Patriot News "In transition: Milton Hershey school on better footing" April 7, 2009

In transition: Milton Hershey school on better footing, but facing key period

by The Patriot-News Editorial Board

Tuesday April 07, 2009, 2:36 AM

The Milton Hershey School is about to select a new president.

The last few years at Milton Hershey School read like a Harvard Business School case study in institutional turnarounds.

At the end of the 1990s, alumni were literally at the school gates in protest that the institution had moved away from Milton Hershey's vision and become a boarding school.

Tensions flamed when the Board of Managers proposed the creation of a "Catherine Hershey Institute for Learning and Development." While a noble idea, alumni questioned why the vast wealth of the trust was not being used to help more students at the school.

The disagreements between alumni and the Board of Managers escalated to court cases. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court had to step in and rule in 2003 that the alumni association had no basis to question the running of the Hershey charitable trust in court. The case was thrown out, and the state Attorney General's office was left to mediate between embittered sides.

Fast forward to 2009. The school is months away from its centennial, and the alumni association and administration are on friendly terms planning for the occasion and working on mentoring current students.

 Much of the credit goes to the dedicated staff, house parents and current president John O'Brien, a 1961 alum, who came in 2003 to try to get things back "on mission."

School enrollment has grown from about 1,200 to 1,800 during the last six years. It has gone back to a full-year residential program and plans are underway to continue growing to a goal of 2,000 students by 2013.

The students today are from families with lower incomes -- about half are under the national poverty line and all are below 150 percent of the poverty line. This was seen as key to Hershey's mission compared with the 1990s when students were coming from families with increasingly middle class profiles.

John Hanawait, left, head of the alumni association, and John O'Brien, the school's current president.

There has been a return to instilling students with service and work ideals and connecting them to the wider Derry Twp. community, as Mr. Hershey outlined in his will. Students have to "earn" their college scholarship money through behavior inside and outside of the classroom. They do internships and help maintain the campus.

While this newspaper's editorial board did support the Catherine Hershey Institute proposal a decade ago, it is clear that the alumni of the school had a different vision that has come to fruition with more disadvantaged kids receiving the education and nurturing support of such a unique place.

But the "roots are still fragile" as O'Brien noted in a recent meeting with The Patriot-News editorial board. So many changes in a short span of time do not come without critics.

O'Brien will step down as president in July. The transition and new leadership are critical. The school needs someone with a deep understanding of the facility's traditions and also its recent politics who can manage all the ambitious growth underway.

It's a steep mandate, but the board, alumni and staff now seem united to make it work.