Saving The Ranch Morning Star Boys Ranch Has Weathered A Budget Crisis And Is Putting Its Focus Back On Helping Teens

Since the Morning Star Boys Ranch opened its doors in 1957, the Spokane institution has been bringing troubled boys back from the brink.

Two years ago, the ranch was on the brink itself.

In 1995, Washington state cut back public funding for residential treatment centers and Morning Star’s population plunged to just nine kids from a peak of about 50 in the early 1980s. The ranch, nestled into a pine grove on the Glenrose Prairie, seemed destined to share the fate of Cannon Hill Children’s Services, a Spokane group home that closed that same year because of similar cuts.

“Internally, we sat down and asked ourselves, ‘Are we going to be here two years from now?”’ says Morning Star’s programming director Lyle O’Neel. “We realized we had to get back to basics.”

That meant laying off eight employees and cutting back in other areas. Around 20 kids were placed in foster homes or other treatment centers across the state.

Last year, state funding accounted for about a third of the ranch’s overall budget, compared to years past when it funded nearly the entire program. This year, public money will make up only a tenth of the $1 million-plus budget.

The drastic drop in funding forced Morning Star to run more like a privately-funded home. The ranch now depends heavily on private donations and interest from an endowment that has been accumulating since Morning Star’s founding.

It’s been two years since its near-death experience, but Morning Star is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. By June, the number of boys at the ranch is expected to climb back to 20.

While money is still tight, ranch director Father Joe Weitensteiner and the rest of the staff say the center can now focus less on the business of saving the ranch and more on the business of saving kids in trouble.

“Years ago, it seemed like all you needed to have was a roof over your head that didn’t leak,” says Weitensteiner, who fondly recalls midnight hikes up Browne Mountain with the boys, or cruising Riverside in the ranch’s school bus.

There are still seven horses in the ranch’s stable, used for the trail rides and other outdoor excursions that have become the hallmark of the ranch’s unique approach to healing. There are still bike trips, camping and basketball games in the gym.

But as families are split further apart, Weitensteiner says those outdoor excursions aren’t enough for kids anymore.

“Now, our staff finds itself running around filling everybody’s needs,” he says. “Kids, and their problems, are becoming more complicated these days.”

In the past, kids may have come to Morning Star after struggling with truancy or trouble at home. These days, many of the kids have been sent to the home by the Juvenile Rehabilitation Administration. Those kids may have been involved in crime or drug activity; often the kids are victims of abuse, Weitensteiner said.

Social worker Mary Jentges has seen the changing face of pain at Morning Star since first coming here in 1982.

“There are school problems, family problems,” Jentges says. “I see this as a place where kids have the opportunity to make the changes they need to be successful.”

There isn’t a lot of hand holding here, Jentges says. Morning Star’s philosophy is simply about showing the way.

Getting there, she says, is up to the boys.

“When people look back at my files, they can’t believe how I used to be,” says Buddy, a soft-spoken 17-year-old. “I was in trouble with the law. I was angry all the time, but I didn’t know what I was angry at.”

As well as getting into scrapes with the law, Buddy used to run away from home. When he arrived at Morning Star two years ago, he ran away from there, too. The difference? The staff put him in his room and took away his things, but they didn’t cry or get angry like his mom had.

“I realized running away wouldn’t help,” Buddy says. “We have a motto here, that every day is a new day. The staff says, ‘Deal with the past, make it better, and go on.’ “

Buddy made honor roll at his high school last semester and is considering a college “Head Start” program next year to make up for time he lost skipping school.

Sal, 18, got busted for stealing TVs and stereos last year. He spent 28 days his hometown’s juvenile lockup in Central Washington before coming here.

“It was like hell,” he said. “There was nothing to do there but sit in your cell thinking about what you’d done wrong.”

Morning Star is different, he says. For one thing, kids meet with their social workers on a regular basis, learning ways to deal with their frustration.

And since coming here, Sal has also had the chance to work on his high-school equivalency diploma. He recently read one of his first books, “Makes Me Want To Holler,” by Nathan McCall, the tale of a man who did hard time in prison.

The story’s cautionary theme rings all too familiar.

Sal looks toward the day he will leave Morning Star with a mixture of anticipation and fear - he knows there are no guarantees. He has a 3-year-old daughter and a fiance and knows this may his only chance.

“I’m getting a little scared of what’s out there,” he says. “But in eight months here, I know I can change.”

Next door to where Sal is studying at the ranch’s administration building, Joe Chandler and an assistant teach a group of 17 junior-high aged boys in Morning Star’s transition school. The school began six years ago as a half-day program to get ranch kids ready for mainstream classes. Morning Star kids attend Ferris High School and Chase and Sacajawea middle schools.

Last year, Chandler’s program was expanded to full-days and has grown to include District 81 students with problems in the regular classroom.

“We’re a retrieval system,” Chandler says. “We take kids who would normally be expelled or drop out and get them back into the schools. They come here and achieve success where they have never had it. They build upon it, to move back into the mainstream.”

Not every boy who has been through the Morning Star program is a success story. Father Joe gets a Christmas card every year from an inmate at the Walla Walla State Penitentiary. The man who donated the money for the ranch’s gymnasium was an alcoholic who died before the project was complete.

But the view of Spokane from Ray Clary’s 16th-story law office in the Paulsen Building makes Morning Star’s 40-years of trying worth the effort.

Before he was sent to Morning Star, Clary was an 11-year-old who “fought all the time and refused to follow the rules.” By the time Clary reached fifth grade, he was on his fifth elementary school, with no sign of stopping there.

“My mother had the strength and the good judgment to get help,” says Clary, now the secretary of Morning Star’s board of directors.

During his two years at Morning Star during the late 1960s, Clary tasted success for the first time. He did chores. He rode horses. He went to school and stayed there. He learned how to play without fighting.

Come to think of it, Clary says, he learned the same things boys have been learning at the ranch for the last 40 years.

And hopefully the next 40.

“The entire institution is developed around giving the boys solid basic values,” Clary says.

“It makes no difference whether it’s your first day there or your last, whether you’re 11 or 17, whether you’re white or a person of color.

“Just think of what a fundamental resource that is to the community.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 5 color photos