Charter School History
Since its opening in September 1979, Hill Country Youth Ranch (HCYR)
in Ingram, Texas has provided on-campus education for special needs
children with academic and developmental deficits. In August
1999, HCYR opened its first on-campus "one-room" school at its new
Big Springs Ranch, a sister ranch near Leakey, Texas. Today, the
HCYR Charter School system, with schools on both ranches, serves up
to 130 children in grades 1-12, at three separate school campuses
for elementary, middle and high school students.
In January, 2001, Youth Ranch officials were notified
that the Big Springs Ranch School had been certified as an official Charter School
under a TEA program to promote quality education for
at-risk students. For HCYR, this announcement was the
culmination of years of planning and dreaming. Like HCYR in
Ingram, BSRC is a unique village
for abused and orphaned children built on the banks
of the Frio River on a 7,000-acre ranch, 50 miles
from Ingram, whose
residents include grandparents,
volunteer mentors, professionally trained
childcare workers and certified teachers of the highest
quality, who give each child an individualized
comprehensive educational program, qualifying him or her to
attend college, or enter the world equipped to seek
gainful employment.
In 2002, Ed and Trudy Brune donated
funds for a high school at Big Springs Ranch,
and in 2005 they added a middle school. In
2006, the Cailloux Foundation added an elementary
school at HCYR in Ingram. The school
component of the HCYR and BSRC vision was originally the brainchild of
four Youth Ranch pioneers, who had shared the
dream for years: Oma Bell Perry, Dr. John Givens,
Mike Wood and Gary Priour. Miss Perry, donor of the Big
Springs Ranch, long dreamed of a quality private
school being built on the beautiful Frio River. Dr.
Givens, spent his
career developing innovative schools. He was the
first superintendent of the Ingram Independent
School District after it voted to establish a high
school in 1978. It was then that he met Gary Priour,
founder and Director of HCYR, who was serving on the
Ingram School Board in 1978, and who asked Dr.
Givens to join HCYR in its effort to create a
quality alternative school system for special needs
children. In 1995, Mike Wood joined the Youth
Ranch team and shared with Gary the dream of
bringing healing and learning together in a school
setting.
Said Priour, "It was Dr. Givens who
introduced me to Miss Perry’s dream in 1995, and as
I began work with our Board of Directors to build
the Big Springs Children’s Village, he came out of
retirement to begin work on creating a new school
and getting it accredited. His tireless work has
paid off."
Dr. Givens said, "The Charter School
is the perfect format for what we want to do. Public
school standards generally apply, but we have great
flexibility to introduce innovative programs. Our
goal is to have a school in continuous search for
the most creative methods for teaching children, to
allow them to advance at the fastest pace possible." Dr. Givens received his
Doctorate from the University of Houston. He has
worked with HCYR from its
beginning in 1977, served as a member of the
Board of Directors, and serves today as Advisory Director.
In 2001, a new visionary took the
helm of the Charter School System. Mike Wood,
with a background in residential treatment, has
proved the ideal leader for a system that emphasizes
both learning and healing in each day's agenda.
