Earlier this year, Brad David was on track to graduate from high school.
For David, 19, public school is not an option. He left years ago, after frequent bullying and his severe social anxiety made it impossible for him to attend.
By this fall, he was attending three or four classes a day at Connected Circles in Berlin, a new, independent therapeutic program for students who have endured traumatic childhoods. Next year, he said, he was planning to pursue a degree in culinary arts.
But over the past few months, state officials determined that Connected Circles was in violation of state rules, and told the school to stop holding on-campus classes — scuttling David’s timeline.
“I’m not going to be able to graduate this year,” David said. “And that kind of makes me upset. Because I was on my road to success, and once again it gets ruined.”
On its face, the situation is simple. Connected Circles had not received state approval to educate children on its campus. Without that approval, the school was violating state rules by holding classes during school hours.
But officials admit that multiple school districts had — apparently unknowingly — already been violating those same rules.
And, to Connected Circles’ owner, the situation underscores the confusing tangle of regulations that would-be therapeutic school operators face — despite a persistent need for special education services.
“When I’m dealing with this level of bureaucracy, right, and fighting the fight and advocating for the kids, and I’m supporting dysregulated kids during the day, it’s really hard,” Kelly Bushey, the school’s owner and director, said in an interview. “I have felt like I… (am) being squeezed.”
Ending a precedent
Before founding Connected Circles this spring, Bushey spent roughly a year as CEO of Stone Path Academy, a small therapeutic school in Moretown.
A VTDigger investigation detailed how the school had drawn state scrutiny over its practices — many of which the newly hired Bushey brought to the attention of state officials — before closing in June.
Connected Circles took on some of Stone Path’s former students. The school is intended to serve middle and high school-aged students who have experienced “adverse childhood experiences” such as trauma, abuse or neglect.
The program is currently a for-profit business, “because it was my understanding (that) this was the fastest way to get through this process,” Bushey said. Connected Circles’ board is working to convert to a nonprofit, she said.
Over the summer, staff moved into a Berlin building and worked to get it up to code, Bushey said. In mid-August, Bushey applied to the state to open an independent therapeutic school, according to a timeline of events she compiled and provided to VTDigger.
The program did not, at that point, have state permission to operate as a school. But that did not appear to be a dealbreaker. Previously, public school districts paid for students to take classes at specialized educational programs — known as “contracted services” — even if the state had not approved them.
But in late August, the Agency of Education issued a memo saying that practice needed to stop.
That memo was not so much a shift in state policy as an acknowledgement that state rules were being violated — but no longer.
State officials “identified that students have, in some cases, been educated at a non-approved program … for partial or full school days,” the memo reads, adding, “The practice of paying for full day educational services delivered on the premises of a non-approved program or entity is not permitted.”
Lindsey Hedges, a spokesperson for the Agency of Education, said officials had identified five supervisory unions in Vermont that “made placements with Connected Circles or another unapproved program, in violation of state law.”
It was unclear exactly how many students were affected, but Chris Case, the Vermont Agency of Education’s director of student support services, estimated that it was fewer than a dozen.
Case said in an interview that it was unclear how long the practice had been taking place, but that state officials are working with school districts to find legal options for kids.
“Generally, if you’re looking for, like, the rationale behind this, a lot of it really rests with student safety and quality of education concerns,” he said.
A middle ground
That meant that Connected Circles — still in the early stages of the application process — could no longer hold classes during the school day.
In correspondence shared with VTDigger, Bushey went back and forth with state officials about a solution.
The school’s approximately 10 students started classes there in late August, and she was worried about what would happen if they were forced to leave.
“Will there be allowances made for programs who are in the approval process?” Bushey wrote in a letter to Education Secretary Dan French. If Connected Circles closed, she said, students would likely regress and face the prospect of being “placed in residential facilities outside of our state and their local support systems,” she wrote.
In an email two days later, a staffer replied that the agency “does not have any authority to grant this program a temporary approval or otherwise give it approval.”
That power, the official said, belonged to the state Board of Education, a council of officials appointed by the governor.
Bushey then wrote to the state board. Two weeks later, Oliver Olsen, the then-chair, told her that the board had “no legal authority to take this up until the (Agency of Education) brings it to us,” according to an email shared with VTDigger.
But officials made one thing clear: Until Connected Circles had received state approval, students could not attend class on campus during school days. After the school day was over, however, Connected Circles was free to provide on-campus tutoring services.
State officials are trying to determine a “middle ground” between both options, Case, the agency official, told VTDigger. The state is “working with our legal team and our independent schools team to figure out what’s permissible,” he said.
Ultimately, to open Connected Circles as a full-time school, Bushey would have to go through the standard application process — which can last up to 10 months.
But Case said that Connected Circles’ application had the attention of state officials.
“We’re aware that there’s a lot of interest in seeing this one resolved quickly, and so we’re doing whatever we can to prioritize it,” he said.
‘The only place they have to go’
Currently, Connected Circles sits empty of students. Classes are held off of the program’s campus — in a library, students’ homes, a nonprofit youth center, Bushey said.
But all agree that is simply not as effective as a dedicated campus.
Jen Boardman, the parent of another student at Connected Circles, said the change has been extremely difficult for her son.
In a Dec. 8 email to state officials that she shared with VTDigger, Boardman asked why her son couldn’t simply attend class on campus, rather than “random locations in the community?”
Boardman’s son experienced trauma as a young child, she said, and he struggles to control his behavior in a traditional school environment. At Connected Circles, she said, he was getting the support that he needed.
“Currently my son is going to a space in a local business conference room, with people that he doesn’t know all around him,” Boardman wrote. “He has stated, ‘I feel uncomfortable in this new space. I feel like I am on display here. I’m not able to do this hard stuff if I am not comfortable.’”
The shift has also thrown her son’s graduation plans into question, Boardman said in an interview.
In a letter to staff at his home school district this month, David, the 19-year-old student, explained that learning in unfamiliar public spaces was difficult for him.
“I have social anxiety and it makes it really hard for me to even walk into new buildings,” David wrote. “This means that I get so anxious that I cannot even focus on class and most times I do not even leave the car.”
David told VTDigger that the closure was a blow to many Connected Circles students.
“That’s the only place they have to go,” he said. “And it just gets taken away from them.”
