Academy Creates Dispute By Asking For More Students Elk Mountain Lied About Its Intentions, Some Neighbors Claim Sandpoint

The embattled Elk Mountain Academy is heading for another skirmish with its neighbors over the number of students attending the school for troubled youth.

Less than two months ago, the academy owned by Carl and Loretta Olding got permission from the Bonner County Commission to house 25 students at the mountainside campus north of Clark Fork.

Now the Oldings have returned for a modification to their two-year conditional use permit, requesting that they be allowed to have 36 students at the school.

That’s three times the number of students they were allowed to have on campus earlier this year.

The increase would accommodate students in the school’s intake program, called “base camp,” and students who turn 18 and are finishing up their course work at the school.

“We hope the commissioners meant what they said, that 25 is 25 is 25,” said Susan D’Aoust, a neighbor and outspoken opponent of the school’s expansion.

At a recent meeting, several members of the Cascade Creek neighborhood chastised Elk Mountain Academy’s owners for being dishonest about their intentions.

D’Aoust said she was unaware of the school’s “base camp” program.

One of the biggest complaints that neighbors have about Elk Mountain is the noise from dirt bikes that the owners and students ride. Students are rewarded, school officials say, with the privilege of riding dirt bikes.

Neighbors also have expressed concern about lack of supervision of the students, some of whom have turned up on private property in the neighborhood.

Elk Mountain Academy isn’t a “lock-down” facility, however. School officials say that they only take nonviolent students who are at low risk of running away.

School representative Kim Pearson described the students as wanting to be at Elk Mountain to escape the drug or alcohol abuse they find among their peers back home.

“It’s for kids who can’t break free from the scene,” Pearson explained.

To make sure it enrolls that type of student, Elk Mountain Academy operates the six- to eight-week base camp, which acts as an intake program for the school.

The base camp is heavily supervised, and students are not allowed “off the mountain,” Pearson said.

Base camp operates out of a house on the 80-acre property, tucked up in the woods above the four other buildings on the campus. Students in base camp sleep in sleeping bags, cook their own meals, help with chores around the school and participate in outdoor activities, Pearson said.

When school officials first applied for their conditional use permit in January, they didn’t tell county officials about base camp.

Nor did they show county planners base camp when the planners visited in late January.

“Base camp was not divulged to us until later on in the application process,” said Rob Wall, Bonner County assistant planner.

The school was already in violation of zoning regulations by having more than three buildings on the 80-acre parcel. In addition, the newer buildings did not have building location permits. The school has since acquired those permits.

In early February, state inspectors from the Department of Health and Welfare found the school in violation of state regulations by housing more than the 12 students it was allowed, with some in buildings that were being remodeled.

The school has since received a permit from the state allowing for 25 students.

Pearson said the school did not apply for a more students because the base camp students and those over 18 years old are not regulated by the state.

Those students do count when it comes to Bonner County regulations, however. Shortly before the issue went to the Planning Commission in March, Elk Mountain Academy asked about changing its application to increase the allowed number of students.

“We realized that (the state) regulated children and Wall regulates students, but by the time we realized it, we were so far along in the process,” Pearson said.

Instead of changing the original application, the county advised Elk Mountain Academy to apply for a modification to its permit. That’s expected to go before Bonner County commissioners in early August.