Xaykosy, a 9-year-old aspiring pilot, wasn't used to acing his schoolwork, but attending Glenwood School for Boys and Girls has changed that.

The fourth-grader reported at lunch last week he has earned straight A's for three consecutive weeks.

"When you come to Glenwood you learn a lot of things," David said.

Together, the St. Charles and Glenwood campuses serve about 200 at-risk children ages 7 to 18 from 60 communities throughout the Chicago metropolitan area.

Pat Pretz, director of planned and major giving, said students come from neighborhoods riddled with gangs and drugs and from homes affected by other challenges, such as death, divorce and mental illness. Furthermore, she said, more than 80 percent of students live at or below the poverty level, and the majority are from single-parent homes.

About 50 percent of students come to the school academically behind by two to three years. Because of their ability to make six- to 12-month-gains within a year, staff members describe students' successes, like David's, differently.

"We do dramatic things here," Pretz said.

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Glenwood School was founded in 1887 by Oscar Dudley, investigator for the Illinois Humane Society, and Robert Todd Lincoln, son of President Abraham Lincoln.

Originally located on the north side of Chicago, it moved 30 miles south of the city after a school board member donated farmland to the school, Pretz said.

Glenwood School has educated children in St. Charles since 1994 on a 100-acre campus off of, but not visible from, Silver Glen Road. It contains a field house, an academic building, an administrative building, a wood shop, baseball fields and residential cottages the students live in throughout the week.

The students' days are structured around chores, school, homework and an 8:30 p.m. lights-out rule. Good behavior earns them points that can be redeemed with later bedtimes and, among other things, a chance to skip wearing the uniform for a day.

Ron Rubottom, the director of residential services, described the structure as a framework for the children to be successful.

"It takes out a lot of gray and gives them black-and-white expectations," he said.

The Glenwood School lifestyle also includes a military component in which students are assigned ranks. They have additional responsibilities, such as marching their peers to the cafeteria for breakfast and, in eighth-grader Evangelica Navarro's case, calling attention at the end of lunch.

"Battalion attention," the battalion commander said, facing the lunch tables last week. "Take up your trays."

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Evangelica transferred to Glenwood School last March from public school, where she said she received no individual attention from teachers. Now, she said, she gets academic support from Patrick Nizzi, the campus' vice president and director, even though it is not his responsibility.

The support at Glenwood School doesn't stop with academics.

Students needing someone to talk to or a few minutes of calm before returning to class visit Donna Provenzano, supervisor of health services.

She also doles out their medicine and vitamins each day, provides them with CPR and AED training and works to get them the health supplies they need.

"I am tenacious about getting them glasses," Provenzano said.

Area professionals are also known to donate their services. Scott Prose, an orthodontist in St. Charles, recently agreed to give braces to a student whose mouth structure is preventing him from pronouncing certain sounds correctly.

"I have traditionally done it for those kids who I feel really need it and can't afford it," Prose said. "Just having that orthodontic service could turn their life around."

He usually learns about the children from someone connected to the school, in this case from Jeanine Holtsford, a speech therapist who volunteers there once a week and who serves on the campus' board of directors.

Holtsford heard about Glenwood School from a neighbor about eight years ago. She said she had no other choice but to become involved with the school after she heard the kids' stories.

"Once you put your toe in the water it's over," she said. "You're in."

For Faith Wolfe, her husband and their two young children, the commitment means living full-time in an apartment attached to an all-girls cottage. They are what the school calls house parents.

Staff consider these adults important components to the school's community because the married couples can model what it means to belong to a family.

"A lot of kids said they're like second parents," said Crystal Phillips, director of marketing and special events.

Although some students transition to the living arrangements easier than others, Wolfe said, most seem to like the setup.

"It's like a family," Evangelica said.

Staff and students say that there are no cliques, and, Wolfe added, despite some initial resistance, the older children get along with their younger peers.

"The facade fades quickly," Wolfe said. "They take the younger ones under their wing."

IF YOU GO

What: Glenwood School Rathje Campus
Where: 41W400 Silver Glen Road, St. Charles
Cost per student: $30,000, half paid for by the endowment, half paid for through fundraising. Parents pay a portion of the cost based on a sliding scale.
Phone: 847-464-8200
Web site: http://glenwoodschool.org