To the Editor:

As most know by now, the House budget includes cuts to mental health programs including a cut to Wright School in Durham. As an informed constituent who retired in 2015 from a career in teaching young people from ages 6 through university over nearly 30 years, I understand the concerns some House members have with this funding. 

For one semester in Birmingham, Alabama, while getting a master’s in special education, I taught at a residential school for middle and high school kids. It was the most stressful work I ever did, and part of that stress had to do with the way the school was run. It had inadequate funding, so it could not attract or keep enough qualified teachers, resulting in too-large classes; and the buildings were sub-standard, to say the least. We had to make our own teaching materials.

However, thanks to North Carolina’s historic support of education, Wright School is a different, far better school altogether. It has a success rate that is admirable, with little staff turnover. It is returning children who had severe problems back to their families and regular schools to function successfully, with continued counseling as needed. Also, Wright School does serve children from as far away as here in the mountains. For these reasons, I hope lawmakers will change the current budget funding allotted for Wright to provide what it needs to expand and continue to help our most desperate children and their families. Three million dollars is a small price to pay for the vast service Wright is doing to children, their families and their neighborhoods. It is pennies compared to the costs of arresting, trying, and incarcerating or putting to death an adult who didn’t get help in childhood.

Here is one example of a family’s story, this told in an interview of the mother:

[Mrs.] Wall said it’s likely she would have spent two or three times that cost out-of-pocket for a private residential center because her insurance would not cover it.

“It was going to cost me anywhere from $530 to $680 a day to put my son in private therapeutic treatment,” she said. R has diagnoses of ADHD, oppositional defiance disorder, major depression and anxiety.

“This was a 10-year-old that had two previous hospitalizations … and was threatening and had a plan for suicide … He was a ticking time bomb.”

When R came home after seven months at the school, Wall described him as “being in a better place.” He attends local schools now.

“They were able to get his medications correct, and on point, which is a difficult task, unless someone is watching him 24 hours a day, which a regular psychiatrist can’t do,” she said. “He learned coping skills through the Wright School that he still uses today.”

Many of the staff have been at the school for decades and several people noted the low turnover. Principal Pete Rich, who has been there two decades, makes $81,796, according to data from the Office of the State Controller. Clinical staff, who have master’s degrees and years of experience, make around $60,000. Lower level counselors make about $40,000.

Dr. Mary Curry

Haywood County