Recession forces Hope Ranch to close

Unable to battle recession-induced funding cutbacks any longer, the Hope Ranch for troubled teenage girls has closed its doors.

The board of directors for the faith-based therapeutic boarding school at Star Meadow west of Whitefish made the decision to shutter the operation in mid-November 2009, and by Thanksgiving the last students had been placed in other treatment programs, Hope Ranch admissions director Jim Carpenter said.

The financial turmoil began in October 2008 when two key funding sources for private schools — Sally Mae and the prepGATE K-12 Education Loan Program — cut off applications for new loans.

“Overnight the whole system went down,” Carpenter said.

Extensive fundraising and a very generous private donor base allowed Hope Ranch to stay open for several months longer, but the handwriting was on the wall.

“This valley stepped up,” Carpenter said. “Our program was so successful, and the demand clearly is still out there.”

More than 80 percent of families used the loan programs to help pay for the tuition at Hope Ranch, and when those programs went away enrollment dwindled to just 13 girls. The ranch had a 36-student capacity.

Hope Ranch began in 1996 at the former Star Meadow Guest Ranch, providing Christian-based treatment and schooling for girls ages 13 to 17 with various addictions and problems.

“Their ministry was extraordinary,” longtime Hope Ranch board member B.J. Lupton said. “They were changing lives.”

The remote campus was expanded several years ago with the addition of an upper campus a mile up the road from the original ranch buildings. Two new residential cabins at the upper campus housed the girls and two other buildings — one intended as a new dining hall and another for a school — were built but the interiors remain unfinished.

“The property itself was healing,” Carpenter said about the 360-acre ranch.

The ranch now “probably will go into foreclosure,” he said. Whitefish Credit Union holds the mortgage.

“We’ve been trying to liquidate the equipment” and furnishings, Carpenter said.

One of the challenges for Hope Ranch since its inception has been keeping tuition affordable while offering a skilled staff at a ratio of one to one.

“We worked all those years to refine the team,” Carpenter said. “We had the most incredible staff.”

Hope Ranch board member John Bent agreed, noting that the quality of care offered at the facility, with many doctorate-level staff members, was expensive but effective.

“The facility was wonderful because of its isolation, but that isolation also worked against it [because] getting care to them was a challenge.”

Bent said closing the ranch has been difficult for everyone involved.

“It changed the lives of hundreds of families and we need to lay claim to what was accomplished,” he said.

“We appreciate the dedication, help, prayers and support of the community during the years Hope Ranch was at work. All ministries have a beginning and an end, but it’s been a painful process because the need is as strong as it’s ever been.”

 Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by e-mail at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com