SOUTH KINGSTOWN — A private boarding school for teenagers with language-based learning difficulties will find a home at Camp JORI, on Worden’s Pond Road.

The Zoning Board of Review last night did not formally approve Camp JORI’s request for a boarding school to be allowed to operate there as an accessory use during the school year, but it directed Nancy E. Letendre, special legal counsel for the town, to draft a favorable motion for board review Tuesday.

The approval would allow Middlebridge School to house as many as 40 high school students, ages 13 to 19, at the camp from Sept. 1 to June 15 over each of the two years. It is uncertain, given the need for several technical approvals, whether it can start this year.

Robert I. Stolzman, vice president of the Camp JORI board, presented the plans last night, describing the school as an intense educational setting for high-functioning students with dyslexia and other language-based learning difficulties. The students, 22 of whom are due to be enrolled, do not have disciplinary or emotional problems and would do community service as a component of their schooling, he said.

Under persistent questioning by zoning board Chairman Ernest George, Stolzman repeatedly stressed that the school constituted an accessory use to the camp because it was a less intense use and because its lease — $100,000 over two years — would help pay for the overnight summer camp. While as many as 300 campers stay at the camp each day during the summer, the school would generate little traffic and actually benefit the septic system by putting it to use in the off-season, he said.

“Yes, we’re only using the camp site for a couple of months, but that’s our principal use,” Stolzman said, adding “We always anticipated a year-round use at the site.”

In 1999, owners of the Narragansett-based Camp JORI, founded in the midst of the Great Depression by the Jewish Orphanage of Rhode Island, bought Card’s Camp, a transient trailer camp at the edge of Worden Pond.

Two years later, the zoning board approved a special-use permit for some off-season uses for the summer camp, on about 75 acres on Worden Pond.

That permit included accessory uses such as elder and vacation camps, educational conferences and a pre-school. The board’s approval would substitute the boarding high school for the pre-school.

“In order to support the facility, we anticipated off-season uses,” Stolzman said.

The approval would serve as a trial run for two years, after which the organization would return to the zoning board to extend the use or possibly expand it to a maximum of 70 students and about 30 staff, he said. (Twenty or so staff would serve the initial plans for up to 40 students, he said.)

Stolzman and Mark A. Pelson, chairman of Camp JORI’s board, promised to pay the town for any losses should local public school students be sent to Middlebridge.

“It’s not our intention to cause a financial burden to the town,” Stolzman said. Middlebridge tuition is $51,000.

Town Councilman James W. O’Neill opposed the application, arguing the school was not an accessory use, but a principal one that was more intense than the camp cumulatively. Allowing the school would violate the town’s Comprehensive Plan by creating a year-round use on a property that is a bridge to conservation lands, he said.

“I see the intensity magnified from what our intention was,” O’Neill said.

The camp is bordered by 220 acres the town worked to preserve with the South Kingstown Land Trust and the Nature Conservancy in 1999.

But Stolzman’s arguments proved persuasive to the board.

It was always “very clear” the camp was to be used year-round, said board member Robert L. Toth.

“I feel it’s in line with what they have,” member Stephanie A. Osborn said.

Only George remained unconvinced.

“This is a stretch to call this an ancillary use, in my opinion,” George said. He said Camp JORI should be seeking a special-use permit for an education use in the residential zone instead.

He added: “I’m not saying a boarding school isn’t good; I’m just saying it’s not ancillary.”

John Kaufman, headmaster of Middlebridge, briefly addressed the board, saying he has a master’s degree in clinical psychology and has worked with adolescents for 14 years. He served for four years as the dean of students at Pine Ridge School, a private boarding school in Williston, Vt., with a similar mission as described by its Web site.

The headmaster of that school, Dana Blackhurst, is married to Jan Jones, the former Las Vegas mayor and Harrah’s Entertainment executive who worked with the Narragansett Indian tribe on its 2006 casino plans.

The state Department of Education has approved Middlebridge School’s educational program, according to Elliot Krieger, department spokesman.

Once the board officially approves the request next week, local and state officials would need to sign off on the school’s building, fire-safety, and food service plans, among other details, he said.

kmulvane@projo.com