Independent School Options

"We worked with Cathy Byerly. At first, she was a great EC to work with, but things went awry once my son finished wilderness and the next step was therapeutic boarding environment. She gave us three options for my son who has extreme issues with OCD and anxiety as a result of a medical condition. One seemed great but was too expensive and too long a required stay. The second was a drug treatment facility in which the director told me she was curious as to why they were picked. The third was a facility that had mostly kids with issues regarding criminal behaviors (unbeknownst to me). We sent my son to the last and he lasted all of eight days. It was an all around fiasco. During this time, I tried to get a hold of Cathy but instead of calling me, she called the school. After Christmas, she wrote me and said she was sorry that I felt the school wasn’t appropriate or something like that. She wanted to help find a new place. I was so disappointed that I didn’t respond for a month. I said as much and felt that these places were a bit of a scam. I told her she could contact me if she wanted. Radio silence. I spent money to engage her services for a year and no response from that email. Maybe she’s better at placements out East, but it felt like she placed our son in the therapeutic boarding environment because she had a budding relationship with them. Thankfully, after much research, I found the perfect school for my son. I will say the wilderness environment she found was very good. Proceed with caution. The EC world is not so large and I’ve now met a handful. All of them questioned why the third therapeutic environment that my son went to was even an option, given his issues."

"Cathy is an excellent resource - years of expertise and professionalism!"