I attended the rural schools conference in Cedar City this summer, and it was a great conference. I would like to focus on two things that I witnessed while at the conference. First of all, in the opening general session, the URSA board recognized Mel Brown as a “Friend of Education” and awarded him with a plaque. Representative Brown has literally been our friend. His attitude and passion for education, especially in rural Utah, was exemplary over the many years of his service. There were many times that I needed to speak to him about a certain bill or issue, and he always made himself available. Mel made sure he understood the issues, and he consistently listened to us before casting his votes. Our schools receive thousands of dollars each year from the School Land Trust. Representative Brown is the father of the legislation that generates that money for us today. His vision of the trustlands has created a huge financial lift for every district in the state. When it first started, our schools were receiving just a few thousand dollars per year, and now each of our schools gets about $80,000 a year. Mel was also a proponent of Necessarily Existent Small Schools (NESS) funding. He continually advocated for more money to help rural schools that couldn’t offer as much for their students as the urban schools could. Our district receives close to one million dollars per year because of NESS funding. I can’t begin to thank Representative Mel Brown enough for all he did for our district and others like ours during his years of service. We will always be grateful for his desire to help kids get a better education.

            During that same session and in a breakout session I had the opportunity to listen to Christian Moore, who wrote the book, The Resilience Breakthrough. One of our district leadership teams read his book last year as we continue searching ways to help struggling students. Christian is a clinical social worker who has narrowed his focus on helping people, especially kids, tap into their negative emotions and turning them into positive actions. He has an incredible personal story of his childhood and the resilience he had to develop on the streets of Baltimore. His knowledge and passion for teaching resilience skills is unprecedented. In a time when we are seeing mental health issues at an extreme high, we would be foolish not to subscribe to his tools for turning adversity into action. Many of our students face some daunting challenges. Anxiety, fear, depression, ADHD, anger and other challenging emotions are prevalent among many humans, but Christian shares a hopeful message that these emotions can become an asset to our motivation. We all experience negative emotions daily, and we have to subconsciously or consciously work our way through those moments. Many kids and adults are not equipped with the tools to overcome these challenges. It is the duty of all of us to first of all recognize mental health issues as real, secondly, to be sensitive to those who are suffering, and third, to help those around us develop tools to cope and ultimately become strengthened through their own powers of resiliency. We will be using his materials to help our students manage their emotions and build their resilience.

Jerre Holmes

Superintendent