Spring Creek Lodge Academy

Spring Creek Lodge Academy is s "specialty school" in western Montana, near the town of Thompson Falls in Sanders County. It currently has between 500 and 600 students (who are held there against their will), though it is constantly growing. It is under the umbrella of WWASP. It is the largest employer in Sanders County, though its wages are usually far below the national average.

The school is sorrounded by many of the controversies that soround all such specialty schools in the United States, though since there are adequate child protection laws in America, many of the more unsavory activities that happen in such schools in Mexico, Jamaica, and Nicaragua do not occur at Spring Creek Lodge. For example, while children cannot be beaten, they can be "restrained," put in the "hobbit" (a punishment similar to solitary confinement in some respects), and threatened with being sent to specialty schools in third world countries. Rules for students include not looking out of windows or at members of the opposite sex, not possessing anything that can be used for escape, including addressess and phone numbers, and not "talking on silence (a time where students are not allowed to talk)." Putting "troubled teens" into strictly regimented environment, combined with intense emotional probing every day, combine to make a particularly unpleasant experience for students. There is high staff turnover as well, but since tuition is more than $3,000 a month, the school easily stays in business.

Students stay in "families" on "lower levels" (levels one, two, three, and three all stars), with the lowest levels (usually everything except for three all stars) sleeping in a single room with ten bunks, housing twenty students. Two family's rooms are joined together at night time so a "nightstaff" can patrol twenty bunks, watching for any "mischeif" during the night. During the day, each family is segregated, and cannot communicate with other families. Indeed, even "lower levels" within a family cannot communicate with each other, unless the two people's levels add up to four (eg. a level one and a level two may not communicate). The family is kept together 24 hours a day, and this results in relationship strain between the students. The family marches in a line (with no "gaps," meaning that on each step, each student's right foot must be next to the left foot of the student in front of them, and so on) to get to any other place, and stand in a line "heel to toe" whenever the line has stopped. There is a rewards and punishment system, a "token economy," for the teens, with points being awarded (which are required in order to gain a level) each day, and taken away by means of "consequences." Each level infers some reward as well: level twos may have sugar in their oatmeal, level threes get a monthly phone call, level fours become junior staff, and so on. Junior staff are students that have been shown to be obedient and are so promoted to help run the facility (it is not called a campus). They consist of level four, five, and six. A level of six is required to graduate. Each level is progressively more difficult to attain, and frequently requires "seminars." A seminar lasts for several days and is an emotional marathon, where students are strongly encouraged to "get at the root of their problems." While they can be therapeutic and uplifting, they are for the most part dreaded. They occur once a month, and "choosing out" (being kicked out for underperforming) both add to the anxiety of the student and spur them on to take seminars seriously. If seminars are not passed, levels may not be gained, and students will stay there for significantly longer.

Class time is six hours a day, six days a week, and consists of "independent study," where a student checks out a book, does an entire chapter's problems, submits it, and then takes a test. If he/she scores above an 80%, that student then moves on to the next chapter, and so on until the book is finished, at which point the student earns highschool credit for the course.