Innovative Education: Supporting Students, Educators and Communities
On this episode, we’re giving you a special preview of the 3rd annual Governor’s Summit on Innovative Education. Hundreds of educators, students and community leaders will come from all across the state to gather in Jamestown, North Dakota on Aug. 14-15, 2019. They’ll talk about the latest innovations in education and how we can work together to support better behavioral health in our schools. Register for your ticket here: bit.ly/innovativend19
On August 14th and 15th, hundreds of educators, students, and community leaders will come from all across the state to gather in Jamestown, North Dakota.
They'll talk about the latest innovations in education and how we can work together to support better behavioral health in our schools.
And you're invited.
Welcome to Work Worth Doing.
I'm Mark Staples.
Today we're giving you a special preview of the third annual Governor's Summit on Innovative Education.
In previous years, the summit has focused on innovative instruction, best practices to personalize learning, and other community-derived solutions to implement in the classroom.
Since taking office, Governor Burgum has outlined five strategic initiatives for his administration, one of which is transforming education.
As students prepare for life after school, they must leverage the technology of the 21st century and gain the skills and dispositions they need to be creative problem solvers, effective communicators, and informed, responsible citizens.
This year, the summit is adding a second date to deliver a specific focus on behavioral health in an educational setting and opportunities for the behavioral health system and the education system to collaborate in a meaningful way.
The summit is made possible through collaboration between the Governor's Office, the Department of Public Instruction, the Department of Human Services Behavioral Health Division, North Dakota Council of Educational Leaders, the North Dakota School Boards Association, North Dakota United, and the Bush Foundation.
We're chatting with guests from two of those organizations today.
You'll hear from Pam Segnus from the Department of Human Services later on, but first we are joined by State Superintendent Kirsten Basler.
Superintendent Basler was elected in November 2012 after spending 24 years in the Bismarck Public School System as a Vice Principal, Classroom Teacher, and more.
She also served on the Mandan School Board for nine years.
In the first half of the show, we'll discuss the focus of the first day at the summit.
Here's Doug Burgum and Kirsten Basler.
so honored to have Superintendent Baszler here with us today on Work Worth Doing.
Welcome to the show.
Great to have you here.
Thanks for having me, Governor.
I love the title of it, Work Worth Doing.
So captures what we're doing.
Well, absolutely you are, and what an important job you are, and how lucky we are in the state of North Dakota to have you, to have someone who's been an instructor in the classroom, someone who's had an opportunity to serve in administration, also serve on a school board, school board president.
We have three big organizations in our state that are involved outside of government with education, and that would be the The teachers, the administrators, and the school boards, and you're, I believe, probably maybe one of the only superintendents in the country that would be a member of all three of those organizations.
That is true, actually.
There's a couple different combinations of one or two, but not those three, so I do feel pretty fortunate.
And I have to say that each one of those roles, in its own way, really tremendously helped prepare me for the job that we're doing today.
And when you say work worth doing, I mean, obviously, I mean, 121,000 K-12 kids in the state of North Dakota in both our public system and the private system and people being homeschooled.
But I mean, all of these students that are supported by services that come out of the organization that you lead.
So again, thank you for this leadership.
My pleasure.
It truly is an honor.
And one of the things that you know, since Brent Sanford and I got into office two and a half years ago, we teamed up and we've been working shoulder to shoulder with DPI on a number of things, but really working on how do we transform education.
There are so many things that are allowing education to be delivered in a more effective way, more efficient way.
More cost-effective way today than ever before.
And so it's a really exciting time for education and for educators.
And just give us your thoughts and overview about what the opportunity is in front of us.
You have captured that so well, Governor.
And it's truly an opportunity for our young people.
You know, everything can be more challenging, but every time there is a change or a system change that is required, there are so many more opportunities that reveal themselves.
Having you and Lieutenant Governor Sanford Support that in the way that you do and bring that conversation to a new stage with a new elevated importance has been extremely helpful.
We have the conversations among educators.
You have the conversations among family members about the importance of education.
But when your governor's office really leans in and says, you know what, this is the future of who we are as a state, we have to make sure that our system prepares our young people for their future, not necessarily based on our past or our experiences.
It brings a whole new element of conversation and opportunity for those that are actually doing the work, the educators, the leaders, the school board members, all of the families that are involved in their young people's education.
It gives them opportunity to really lean in also and say, you know what, let's take a look at this.
Let's see what can be better tomorrow than it was yesterday or even today.
So we do appreciate it very much.
And I think that there are so many opportunities.
North Dakota is a rural state and we have some rural and isolated communities.
But what I think is sometimes often misunderstood about from others that don't live in a rural community or don't live in a North Dakota is that the people that live in our rural communities and in every school district in our state, they're choosing to live there.
And that might not be the case from some other states, and I've seen that with visiting with other leaders from across the nation.
Sometimes people make the incorrect assumption that those that are living in rural communities are trapped there.
Or they have no other options.
And I try to explain to them that that's not the case in North Dakota.
People go away to university, to colleges, they go away for training, and they come back to those communities to raise their families and earn a really, really good living, whether it's an egg or an energy or in the tech sector, because they can.
So what we get to do in North Dakota is really leverage all of those opportunities to partner that really high quality of life in North Dakota with a really 21st century Cadillac learning system.
Part of the answer is technology.
Part of the answer is that community that we live in and really seizing the opportunities of all the experiences of the people that live within those communities.
Yeah, I agree about all those great communities we have.
And I say being in North Dakota is a choice.
It's not an accident.
People choose to be here, and we want more people to choose to be here, and one of the reasons they might choose to be here is because of the great schools we have.
I've heard that over and over again, especially when I travel in western North Dakota.
We had a lot of people, 2011, 2013, 2015, that were moving to North Dakota from all parts of the nation.
Then there was a bit of a dip, as we all know, in our energy industry.
And what we didn't see was a reduction in our student enrollment.
And so we looked into that a little bit more deeply, asked lots of questions as I was in Western North Dakota.
And one of the reasons that many of the families stated was because they couldn't get a public education of the quality that they were getting in North Dakota back in their home state.
So they chose to ride out the economic downturn.
Some of those employees, the energy sector employees that had been traveling back and forth, flying home on the weekends 'cause their energy company paid for it, or maybe they were paying dual housing, they were faced with a choice.
Do they quit a good job and move back because housing wasn't being paid for anymore and their travel wasn't, or do they move their family up here?
So we actually saw an uptick in student population when more families became permanent residents in Western North Dakota, and that's a true testimony to our education system But with that being said, Governor, I have to say that good is good, but good is not great.
And so it's one of the things that we, I think, have to be aware of as we look at education.
We can celebrate how good we're doing, but is good good enough for those 121,000 students?
And so I want to be excellent.
I think we should be great.
And so we should never stop exploring the ways that we can improve and the continuous improvement.
And I think that that's what the Innovative Education Summit that you hold every year, the opportunities that our legislators have supported, it's asking our school leaders and our communities to say, "Okay, we're good, but what do we need to do better?" And that growth mindset that we ask all of our children to have, and that curiosity that we ask our students to have, we are asking ourselves to do that same thing as adult education leaders.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I agree with you on the excellence because I believe we really have an opportunity in North Dakota to be number one in the country.
The resources we have, the leadership we have, but part of where those ideas are also going to come from is from people on the front lines.
But one of the things I've always been impressed from the first time I saw you before I was even in government and when you were out doing your job and serving the state of North Dakota was you always put students first.
And you've found some ways to really listen and learn from students.
You've formalized students.
You've got a statewide group of students, but maybe just talk a little bit about that, because I think some people might think of, you know, the local K-12 school is a form of, it's about jobs for teachers, or it may be about, you know, the local sports team, or it may be about another thing that provides community pride, but I know that your number one concern is the I appreciate that.
And yes, they are.
The 121,000 students that we serve in North Dakota in one way or another, they're my primary customers.
And the reason I pull into the parking lot every day at the Capitol, and I try to communicate that with the team.
I think the team at the department that I have the pleasure of working with, the honor of working with at the department, we understand that that is who we serve.
Those are our customers, them and their families.
That is our number one priority.
And I think it's important for us as adults to remember that it's our responsibility to set the table for them to be successful.
This group of young people that are in our K-12 schools now Not a lot of adults get to hang out with them the way that I do or get to engage with them.
But I'll tell you, I don't think I've seen a better generation ever.
They're excited.
They're eager.
They have creative ideas.
They understand the responsibility to make this state, this nation a better place than it was last year, last generation.
But they really are counting on us as adults to make sure that the things that are necessary to be in place are in place.
And so student voice is extremely important to me.
My student engagement cabinet was a direct result of me having spent 24 years in a classroom and school buildings as an educator in different roles and different capacities.
And so every time I would make a decision whether it be as a classroom teacher, a building administrator, or a school board member in a district, It was pretty easy for me to see the results and the impact that that decision would make.
If it was as a classroom teacher, I'd make a decision, boom, I had 25 people telling me whether it was a good decision or a bad decision that were impacting them.
Same thing in a school building, same thing in a school district.
Suddenly I'm elected, my office moves from a school building to the 11th floor of the Capitol, and I have kind of a vacuum of that student voice.
I had lots of opportunities to talk with legislators, school administrators, school teachers, but I wasn't really hearing from the people that those decisions were being made for.
I started the student cabinet.
It's a group of young people, 4th grade through 12th grade, that serve an 18-month term.
And that's intentional because those 12th graders then go on to their first year out of school, whether it be to a trade school, a four-year university, four-year research university, or a regional college.
They come back, meet with me quarterly for a full day, and share with me what's working, what worked well, what do we need to keep doing, or what didn't go so well, and what do we need to stop doing, or what do we need to start doing and implementing.
So incredible policy ideas have come from a result of those conversations with my student cabinet.
And I think it is catching on.
I think the rest of the nation is starting to really understand that student voice.
Students aren't letting, I think, the rest of the nation forget that they exist and I'm proud of them for that.
Yeah, well, I have to agree with you on that because with the Main Street Initiative, we basically have a rule now.
If we're going to come to a community to do a Main Street listening session, we will not be there and have that unless there are students at the table.
And it's always a great contrast when the adults tell us how many things there are to do for kids in their community, and then we ask the kids the same question, and sometimes we get different answers.
I mean, we need to be building...
Schools and communities for our students and not just the leaders of tomorrow.
These students really are the leaders of today and we've got an opportunity for us to engage them at all kinds of levels and really be part of the solution to what we're doing.
Student involvement is key to developing an education system that delivers the essential skills necessary for success after high school.
But with the rapid changes we're seeing in technology, we know that the path to success is not rigidly defined.
Students in our system today will one day have careers that don't even exist yet.
That's why Superintendent Basler has led the Department of Public Instruction to develop a new component in the North Dakota accountability system called Choice Ready to measure whether our high schools produce students who are ready for their future.
The Governor's Summit on Innovative Education will feature presentations from educators who are implementing innovative solutions to create Choice Ready graduates.
We've also got another group of people that are really, really important, and that's these frontline teachers, which I know you care about deeply, and you've been there, you've been in their shoes, and you advocate for them strongly, but we've got so many people that are doing really innovative work on the front edge.
I mean, they're out there really driving change in the schools, and that gets me excited.
And at the upcoming summit, we're going to have a chance, you and I, to give out some innovation awards.
But tell us a little bit about when you think about those frontline teachers and innovative transformation.
It is.
I, too, share your excitement.
It gets me so excited.
I think a majority of adults, if they're not involved with the education system, even if they have students in school, they don't understand how different the classroom looks today than it did 10 or 15, 20 years ago, certainly 30 and 40 years ago when I was in school.
It looks so different.
There aren't desks in rows.
There aren't the teacher up at the front of the room imparting knowledge and students just vigorously taking notes in their notebooks.
It is so different.
There is collaboration.
There's communication.
There is the opportunity for students to ask a curious question and then find out their answer.
Teachers have transformed and have evolved into much less of a sage on stage and much more of a facilitator.
There's also a transition that our teachers have gone through in the last 10 years, and this hasn't been imposed upon them.
It's been their own self-journey of awareness where they're less afraid to acknowledge that they don't know the answer.
When one of their students has a question, they're so much more comfortable today by saying, you know what?
I don't know the answer to that.
Let's find out.
That's a great question.
And that question may transition an entire nine-week period into a different exploration journey that that class has taken because of a good question.
And so our teachers, as you said, are incredible.
They are my heroes.
We had the opportunity to recognize some of our best of the best, those that received their national board certification.
Those that are our Milken Award winner, as well as our North Dakota Teacher of the Year, you heard their stories.
You heard about their self-reflections and the journeys.
They never stop learning, and they do it all for their students just because they understand the important role that they play.
That was such an inspiring day, and I'm looking forward to acknowledge them again during our summit, the same folks that we got to recognize here at the Capitol.
I know one of the things that you've talked about a lot is being choice ready.
And it's so important in this day and age, which I think is a great reflection, because I think the culture of our nation is really changing from being college ready to choice ready, because the path of piling up a lot of college debt, $1.6 trillion in our nation, because the path of piling up a lot of college debt, $1.6 trillion in our nation, trillion with a T of When we know that even in our state right now, there's 30,000 jobs available in North Dakota that pay well.
And these are not dead end jobs.
These are jobs with companies who continue to invest in additional certification, additional degrees.
And many of those companies will pay for college, as does the military will pay for your college.
There's a lot of ways to achieve high levels of education without having to take all the debt on yourself.
But just tell us a little bit more about choice ready and how that's influenced the strategies of DPI.
It speaks to the culture of who we are as North Dakotans.
We want our students to be well-rounded.
We want them to be able to do whatever they choose to do after they graduate from high school.
And I think it's the responsibility that our state, our state's leaders, developed the Choice Ready plan.
It wasn't something developed by the Department of Public Instruction, but it was a group of teachers and educational leaders and parents And specialists that came together and said, our kids need to be well-rounded.
It's not just enough for them to be ready for post-secondary education.
It's not just enough for them to be ready for work or military.
They need to be ready for at least two of those three.
All of us have probably spent time with a young person that said, oh, I'm never going to college.
I'm going to go get my welding degree or I'm going to go get my electrician degree.
And then I'm going to go out and work for the rest of my life.
And I had one of those sons.
And then suddenly he went to line workers school, to linemen school.
He got his two-year certificate as associate's degree.
And lo and behold, he's 20 years old and he understands and realizes that, boy, when he's out on the pole, it's probably because it's 40 below and the wind is blowing and there's ice on the line.
And he thought, I don't want to do that for the rest of my life.
And so he went back and decided to go back to school again.
So with that, we need to make sure that when they change their mind at 20 or 21, that high school has prepared them.
We also have to make sure that they're exposed to a lot of different things.
A student may say, I want to be an engineer or an architect.
They've never spent any time in an engineering office or an architect's office, and so they go to school, they build up all this pile of debt, and they finish college, and they just said, I don't want to do that anymore.
We have to make sure that we have those experiences while they're in high school, While they still can make some fluid changes so they're not piling up a lot of debt, we also have to help them understand that there is a tremendous amount of career opportunity out there that can be accomplished through micro-credentialing or through an associate's degree or a certificate and internships and multiple pathways.
The post-secondary education still is super valuable.
Not going to diminish that at all.
But we have to make sure that our students have all of the choices in front of them, and that's K-12 responsibility.
I'm really excited about that.
I'm going to say that some of our schools are having a little bit of adjustment period, redefining who they might be in that arena.
Not really quite being able to understand and grasp that, well, I have a kid that got accepted to Harvard with a full scholarship and you're telling me he's not choice ready?
No, I'm telling you that he's college ready, but has he had an opportunity to do an internship?
Has he had workplace experience?
Has he had the opportunity to practice those C's of communication, collaboration, creativity?
He got a great ACT score.
He got a great GPA. But is he ready for being Choice Ready?
And we're going to get a chance to talk about that, Choice Ready.
We're going to be able to talk about, you know, transforming education, innovation education at this upcoming summit.
This will be the third one that we've had.
This one's August 14th and 15th at James Sound High School.
But tell us a little bit about why.
Who should come and why they should come?
You know, I think this gathering, this summit that was created, third annual, I'm so excited about it.
The first year was an amazing gathering of people.
The energy, the momentum was incredible.
You announced at the first Innovation Summit the creation of the Innovative Education Task Force that led to a whole multitude of ideas through those meetings, those gatherings, the learnings together, a list of must-dos and have-to-dos.
The second summit that we had, we introduced the idea of the Innovative Education Awards, which we will continue and have at this year's summit.
But this summit is for everyone.
It is for teachers.
It's for students.
We had a student panel at the first education summit.
We've had student speakers.
It's for community leaders.
It's for parents.
It's for legislators.
It's for anyone and everyone.
We're excited and interested in knowing about what we can do for the next generation of our 0-18 year olds.
Absolutely.
And one of the things that we're adding this year too, of course, because we know that behavioral health is a big topic in the schools, a lot of our teachers are being put in a position where, as opposed to teaching, they're actually having to deal with all kinds of Behavioral health-related issues, and so we're teaming up with our North Dakota Human Services Behavioral Health Division.
We'll also be present this year at the Innovation Summit.
The behavioral health issue, it's been in the media.
I think you'd be hard-pressed to not know that there are challenges, increased challenges.
There has been conversations about it among our teachers.
I hear about it from students, families, educational leaders, and teachers.
This is something that is impacting everyone.
And I am so happy to have this summit evolve into that two-day partnership with DHS And the Governor's Office and DPI. I think it really models an example that's very, very important for us to be leveraging at the state level.
Chris Jones, Pam Sagnes from the Department of Human Services.
Chris Jones, the Executive Director.
Pam Sagnes, the Behavioral Health Division Director.
They have been some of my greatest partners in the last two years.
As this has become more and more pressing of an issue in education, We have become better and better partners, better and better communicators.
We spend $2.3 billion, I believe, was this year's budget in education, K-12 education.
There is a whole other set of billions of dollars in behavioral health services at DHS. Two state agencies shouldn't be replicating the same thing.
I have a whole field of people that have gone to school for 4, 6, 8, 10 years in education.
Chris has a whole field of people that are behavioral health specialists that go to school for 4, 6, 8, 10 years.
We should not be duplicating those services within our communities.
Chris has people in his counties.
I have school districts in our counties.
This is a great example of two separate state agencies that are partnering and collaborating together to meet the whole child and the whole family within the communities that they live.
And so I think it's just better government.
It's more efficient and more effective work.
So I'm really excited about this partnership.
The first day's agenda will feature speakers who are nominated by their peers to share the work they've done in their schools to improve educational outcomes.
To view the lineup of speakers as they're announced, visit bit.ly slash InnovativeND19.
That's bit.ly slash InnovativeND19.
You can also use that link to register for your free ticket.
We turn now to Day 2's agenda, Behavioral Health.
Pam Stagnus, Director of the Behavioral Health Division in the Department of Human Services, has more than 20 years of experience in behavioral health.
She's worked as a clinician, prevention administrator, and substance abuse program lead.
We'll start by discussing the need for behavioral health care in North Dakota and learn what kind of services her team helps to provide.
Well, we're honored to have Pam Sagnes join us on Work Worth Doing.
Pam, great to have you here.
Great, great.
I'm so happy to be here.
Well, and look, we're honored to have you here for a number of reasons.
One is, of all the people I've met in my life, you know more about behavioral health and behavioral health programs and implementation and success stories than anybody I've met.
And then secondly, you've been such a great partner.
And I just want to say thanks on behalf of the First Lady.
Of North Dakota, Katherine Helges-Bergam, myself, our whole team.
Your work as a director of the Behavioral Health Division within Human Services North Dakota has had a huge impact on thousands of lives, and the partnership's been incredible.
To kick it off for people to understand all the great work you do, just talk a little bit about your division and the impact you have broadly, and then we'll zero in on K-12 after that.
Absolutely.
Well, thank you for having me.
I think it's so important that we're talking about behavioral health.
It's really been kind of one of those key things we've been working on as a state over the last, not just the last session, but multiple sessions.
We also want to thank you for the leadership that we've seen and for First Lady Catherine and her work in creating awareness of stigma and creating this awareness around behavioral health.
So I guess I'd start with talking a little bit about what behavioral health is.
Behavioral health is a new term for some people because it's an umbrella term that kind of encompasses the things that historically were addiction, mental illness, brain injury, general prevention, and wellness.
And so when we use the term behavioral health, we're really speaking to those components of wellness or well-being.
And so when we talk about behavioral health, one of the key messages we want to make sure that people are aware is that behavioral health is part of health.
And when we look at wellness, they're so interconnected.
If you want to be healthy physically, we also need to have behavioral health.
So in that, North Dakota has really been working to reform the current behavioral health system.
There's been years and years of research and study looking at what we need to do.
And over the last year, we've really seen the most significant change in our state that we've ever seen.
I'm so excited about the things that we're going to be able to do over the next year to change the lives and the opportunities for people of North Dakota.
And Pam, tell us a little bit about what are these things where you think that the next 12 months and what are the big opportunities that are in front of us?
Yeah, absolutely.
So this is the first legislative session where I can say there was the action that went behind the momentum that we had been seeing.
We've been studying behavioral health for many years, but those studies didn't always result in the type of action that we would have necessarily wanted to see happen.
But what really changed this year is that we had numbers.
We started to be able to really talk about things in the context of how do we make true change and how can we make our system meaningful, making meaningful change to be sustainable.
And so part of that is one of the things that will be changing this year is that we're going to have reimbursement for services that never existed before in behavioral health.
The change comes from a legislative bill that introduced a 1915i Medicaid state plan amendment.
And that may be something that doesn't really mean a lot to everyone, but what it means is that we're going to be able to provide services that are recovery support services, education supports, respite, care coordination, education supports, things that just weren't available for individuals before that had a mental illness.
And they're services that sometimes people were able to access if they had a different condition, but it was something that if you had an addiction or a mental illness or a brain injury, there just weren't those services.
And so it's kind of one of those things where we're changing the system based on being able to have access to services by having them part of that health care plan.
And these reimbursements and the ability to reimburse for those essential activities which we know are part of that continuum of care really matter.
Maybe just for the listeners, talk a little about the continuum of care.
Talk about where the money used to go in the old system and how you're going to be able to put it into places that are more effective under this new approach.
So there were really three key areas that we've identified that we need to make change in order to have a really effective behavioral health system.
The first is that we need to support the full continuum of care.
And what that means is we need to invest in prevention.
Whenever possible, if we can prevent an illness, that's the best thing that we can do.
And then we need to have early intervention services so that if there is an individual that starts showing symptoms, we have an opportunity to intervene and change the trajectory of that illness whenever possible.
But there's always going to be individuals that we need to interact at a point when there's already maybe a need for treatment.
So how do we have effective, efficient, and robust treatment services that are accessible to everyone in the state of North Dakota?
And then lastly, how do we ensure that we have recovery support services?
So often in North Dakota, someone may be able to access that acute treatment.
But once treatment is over and they return to their community, especially in rural North Dakota, you have to say, what services do I now have available in my home community?
And so we're really working to build robust recovery support services so that no matter where someone lives, they have access to those services.
So supporting that full continuum is vital.
I think that's one of the key things that really changed this legislative session was the understanding that we can't reduce prevention in order to support treatment, and we can't Support treatment without having those recovery support services and we had key legislators and great leadership in the executive branch that said we need to do this right and we need to do this in the way that's going to be meaningful for people.
The other two things that we really focused on this session were how do we get community-based services, right?
How do we get services to people where they live?
So often when we're talking about behavioral health and there's a need, people say, well, where can they go for treatment?
And we need to first ask ourselves, how do we get treatment here?
How can we get services, recovery support services and those early intervention services to each person in their community so they're not having to access those very expensive, higher levels of care that sometimes are unnecessary.
Or distant.
Absolutely.
So you're really talking about meeting people where they are.
100% meeting people where they are.
We should not be in a situation where the system actually disconnects someone even further from their natural supports.
A parent shouldn't have to leave their children in order to get services.
And we shouldn't be in situations where we're creating difficulty for someone to maintain their employment in order to get their health care.
And that's the key.
It is healthcare.
Treatment is healthcare.
The last thing that we focused on was also decreasing the criminal justice involvement for individuals who have a behavioral health condition.
We need to recognize that in North Dakota, a lot of what we've done is criminalize behavioral health because of the lack of resources.
If someone has to go to prison in order to access a service, our system has failed.
We've failed that individual.
We've failed their family.
We've failed perhaps their children.
We've also failed the taxpayer because the criminal justice system might be a $41,000 a year per person solution for incarceration.
And I know that you've shown me that we have, for less than $41,000 a year, we can have very effective health care interventions, which can really transform and turn people's lives around.
Yeah, absolutely.
I think it's so important that we're focusing on how we can change our reimbursement to really incentivize wellness instead of sickness.
So how can we ensure that we're looking at outcomes that we're expecting outcomes?
No one goes to a healthcare provider for a physical condition like diabetes and doesn't expect to have positive outcomes.
We wouldn't settle for a 25% success rate of insulin, right?
We would say that's not good enough.
And so it's so important that we're doing that same thing when we're looking at behavioral health, because again, behavioral health is health.
And so there needs to be that same understanding of access to services, and our expectations should be that equally as high.
I love your insulin example, but I think it's the same thing.
I mean, we acknowledge that diabetes is a chronic, progressive, and ultimately fatal disease, and that if someone likely gets to the point where they need insulin, then they need that for the rest of their life.
And I think that we've had for too long a misunderstanding that in some of the mental health Behavioral health addiction is really a brain disease, and you can't solve a chronic, progressive, ultimately fatal disease with 28 days of treatment any more than you can solve diabetes with 28 days of insulin.
But yet, the reimbursement model was for the 28-day, quote, treatment model, and then we would have a high relapse.
And I think, again, we have to realize that some of the things we've been funding have been helpful but maybe not effective.
Absolutely.
And I think it's important to make sure that we mention mental health in that.
Because so much of this, lots of times we talk about it in the context to addiction.
But mental illness, we have a very similar thing, which is often an individual is unable to get the mental health services they need.
And so we end up looking for criminal charges as a system.
We look for criminal charges so that we can have a safe place for somewhere to go, for someone to go.
And sometimes that means we're criminalizing what is actually an illness, instead of seeking the right services.
And so individuals end up in jails, And they end up in prison because of a chronic mental illness.
And it's so important that we find a way to kind of right-size what those needs are and meet those needs sooner.
Yeah, and I'm going to go back to your first of your three things on the continuum care, because this is something you helped me understand, was that when we took a look at the budgets, and North Dakota and the nation spends a lot of money, but we were spending very little on prevention, very little on early intervention, a pile on treatment, and very little on recovery.
And so part of what I would say is that the approach that you're describing and bringing and what you've got, the reimbursement models and the programs support you, is A model that's more balanced, but also it's more cost-effective, particularly when we can move resources into...
A dollar spent in prevention has got a very high return, and a dollar spent on the other end on low-cost, high-effective recovery support services, peer-to-peer support, all the innovations around free through the recovery.
That's also got a high ROI on both ends of those things, so we don't need to...
These are sometimes small dollars and high return.
Absolutely.
I think one of the things that's really exciting after this session is that for the first time we've seen an investment in mental health promotion and mental illness prevention.
So we're excited to get to, over the next 12 months, develop a program that will really focus on that promotion.
We've had minimal funding that's been provided at the state level for substance abuse prevention also, but we're able to access some federal grants in order to kind of Have that program be more robust, but we're really excited about the changes in the investment in prevention.
One dollar in prevention can save $64 in costs that otherwise we incur.
And not just save dollars, but also save lives.
Because when we talk about youth and we talk about progressive and sometimes ultimately fatal, I know your division also has got a big focus on awareness and prevention around suicide.
And I know you've got some statistics that have come back from youth surveys that are, you know, as a As a parent, as a citizen, certainly I don't want to say shocked me, but raised my awareness about how pervasive in today's world and today's sometimes isolated,
not because there aren't people around you, but maybe it's isolating because of technology or something else, but we've seen some really disturbing trends here in North Dakota relative to our youth and how they think about suicide or how they've attempted suicide.
Absolutely.
I think it's important to note that we can see a connection between our resource and our efforts and the outcomes that we're seeing.
So although we've seen our underage drinking rates cut in half, and we've had those prevention programs in place and been implementing them, we continue to see increases around depression or students that are feeling hopeless.
We see increases in suicide and very young, young children who have completed suicides.
And that's very concerning and something that we need to address immediately as a state.
And I know that there's a lot of effort that has already been underway around suicide.
One of the changes that occurred just this month is that the Suicide Prevention Program has been embedded in the Behavioral Health Division.
Our goal being that we can ensure that suicide prevention and support services are woven throughout that full continuum of care that we talked about earlier.
It's just so important that we don't lose sight of that, is that the numbers are increasing when we look at the mental health needs of our youth.
If behavioral health providers are going to meet people where they are and provide essential supports, they must be in sync with our schools.
Pam and her team have been working to develop a roster of presenters who will engage teachers, administrators, students, parents, and community leaders to support better behavioral health for North Dakota's youth.
And as we talk about our youth and their behavioral and mental health needs, this is why we've added a second day to the Innovative Education Summit.
We really want to focus on behavioral health and youth, and we've got an exciting day planned.
It's going to be an opportunity for Everyone that attends, educators, school board members, parents, administrators, behavioral health specialists that care about students to come and be part of this.
But maybe just give us a little bit of a preview of some of the topics and what people will learn and why should they attend.
Yeah, absolutely.
It's so important that we focus on the fact that we have two separate systems right now that really haven't necessarily been working together.
We have a behavioral health system that's under its own state of reform and has needs and we're not meeting the capacity.
And then we have an education system that is desperately really crying out and saying, we need behavioral health supports.
So over the last couple of years, we've been really engaging to say, how can we do a better job of having cross-system communication, understanding what I think what's important to note is that one of the first things we need to start with is just an understanding and understanding that our languages are different.
One of the best examples I have of that is actually as a parent.
I've been a parent who's received a phone call from an emotional disturbance specialist.
And I didn't know what that was.
How can I be the director of the behavioral health division?
And I don't know what an emotional disturbance specialist is.
It doesn't exist in the realm of behavioral health.
It's not a title.
It's not a thing.
And it really made me think about...
But this was a thing that existed within the K-12 education system.
Absolutely.
And it's one of those things where I went to a meeting and I was like, can you explain to me, is this a social worker?
Is this a clinician?
I just didn't understand.
And it was something that was really difficult to navigate.
And I thought, if I'm struggling to navigate this in the education system with the skills and the advantages I have of understanding behavioral health...
How can I struggle this much with that?
And that's one of the first things that I bring up when we first started having conversations with education partners.
I was like, we are not using the same words.
And it was something that has really had an implication when we look at credentialing and who's working in schools.
So we'll have schools that will meet with us and say, we have a behavioral health crisis.
We hired a counselor.
But it's a counselor who can't Do the things that they need.
It's not a clinician.
And so they don't know our language either.
They don't know the difference between an LICSW and an LCSW and an LSW. Those are all different classifications of a social worker.
So we started with creating a basic framework of how do we cross our language.
And so a lot of what we'll be talking about at Innovative Education is going to be focused on What are the language differences and how do we start integrating our system so that we better serve the children that we are meant to serve?
And those are the youth at risk for behavioral health issues, those already experiencing behavioral health issues.
We have a continuum of care and education has a multi-tiered system of supports or MTSS. So that was the second thing we did is we said, well, how do we cross the continuum of care and the MTSS? So we're all talking about the same thing.
So that, again, is another thing we'll be able to present at Innovative Education and say, hey, look, we're all talking about the same thing.
We're all talking about Tier 1 is prevention and promotion, and Tier 2 is that early intervention.
So it's so important that we're all speaking to the same thing.
We have a shared goal.
We all want to see education be able to occur because someone's symptoms are not disruptive in the classroom or Or impeding their own ability to be successful.
So those are all the things we're working on.
We're excited to also provide information on all of the new legislative actions that have passed.
The behavioral health executive budget request is fully funded in regard to action, right?
And so we have the opportunity for the first time To really impact and make changes from a policy perspective to increase services.
And doing that without adding, you know, an incredible amount of additional resource.
We need to be creative.
We need to be able to find how we can do things in a smarter way, in a more efficient way.
How can we incentivize wellness, again, moving towards outcome-based payment and doing some of those things.
And so those are all things that are opportunities for us to just have additional conversation about.
Well, it's exciting because when I think about the shared goals, we all want happier, healthier children who are reaching their fullest potential.
And there's such an opportunity for the state of North Dakota.
We could actually be the first in the nation to have this level of partnership between our education system and our behavioral health system.
And it could be transformational.
And the long-term effects, not just affecting every one of those 121,000 kids who That are in school today, but what it could mean in terms of fewer people engaged with our criminal justice system in the future, you know, fewer suicides.
It's, again, life-changing and so fun that you're on the front lines of that.
Pam, you've dedicated yourself to this for really a lifetime, but maybe share a little bit with people about, you know, what's the source of your passion and why do you find this work worth doing and what's your optimism about where we can go next?
I just think for me this is such an exciting time.
We rarely get to see entire system transformation.
And that's really the thing that is my passion.
I am passionate about behavioral health and finding a way to more creatively solve the problems that we're dealing with because it impacts every single one of us.
And I don't know a person who hasn't had a moment in their life when they haven't, you know, at least had an experience where they've struggled with anxiety or depression or had a family member with an addiction.
And it impacts every single one of us.
And it comes back to the core values of really, you know, for me, how I was raised in rural North Dakota, which is that, you know, you care for your community, you're responsible for your community and for each other.
And it's just part of who I am.
And I think it's a huge opportunity to be able to be a part of it.
The next 12 months are going to be the most important opportunities we have to transform the children's system.
And I'm just excited to be a part of it.
Fantastic.
Thanks for being with us today, Pam.
Well, thanks for listening in.
And again, I want to invite anyone who's listening and your friends to And your relatives and anybody who cares about children and our future in North Dakota to join us at our third annual Governor's Summit on Innovative Education, August 14th and 15th at Jamestown High School.
Of course, that's the alma mater of the First Lady.
But it's going to be a fantastic program.
Day 1 on the 14th is going to be really focused on innovative education.
Day 2, as you heard from Pam Sagnes, we're going to be talking about behavioral health in the schools.
Both days fascinating.
Both days are going to help advance your understanding and your career.
So make time.
If you haven't registered already, listen in.
Find out how to register.
Register online, and we'll look forward to seeing you in Jamestown.
Tickets and more information can be found at bit.ly slash InnovativeND19.
Again, that's bit.ly slash InnovativeND19.
Thanks to State Superintendent Kirsten Baszler and Pam Sagnes for joining us today.
They'll also be joining us and hundreds of stakeholders in Jamestown.
We hope to see you there.
Finally, thanks to our audio producer, Alicia Jolliffe.
