The Willamette Leadership Academy in Veneta has evolved from a disciplinary center for troubled youth to a fully functional military school
The Willamette Leadership Academy in Veneta, Oregon, a town eight miles west of Eugene began as an afterschool program for troubled youth. Now, it is a fully functioning military charter school. It is a military school but it is not a boarding school. It takes aspects of the military education and applies them in a charter school setting. The students do have to wear uniforms, refer to people by their rank and march in formation but they still get to go home at the end of the day. The “battalion” has students from sixth grade through seniors in high school and each class is referred to as “companies” denoted by letters in the military phonetic alphabet such as “Alpha (seniors and juniors), Bravo (sophomores), Charlie (freshman),” etcetera. The students go through roll call and uniform inspection every morning. They start their days with “Reville.” Students have a chance to lead within each company as the class leader, platoon leader or squad leader. They have teachers, usually known as captains who handle the academics who are always accompanied by the battalion’s sergeants who are in charge of the day-to-day disciplinary action. If some of the students in the company don’t do as they should they are usually reprimanded by “physical correction,” push-ups are the most frequent method of correction.
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