A school for teenage girls that once opened up in the former Bricelyn School building has been resurrected and is scheduled to open in less than a month.

It was in 2010 that the school first opened as the Miryam Ghermezian Academy and had several troubled Jewish girls from New York who were going to live in Bricelyn and go to school at the facility.

It closed shortly after it opened, due to a variety of reasons, including not having proper licensure from the State of Minnesota Department of Education.

Now the school, with a new name Minnesota Girls Academy and other changes, is set to open somewhere around Dec. 1, with an enrollment of seven girls.

“The major change is that we no longer are just going to focus on Jewish girls,” the new director of the school, Kristen Nosti, says. “We will have girls aged 13 to 17 when they are admitted, who need mental health treatment and therapy. And, they can come from anywhere in the U.S.”Nosti says when the facility closed six years ago, the owners Project Extreme decided to regroup before opening again.

“We have looked at different needs across the Midwest, for adolescent girls,” Nosti says. “And, we found there was a need for just such a facility as this.”

After they get opened and established, they will look at increasing enrollment in phases. Starting with seven at first, they could add another eight girls in the near future.

“We do plan to grow and expand,” Nosti says. “We own six houses in Bricelyn and plan to house our first seven girls in one of them, then expand to others as we grow.”

As far as classrooms, the academy is planning on using some portable classrooms they have brought in at the school site.

Teaching staff is a change from before, as well.

“We are working with the Southern Plains Educational Cooperative, in Winnebago, and with United South Central School District,” Nosti says. “We will have a licensed teacher on site for the girls.”

There is plenty of other staff that will also be needed, the new director says. And, she has been advertising for a variety of full time, part-time and flex positions.

“We are actively hiring staff now,” Nosti says. “I hired a person from Winnebago today, and earlier one from Minnesota Lake and one from Bricelyn.”

The director says MGA (Minnesota Girls Academy) wants to employ people from the local community of Bricelyn and the surrounding area.

Nosti herself, however, is not a local person.

“I moved here from Pennsylvania,” she says. “I have 20 years of experience in residential treatment covering the whole population from first grade to geriatrics.”

She adds that she was not prepared for how beautiful the Faribault County area is.

“And I have been amazed to see how large the farms are here, and how quickly the farmers are able to do the work of harvest. This is really a nice area of the country. It has only been the wind that has taken me some time to get used to.”

And yes, she adds that she has been warned about the winters in Minnesota.

Nosti says the goal is to get the school up and running on Dec. 1, but that will depend on several things.

“First we have to have enough referrals (of girls to attend the school),” she explains. “Then we need to have sufficient staff hired by that time. Staff will be the key to our success and our future growth.”

Nosti adds that she needs to get the staff adequately trained after they are hired, and it might be that staff training will still be going on at the Dec. 1 target date. Or it could mean they might not have the number of girls yet.

“Project Extreme, and our Camp Extreme, still has the same philosophy,” Nosti says. “We still very much care about helping kids who need it.”

The Project Extreme website lists themselves as “a one-of-a-kind not-for-profit organization which provides unique, innovative and individualized attention and services for teens-at-risk, their families and their communities. Teens exhibiting at-risk behaviors have placed their entire social, emotional, familial and academic development in jeopardy. Project Extreme deals with all these realities with compelling positive outcomes.”