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Foster grandparent program ending

by Peregrine Frissell Daily Inter Lake
| May 2, 2018 4:00 AM

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KNOWN AS “Grandma Rita,” Rita Gergerich visits with children from Cherry Valley Elementary in Polson. Gergerich is part of a foster grandparent program that is coming to an end this school year.

Five days a week, Rita Gergurich leaves her apartment in Polson and heads to Cherry Valley Elementary School, where she teaches children in the library and works one-on-one with students who need more face time with a teacher.

The students know the 80-year-old as “Grandma Rita” and she has a special Adirondack-style wooden chair that sits in the middle of the group as they listen to the librarian read books. There are two smaller chairs on either side of her where the children who behave the best get to sit.

Gergurich is one of 40 foster grandparents spread throughout western Montana who work with children in schools and other settings. The program, which is run by the Western Montana Area VI Agency on Aging, is ending this year after school lets out for the summer.

It has been getting its funding from a federal grant that requires the agency to put up matching funds. The budget can’t handle the match any longer, said Nancy Hemphill, director of the foster grandparent program. The money mostly goes toward small stipends for the foster grandparents and training.

Foster grandparents receive compensation for the miles they commute to and from work and regularly scheduled training sessions. They also receive $2.65 an hour for the time they spend working.

For the last couple years, Hemphill has been approaching other agencies that might be able to take over the program and provide the matching funds. She said she approached the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes and the Missoula Agency on Aging, but they weren’t able to find the money either. The grant application was due April 26, and since no one filed, the money won’t come in again.

Hemphill has been managing the program full time for the last three years. When the funding dries up and Gergurich loses her job, Hemphill’s job disappears too.

Hemphill’s program places foster grandparents in every county in western Montana except Missoula, which runs its own program. She said that while most school districts have foster grandparents, some rely on it more heavily than others and they will see a significant reduction in the amount of help they have when it ends.

“Libby and Troy, we have a lot of grandparents there,” Hemphill said. “It’s going to really impact the elementary school in Libby because we have five grandparents there.”

Gergurich shared a story that helps illustrate how important a role the grandparents play in the lives of their students.

She spends about five of her 15 hours per week in a classroom where she works one-on-one with students who need extra help. She said earlier this year she was paired with a girl who didn’t want to work with her, and would swipe her notebook off the table and onto the floor when she tried to urge her to do her work.

Gergurich is patient, and as weeks turned to months, she became an increasingly important part of the girl’s life. When Gergurich had some medical issues recently and had to spend two weeks away from the school, the girl’s teacher said she asked where Grandma Rita was every day.

Earlier in her life, Gergurich taught in a school in Ramsay, outside of Butte. She said teaching was a different game back then, but the skills she formed help her as a foster grandmother at Cherry Valley.

Not all foster grandparents used to teach, but many of them have worked with children in the past, Gergurich said.

She later pursued a nomadic life working at different national parks, from as far north as Alaska all the way down to Death Valley in California. She would head south in the winter and north in the summer and loved the lifestyle. She made enough to keep doing what she loved until she was 75, and eventually decided to retire to Polson.

“I never made much money, but I got used to getting by on very little,” Gergurich said.

Years of having a low income, however, have made the small stipend from the foster grandparent program especially helpful.

Rita has been budgeting for the last few years just in case the income she received from the program were to dry up, so she isn’t overly concerned about how she’ll be able to make ends meet next year. However, she also said she probably wouldn’t be able to spend as many hours volunteering as she did when she was getting paid for the work.

She also said she knows several grandparents for whom the income was important and would probably have to find other jobs.

Hemphill said when the funding disappears next year, the foster grandparents will likely all still be able to continue volunteering, but they won’t be paid or have their transportation expenses reimbursed. They will also no longer have the monthly training sessions.

Gergurich plans to keep working in the library next year because she values the relationships she has formed there, but said she will likely scale back the hours she spends elsewhere in the school. She said the program helps older citizens feel valued and give back in ways they can.

Reporter Peregrine Frissell can be reached at (406) 758-4438 or pfrissell@dailyinterlake.com.