Support for a Community College in the Bitterroot Valley from Rob & Terry Ryan – Proposed Bitterroot campus faces tough sell to regents this week – Your Support is Needed

From: Terry Ryan

Sent: Friday, November 14, 2008 12:19 PM

To: ‘[email protected]’; ‘[email protected]’; ‘[email protected]’; ‘[email protected]’; ‘[email protected]’; ‘[email protected]’; ‘[email protected]’

Cc: ‘[email protected]’; ‘[email protected]’; ‘[email protected]’

Subject: Support for a Community College in the Bitterroot Valley from Rob & Terry Ryan

Dear Board of Regents,

We are writing to ask your support for establishing a Community College in Ravalli County for the Bitterroot Valley.

The Rob and Terry Ryan Foundation is a major philanthropy entity in the Bitterroot Valley. Our primary focus has been education. Therefore we are intimately involved with the education facilities in Ravalli County. Last year we completed the endowment of the Valley’s GED program with $50,000. The two years before that we gave over $200,000 to Hamilton High School to provide state of the art technology to the science and math departments. Earlier we endowed the music program at the high school with $150,000.

All of these "investments" have paid handsome dividends in community benefits. The GED program graduated 45 this year, more than several of the Valley’s high schools! The Science labs at Hamilton High School gained a dual function as the training grounds for lab techs for Glaxo Smith Kline and The Rocky Mountain Laboratories, two major employers in the Valley. In 2007 Hamilton High School was one of 7 high school choirs nationwide invited to perform at Carnegie Hall in New York City.

Local education opportunities in the Bitterroot are welcomed and put to good use by the community. The Community College campaign has been a grassroots effort which has gained a groundswell of support from folks all over this valley. Ravalli County’s current population is 40,000. Our community would reap many benefits from the addition of a local two year College. Just one year of education past high school nearly doubles lifetime earnings.

We need a community college so we can tailor the opportunities to the local community needs. For example, 15 years ago there were seven sawmills in the Valley. Now there are none. This resulted in severe employment displacement. The valley had no means of retraining those displaced. The impacts of the displacement could have been mitigated if retraining opportunities were available. Instead, many area families are still suffering financially from mill closures. Now we need to provide retraining to area trades people who are out of work because the building boom in the Valley is ending. These are good productive citizens, the kind of people every community should strive to keep. Let’s not blow it this time!

Local college opportunities are even more important in times of economic stress. Families can more easily afford to keep a kid in school if he or she can live at home. Many of those who want to go to school must also work. This is impossible if you have a two to three hour per day commute to school. Such commute time puts continuing education literally out of reach for working people who live in Darby or up the West or East Fork of the Bitterroot River.

Getting remote outpost COT status from the U of M won’t hack it. It has already been demonstrated we are treated as a poor relation. We will be offered only classes where U of M can profit. If the same classes at U of M or the related COT are not filled up in Missoula, we will be expected to commute rather than have our own. By the same token, if we cannot fill up the class room down here U of M will not want to expend it’s assets to offer the course. When our two local labs needed training for lab tech positions, U of M proposed to run the courses at the COT in their Missoula location. The only reasons U of M finally conceded to offer the classes in Hamilton were one, the state of the art lab equipment our Foundation gave Hamilton High School blew the equipment at the COT in Missoula out of the water and two, our local high school teacher is more than qualified to give the classes so no U of M instructor had to commute from Missoula. Otherwise U of M would have insisted on running the courses at it’s Missoula COT location and local young people interested in qualifying for these local jobs would have lost out.

In uncertain economic times, investment in infrastructure is one of the smartest moves a state can make. It puts people to work and gives everyone hope. The economic stimulus it provides is permanent, unlike tax refunds to individuals which are soon spent. And, as the ad says, improving the earning power of young people in the community, priceless.

Sincerely,

Rob and Terry Ryan, Trustees

The Rob & Terry Ryan Foundation

Hamilton, Montana

November 13, 2008

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Proposed Bitterroot campus faces tough sell to regents this week

By CHELSI MOY of the Missoulian

Bitterroot Valley residents may have a tough time this week persuading the Montana Board of Regents that Ravalli County should have a community college.

“It’s a pretty hard case to make, really,” said Mary Sheehy Moe, the state’s deputy commissioner for two-year education. “I think it’s important for them to show a compelling need to justify the addition of another community college.”

Commissioner of Higher Education Sheila Stearns and her staff released a 54-page report Monday on the Bitterroot Valley Community College proposal.

Full Story: http://missoulian.com/articles/2008/11/18/news/local/news02.txt