It is 9 a.m. at Rancho Valmora, a private school in northern New Mexico, and the clear blue sky is already promising another pleasant, but warm, mountain morning. Anxious to beat the heat, nine young horseback riders, just back from roping practice, are unsaddling and cooling their horses off.

These are not local cowboys, however. A year ago, most of these teenagers had never ridden a horse, let alone groomed one. But at Rancho Valmora, horsemanship and rodeo skills are a part of the curriculum.

At-Risk Teenagers From Across the Country

Located on the edge of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, an hour’s drive east of Santa Fe, Rancho Valmora is a nonprofit residential school and treatment center for at-risk adolescents, ages 12 to 18. The school and its sister facility, The High Frontier, situated near Fort Davis, Texas, serve young people who come from all over the country with educational, emotional and/or behavioral challenges.

During their average 15-month stay, the students will improve their grades, adopt new values and, in most cases, develop an altruistic, caring attitude toward others.

The schools are operated by Social Learning Environments, Inc., a nonprofit organization headquartered in Granbury, Texas, and directed by AgTexas Farm Credit Services (FCS) customer Bill McKay, a former Fort Worth automotive business owner. 

McKay became involved as a donor and business advisor to The High Frontier in 1976, the year it was founded. When the administrator left a year later, McKay was asked by the board of directors to step in and help run the school. “At first, I was just protecting my investment. But I started spending time out there and fell in love with it,” he says.

Positive Peer Culture

McKay successfully lobbied for state legislation favorable to private schools for adolescents and hired a new administrator. But more important, in 1978 he helped the school switch from a strict behavior modification model, which was not proving effective, to a social learning model, which establishes a positive peer culture.

“Our model is based on the idea that teens are more likely to listen to their peers than to adults, especially when they’ve had bad relationships with adults,” McKay explains. “We don’t have a lot of rules. Instead, peer culture influences behavior. The students challenge negative behavior and support positive behavior.”

In the positive peer culture process, eight or nine same-gender students study, play and share a dormitory together. When an individual has a problem, spontaneous group meetings are called to help resolve it. Through this process, the students develop self-worth, dignity and a feeling of significance as they become committed to the positive values of helping and caring for others in the peer group.

Best Recovery Rate

“After just three years, we had the best rate of recovery of any program around,” McKay says.
The High Frontier program proved so successful that a second school, Rancho Valmora, was opened in 1994. Later this year — with financing from Farm Credit — the organization will open a third school in Montana. All of the schools are located in rural settings to escape urban stimuli and negative peer structures.

“Our whole program is about value change — not just obtaining compliance,” says McKay, himself a father and grandfather. “What’s kept me involved is seeing kids turn around and become first-rate citizens who support other people and their communities.”

Farm Credit Invests in Rural America
Bond Program Funds School Expansion

Last year, when AgTexas, FCS loan officers were discussing an agricultural loan with Bill McKay of Lipan, Texas, they had difficulty keeping him focused on the ranch. “All Bill wanted to talk about was his passion for the schools he’s involved with for at-risk teenagers,” AgTexas Chief Executive Officer Mitchell Harris recalls.

But when McKay mentioned that he was looking for financing for the rural schools, John Kumle, AgTexas vice president, started asking questions.

It turned out that the projects fit the criteria for the lending cooperative’s new Rural America Bond Program: The schools are located in rural communities with low per capita income; they provide jobs for scores of rural people; and they contribute to the economic vitality of the rural areas where they are located.

Channeling Money to Rural Communities

The bond program is a tool through which Farm Credit can channel money to rural areas to help meet the growing and changing needs of agricultural enterprises, agribusiness and rural communities.

In October 2006, AgTexas and the Farm Credit Bank of Texas purchased bonds totaling $5.5 million to fund McKay’s Social Learning Environments schools. It was the first time that the lending cooperatives had used the statutory investment authority permitted by their regulator to invest in rural projects they could not finance through traditional loans.

“We were thrilled to be able to invest in such a worthwhile project that not only will benefit countless young people, but will provide jobs and support the local economies in rural areas of Texas, New Mexico and Montana,” Harris says.

300 Rural Jobs Created

With the bond funds, Social Learning Environments, Inc. is expanding its New Mexico and Texas facilities, which each employ 100 local residents. The bonds are also helping to finance construction of a third school outside of Missoula, Mont., which will create another 100 jobs, bringing the organization’s total rural staff to 300. All of the schools are located at least 25 miles outside a rural town and within a reasonable proximity of a small university, thereby bringing value to those communities.

“We had other offers for financing the schools. But what made the difference was the enthusiasm and personal touch put forth by John Kumle and Mitchell Harris at AgTexas. Theirs was also the best overall deal,” McKay says. “In the end, it’s not just about the money, it’s about relationships.”

Article by Janet Hunter
Photos by Jim Lincoln and courtesy of Social Learning Environments, Inc.