Letter to the Editor - Working in Helena with past Havre administrators

Editor,

This past week put me in Helena for an Education Interim meeting. At the meeting was two past administrators of the Havre school system, now executive director of the School Administrators of Montana Kirk Miller and Dennis Parman, now director of the Montana Rural Education Association.

As we worked on mental health issues, special education cooperative funding and work-based learning, they both weighed in on their programs feelings. Was interesting to work with Mr. Miller as my wife was teaching in Havre when he was the administrator at the school district. Again almost every issue we deal with has to do with cost. How will programs be funded when a need for such things as mental health is out there. A bright spot in my eyes and the program schools are working on is the Career and Technical Education (School to Work) or On the Job Training. Call it what you want, schools are putting kids in the workforce teaching how to show up for work on time, how to communicate with the employer and clients, the soft skills that seem to have been lost. In most cases these are dual credit programs, meaning school credit and a start of an apprentice program. To me that is exciting.

We had the opportunity to tour Shodair Children’s Hospital, they deal with mental health, one of the agenda items our committee is dealing with. We soon found out that mental health was only part of the big picture. These kids can be from 3 years to 18 years, attend counseling, school classroom work middle school to high school, and hopefully be transitioned back to a productive life. In 2017, Shodair had 1,700 patients served, 80 percent paid by Medicaid. Patients are referred by schools, guardians, and in some cases patients have asked to be readmitted, average stay is 56 to 75 days depending on the unit they are in. We were briefly introduced to the genetic research work that is being done. At that point we were running late, but I would like to have asked more questions of that department.

A highlight of the week while in Helena was visiting with the Johnson family. They were down to be honored for Blake’s winning the Farm Bureau bumper sticker art work. Have a great week.

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Sen. Russ Tempel, R-Chester, a candidate for re-election, can be contacted at [email protected].