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Organizers, a future student and area pastors bless the Spotsylvania site of Jonah's Run Alternative High School.
Sarah McKennon, director of Jonah's Run alternative school and a former probation officer, visits a classroom at the site near Partlow. |
BY MEGAN WILLIAMS
In the Bible, Jonah runs from the people of Nineveh instead of helping them as God asks him to.
This story inspired the name and mission of Jonah's Run Alternative High School, which is to open this fall in rural Spotsylvania County, for teens at risk of dropping out.
"Like the people of Nineveh these kids need help and no one will give it to them," said Sarah McKennon founder of the alternative school in Partlow.
Jonah's Run will offer an alternative for students who are having a hard time in a traditional public school setting. They will be evaluated by McKennon, who will confer with their high school counselors before letting them enroll.
"We don't want to take anyone out of the public school system unless it's in their best interest," McKennon said.
In Fredericksburg and the surrounding counties there is a kindergarten through 12th grade alternative school and an alternative program for students with medical needs that keep them from attending public school. But there is nothing specifically for high schoolers with a wide range of problems from medical to behavioral.
"Our school will be all inclusive," McKennon said. "It's going to be a therapeutic place."
Jonah's Run will be a private, certified special education school. Although the name is a biblical reference, the school will have no religious affiliation.
The idea for an alternative school began while McKennon served as a probation officer at Massaponax High School. She worked with the court-services unit but was placed in the high school and took on the caseload of the students on probation at Massaponax. She quit in June 2007 to work full time on the alternative school.
"I worked with kids who were at risk of dropping out of high school many of them did and I had to lock up many of them," McKennon said. "These are kids that don't have learning disabilities but aren't doing well in their studies they just didn't have the support they needed."
Now that McKennon has a site for the school, she is completing accreditation requirements, which is a two-year process. She also has students slated to attend, a curriculum and $4,500 for scholarships. She has chosen a principal and interviewed three teachers.
McKennon will be the executive director of Jonah's Run and will help counsel students in matters of truancy and behavioral problems.
In the beginning the school will enroll 20 students, but it could expand to 36 students.
"When we reach 36, we will assess where they are coming from, where the need is and open a second site," McKennon said.
On Wednesday, pastors from local churches came to bless the school. Seventeen-year-old Amanda Berryman, who will attend the school, came for the event. She attended Spotsylvania High School for less than a year before it was suggested that she drop out and pursue home-school options because of a heart condition that kept her out of public school for days at a time.
The condition called POTS "causes me to pass out. I was going to fail so I dropped out," she said.
She heard about Jonah's Run through a friend and said she's "more than interested."
For Monica Thomson, whose son was expelled from Mountain View High School in Stafford County in 2007, Jonah's Run is the only chance her son has to get an education.
"I can't afford to send him to private school," Thomson said. "Unless you have a child at risk [of not completing high school] you don't realize there is a lack of resources, and how many kids are suffering because there isn't anything."
Jonah's Run is on 12 acres of farmland on Shepherds Road. A rental house on the site will serve as the school until something larger can be built. Now she and her husband, Scott, who is a contractor, are working to make sure the building complies with the fire code.
"I liked the location because it's different from what they're used to," she said. "It doesn't feel like an institution."
Megan Williams: 540/374-5000,
Email: mewilliams@freelancestar.com
