The Best School You Hope Your Kids Will Never Attend

July 12, 2006 — -- When it comes to gentle kindness and personal attention, Hutch School in Seattle is among the best academies in the country. It is tuition-free and offers an amazing teacher-student ratio. And if you are lucky, it's a place your children will never attend.

Operated by the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, Hutch is the only school in the country run by a hospital but largely devoted to healthy children. They are kids of vastly different ages, vastly different backgrounds, all with one grim factor in common: each has a loved one who is suffering from cancer and has only a 50-50 chance of survival.

As uprooted families endure the long, grueling process of a bone-marrow transplant, the school becomes a haven for the children. It's also a place where the teachers must be ready for the most difficult of questions.

"In our culture, you know, we don't talk about death that directly or that openly," said Eileen Hynes, a teacher at the school. "And kids do think about it. So letting them know that they can talk about it here, I think is reassuring for them."

Anna White, another Hutch teacher, said she is impressed by the strength the children display.

"I think, in general, they are a lot stronger than we think they might be," she said. "We might be afraid to tell them certain things when, in reality, they already know. I tell you, I'd be able to go through something a lot better now, if I had a crisis in my life, gleaning what I've learned from these guys. It's incredible."

The daughters of Iditarod champion Susan Butcher currently attend the school. Butcher, who was diagnosed with leukemia seven months ago, said the school helped alleviate her second-biggest fear: what her family would do while she received treatment.