For 29 years, the Kingsley Wilderness Project has given at-risk teenagers in Montgomery County a place to go.
In exchange, the participating students would spend half of their school hours working to restore and sustain the environmentally rich property in Boyds, Md., in which the classes were conducted.
But when Montgomery County Public Schools left the approximately $400,000 needed to fund the project off of its fiscal year budget earlier this year, the project’s fate was effectively sealed.
Program officials, alumni and parents challenged the decision to the Council throughout the spring, to no avail.
Now, staff members are being forced to pack up, said Cathy Jewell, who has run the project for the past decade.
“It was a terrible decision,” she told The Examiner. “There really could have been some innovative ways to keep it open, but unfortunately the county does not want to do that.”
It was rumored that the Department of Corrections could take over, considering the jail shares land with the project’s site.
But Art Wallenstein, director of Correction and Rehabilitation for the county, told The Examiner that’s simply not true.
“[The Department of Corrections] has never sought any involvement in Kingsley … and we have no intention of intruding in their work,” he said.
That leaves the program still searching for funds and an agency to take it over, said Jewell, who will be transferred to a Montgomery County extension program through the public school system.
In the meantime, though, she said a display will stay on site that honors the student who achieved the most success each year.
