Again, WCTS provided various indispensible services to the public school system through the years, including evaluations to identify, and help get “feebleminded” children out of public schools ill suited to their needs before they became dropouts. WCTS also opened America’s first institutional day school in 1957, in a building on campus for retarded children who still lived at home. ¹⁰⁶  This move may have presaged the eventual shift to “community placement” of the retarded into group homes. Superintendent Buoniconto had been exploring the possibility of establishing “sub-stations” for the retarded within the community for two years prior, ¹⁰⁷  and predicted that the Day School would become a model for similar schools nationwide. The aim was to alleviate the pressure of keeping up with the pace of ordinary public schooling by allowing the children to attend the Day School, without requiring that they be institutionalized. This way, explained Buoniconto, “the benefits of institutional treatment” and “the loving care afforded by a home life” can be combined. Furthermore, the cost of residence at an institution would not need to be footed by either the family or the taxpayer. By 1958, participating school districts included Wayne, Plymouth, South Redford, Redford Union, Livonia, and Northville. The staff of the Day School was separate from that of the WCTS proper, and its director was Dr. L.D. Blackmer, an alumnus of Central Michigan University.

          The concept behind the Day School program was to take retarded children at a young age, and groom them to be easier to treat later in life. Buoniconto noted that although there were already day programs throughout the nation for older retarded children, WCTS had the only one focused on prevention at a young age. “We try to reach the children before they have had time to develop set patterns of behavior,” he said. Buoniconto recognized that the same children would be “likely to develop emotional problems and deteriorate intellectually” by continuing to place them in an institution’s general population without specialized programming. ¹⁰⁸

          The children of the Day School were taught simple basic social behavior, familiarity with objects, and if possible how to dress themselves, perform basic hygienic tasks, and get started with rudimentary literacy. The thousands of retarded adults currently languishing in training schools across the country could have been in a better position had they received similar training at a younger age, and less likely to have emotional complications as a result of their difficulties in learning. The program focused on developing the “total personality,” according to Buoniconto. He also noted that it was in this crucial age bracket that a child’s learning potential could be observed—crucial information that could be used to structure their training as they mature, and even when determining what other institutions to which they could be referred, or whether they are ready to attend special education classes in public schools. ¹⁰⁹

          Though WCTS was for decades recognized as the worldwide leader in the field, it still gradually sank into the stereotypical disrepute associated with custodial institutions despite the best efforts of its administration. There were accusations regarding physical treatment of the residents brought forth against WCTS in the newspapers in 1942, ¹¹⁰  1966, ¹¹¹  and 1972, ¹¹²  resulting in the conviction and incarceration of at least one employee on counts of child abuse. The courts also began to contribute to the WCTS's downfall by referring children there that it was not designed to handle.

          Increasingly it was a dumping ground for children with difficult problems for which no solution could be found. The Detroit school system kept referring children to the training school in the hope that a more structured and disciplined setting would make them better learners, and the Juvenile Court committed them in order to remove them from the inimical environment of their families and the slums. ¹¹³