You are the parent of an obese teenager. You are at your wits' end: no diet works, and your child's physical and emotional health are suffering. What would you pay to send your child to a boarding school especially for overweight kids?

Before this year, this would have been a purely hypothetical question. Now, however, it's not. With childhood obesity reaching epidemic proportions, and with "therapeutic" boarding schools (boarding schools that supply in-house treatment for variously troubled kids) becoming increasingly popular, it was only a matter of time before someone decided to open a school centered on helping obese kids work to lose weight. For $5,500 a month (close to twice the cost of a typical boarding school education), parents can now send their obese children to the Academy of the Sierras, the nation's first boarding school for severely overweight kids. The school opened its doors this fall, and its seventeen students come from as far away as New Hampshire and Ecuador.

The school combines a rigorous weight-loss program with a college prep curriculum; an admission requirement is that prospective students be at least 30 pounds overweight. The school expects to be enrolling 70 students within the year, and if the undertaking succeeds, the company that runs it--Healthy Living Academies, a division of the Aspen Education Group known for its summer weight-loss camps--will open more such schools across the country.

Academy of the Sierras is a for-profit venture, and while it tries to help families find ways to finance the hefty price tag by tapping external financial aid sources as well as insurance policies, it does not itself appear to be in the business of offering tuition breaks or scholarships for especially needy or deserving kids. Instead, the school seems to be selling a potentially winning combination of discipline and hope: What kids do at the Academy to lose weight--exercise, diet, therapy--they can do at home, but, for whatever reason, don't. The Academy of the Sierras is thus an experiment in an emerging form of boutique education, one that has as an operative enterprising premise that you lose what you pay for.

I'm interested in readers' thoughts on schools such as this one. They strike me as both consummate ripoffs and potentially life-saving, life-changing ventures.

What's the likelihood the child will see it as a plus? Parents send him away because he won't do as they want -- whether it's in his best interest or not doesn't often influence a teenager.

So now he's being forced into a program he doesn't want, away from friends and family, "for his own good."

Can't see it being anything but a ripoff and a feel-good for parents with more money than sense or parenting skills.

Waddling Thunder (the nom de blog of a Harvard Law Student) has some interesting thoughts on the actual program that they're offering from the point of view of weight-control starting here:

The Academy of the Sierras

The most interesting bit, I think, it that instead of simple criticism he contrasts it with a sensible-sounding counter-proposal.

I think that while it is an interesting idea, the graduate of such a school will be stuck with the label for the rest of his life. That is probably something no person would want. Most prep school graduates are proud of their alma maters, but can you see that happening here?

One of the things I'm curious about (but haven't had the time to chase down) is the history of the "therapeutic" boarding school movement and the connection of that history to Outward Bound and the spread of Kurt Hahn's ideals.

OB didn't start, and isn't now constituted as a "therapeutic"environment. However, as long ago as 1968 (my first OB experience) juvenile judges on the east coast were sentencing girls (at least) to OB as a diversion.

Certainly prior to the 1960s, acting-out boys from well-to-do families might be sent to a residential military school--strict discipline being thoght of as the cure. As the tide swung away from single-sex schools in the 1970 (a timeline would be interesting, when the traditional single-sex schools integrated) and progressive education made inroads, perhaps that set the stage for more restrictive, more intrusive "therapeutic" schools.

CEDU was one of the first in California, and it I believe opend its doors in 1967. Readers?

Perhaps an alternative approach would be: an intensive summer program, followed by an evening/weekend program while the kid is in regular school.

One more reason rich people make me sick.

I spent two summers at a wonderful place called Structure House in Durham, NC (a mecca for the obese, which also has the Duke Executive Fitness Program). It was a live in program, with apartments, and food planning, and classes. A lot of fun, and I learned a lot and lost weight. Admittedly, it was great being somewhere where the cool kids were all fat! (So to speak -- the "kids" were all adults of all ages, as this was only a couple of years ago.)

Anyway, the problem comes when you have to return to the "real world" where people don't fix your food and you don't have constant support from others with similar problems -- everyone speaks the same language there, the shorthand of a lifetime of medicating problems with food.

Back home, real life and real stress return and the weight comes back. And there goes the several thousand dollars wasted without lasting progress. (Now, many people are very successful, and it is by far more successful than most weight loss programs.)

Anyway, I finally gave up and had surgery. Not the icky, dangerous gastric bypass, but the much more reasonable (and adjustable/removable) gastric banding. I've lost 70 pounds this year. This is one option I'd recommend for a chronically obese young person (not too young, of course). If I get pregnant or sick, I can have the band loosened (in the doctor's office, with a needle to draw out the saline). Of course, most people have the other one because it has been around longer and is covered by insurance. But the band has been around for about 10 years now (longer outside the US), and it was definitely worth it. I wish I'd known about it and done it in my mid-20's (when my skin was more elastic!) (except I prefer that doctors practice a new technique on other people!). On the other hand, by losing a bit more slowly than with the gastric bypass, my skin is adjusting pretty darn good for my age!

I was overweight in high school, and not obese (but the dieting that started then certainly helped me get where I was before the surgery!).
I never went to a "fat camp", although I've heard they can be fun (but I imagine that you wouldn't want others to know). It would be interesting to know more about their non-weight related classes -- if I paid that much, I'd want to lose weight and come back prepared to excel at an Ivy League school!

Dr Liz

I don't have an opinion on this, but thought it was quite fitting to have a post on this topic on a blog named "Critical Mass".

I am the Executive Director of the Academy. Some good points on this page. A few responses:
1) Of the 31 students currently enrolled, many are middle class and one is being paid for by the State of New York pursuant to a court order secured by the Children's Aid Society of New York. Very few are "rich." All have tried all less intensive weight control options and failed.
2) One of the goals of the researchers involved with this project is to demonstrate to insurance companies than an intensive, extended behavioral change program will produce outcomes on par with or superior to outcomes from bariatric surgery. Based on the results we are seeing so far (avg. weight loss of 4.5 pounds per week, remarkable behavioral changes -- see www.academyofthesierras.com for updates), we believe we are on track.
3) The focus of the program is not weight loss, but rather behavioral change. Everything we do is oriented to ensuring the student will think very differently about his or her diet and physical activity the moment s/he returns home. This includes family education, transition planning and a 6-month after-care program wherein the student will continue to work with the therapist.
4) All students currently enrolled want to be there. We do not enroll students who do not want to attend.

I probably won't have time to check back here when the new semester starts next week. But feel free to e-mail me with any questions. rcraig@academyofthesierras.com

Thanks for your interest.