Spring Creek Lodge students find home in Thompson Falls

Jamie Doran

Valley Press

The Thompson Falls School Board held a special meeting Tuesday Jan. 20 at 7 p.m. to discuss the issue of expanding the Thompson Falls High School’s alternative school program.

Thompson Falls Superintendent Jerry Pauli said that this meeting was held in regard to the closing of Spring Creek Lodge at the beginning of the month.

The school board approved the application for 23 non-resident students to start at Thompson Falls High School in their alternative school program.

The 23 students went to Star Peak Crossing after Spring Creek Lodge closed.

“About half of them will come in from 4-7 p.m.,” Pauli said. “Some will come in the afternoon only, some will come right after lunch and some will come for the full day.”

Pauli said the school had the staffing to handle the extra students, so the decision to take them in wasn’t really a hard one for the board to make.

Spring Creek Lodge had roughly 50 students attending it from around the country. While many of the students are being placed in other facilities, according to Pauli there are a number of students that are going to be staying in the area and need a place to attend school.

While Pauli said that some of the students would be able to be integrated into regular classrooms, due to some of the problems with others, it might not be so easy.

“We don’t want to disrupt the classroom and learning of the students we already have enrolled,” he said. “It was important that we were able to come up with a solution that could help give these displayed students a place to learn, as well as making sure our current students remained comfortable.”

All of the students are out-of-staters and come from as far as California, New York and Florida, so this decision gives them an opportunity to stay in the area and continue their treatment at Star Peak Crossing and their schooling at Thompson Falls.

“We have quite a few therapeutic homes in our area that we get students from,” Pauli said. “All of the heads of those homes were at the meeting on Tuesday.”

However, Pauli did say that the school board is looking at it and will be reassessing whether or not to continue to have these students at the school over the summer.

“So for right now this is just on a temporary basis until we can come to a definitive decision during the summer,” he said.