Hi, I’m Father John Hatcher. I’m President of St. Francis Mission and I’m glad to be able to take an opportunity to speak with you again about the things that have happened at the Mission in the last several months.
As you know, we began a school two years ago and we thought that we would start with the third grade – that was a successful year. Then this year, we expanded to third and fourth grade. What we found out is the students we were taking in from the local community, in the third grade, were really at first grade level. So, we’ve had to spend a lot of time trying to get them up to speed and on grade. This coming year we plan to start with Kindergarten. In September, we will be offering Kindergarten through fifth grade. The good news is, there seems to be a lot of people interested in this – we have more people that have signed up and applied for Kindergarten than we have room for, and we think that will also happen in the first and second grades. We will also take in some older children in the third, fourth, and fifth grades. So the school is expanding – a little bit quicker than we planned on – but it seems like it’s wise to take kids in at the Kindergarten level, so that you don’t have to spend so much time trying to catch them up to speed. We will take in some few children – like I said – in the third, fourth, and fifth grade, but not too many because that would drag the kids back – the ones that we’ve had in school – and we’re trying to make sure that we’re going to protect them as we go forward.
We also tried to get the parents involved in supporting the school: we asked them to bring the children to school and pick them up in the evenings; school begins at 8 in the morning and ends at 5 in the afternoon – it’s a long day for the kids, but they enjoy it and I think they’re learning a lot. We ask for the parents to bring the kids to church on Sunday and we ask for the parents to pay a minimal tuition and/or volunteer to clean the school, to work in our community garden, to work in the churches…to sort of get them involved in having some “skin in the game” for their kids going to get this education. We find it much better to partner with people than simply to give out something – and that seems to be a wise way to go.
Other programs are doing well, too. The recovery programs continue to attract a number of family members to come for our family recovery programs. Geraldine Provincal is doing an excellent job there: she got her Bachelor’s degree last year and now she is working on her Master’s degree with South Dakota State University. It’s going to be a long haul because she has to go all the way to Rapid City – which is two and a half hours away – for class and she does that at least once a week, sometimes twice a week. Once she completes that degree, then we will be able to offer counseling services here at the Mission. She has also taken over the suicide crisis hotline. This is very important work that we do and she has trained a number of people to help her with that crisis hotline. Our neighboring reservation has had 8 teenage suicides since the first of the year. Since we began the hotline, a year and a half ago, we haven’t had any teenage suicides. We’ve had some adult suicides, but not teenage ones. We have tried to saturate the schools, the hospital, and the police department with the suicide crisis hotline number. We talk about it on the radio, we talk about it every chance we get – and we think that’s helped. Now, I’m not going to say we’ll never have another teenage suicide – that would be ridiculous – but, I think now we can probably help Pine Ridge as well, and be able to reach out to them and maybe offer that service. Anyway, that’s a very important program that we’ve been working on and that the Mission provides.
A third program that’s going very well is our dental clinic. We started a year and a half ago. It was a slow start – took about four years to get open – but now we have great response from the South Dakota Dental Association – which has five clinics planned for the summer and fall already. We’ve been working with Creighton University Dental School – they came up and do come up four times a year – but now, the University of Nebraska Dental School is coming and the University of Indiana Dental School is coming. So, all summer and fall we’re going to have a number of open clinics for people to come with the cooperation with these universities and many South Dakota dentists; but also dentists from out-of-state, who come and offer their services on a volunteer basis. So, we’ve seen over 600 people in this clinic and we’ve completed their work. This has been a great help to many people and will be to many, many more people.
I had a letter from a person – a doctor – who worked in the Indian Health Service. He asked me, ‘Why is it that you have to provide dental services?’ And, I said to him, ‘Look, we have 26,000 people on this reservation. We know that we have a terrible oral health situation among these people. The hospital is underfunded and understaffed. Even if they were completely funded and completely staffed, they would only be able to take care of one quarter of the people on the reservation. So, in responding to this humanitarian disaster that we’re facing in oral health, the Mission has provided this clinic and many people have come to support this clinic – and I thank you for your support, too.” Whenever we have a letter go out asking for help for the clinic, we get a very good response. But, this is direct service to people – and that helps.
Right now, our religious education programs are winding down in the schools – our four programs that we have. We are preparing the five summer programs for religious education. We’ll have five one-week programs in five different villages. This is something kids turn out for and they love it. We use our Sunday visitor series as the structure for these programs. Xavier High School from Cincinnati sends some of their juniors out to help with this program for two weeks and Jesuit High School of Tampa, my alma mater, come out for a week. So, we’re looking forward to a great summer with religious education.
I want to thank you for your support and I’ll try to keep you updated on what we’re doing. I think that the Mission is doing well and we are looking forward to another good year starting in September. Thank you!
