Second chance for discovery-A dead-end job and a $200 scholarship jump-started Frank White’s college career.

His life-changing shift happened while listening to a Miles City radio station one day. At the time, he was unhappy working as a boiler operator and lumber dryer, pulling down $8.90 an hour.

By BETSY COHEN
of The Missoulian

"Logging and sawmills is all that I had ever known, but before long there were no longer sawmills to go to," White said. "At 29, I didn’t have a lot of options."

As he sat listening to the radio, the show’s host offered listeners a $200 scholarship to Miles City Community College.

On a whim, White called in and got the prize.

When he told his boss about the scholarship, and joked that he actually might use it, his boss offered him a 10-cent-an-hour raise.

White chose, rather, to get his associate’s degree in Miles City, and developed the courage to go after a bachelor’s degree at the University of Montana.

After 11 years working in sawmills, the Ashland resident stepped away from the work he, his father and his forefathers had known to write poetry, to read, to think and to focus his analytic mind not on machinery, but on how to fine-tune young minds.

Come spring, the 34-year-old father of two will graduate from UM, inspired to continue his creative writing, and with a beefed-up English degree that qualifies him to teach high school English and history.

Even though he’ll graduate with the prospects of a $20,000-a-year teaching job – about the same amount if he stayed at his old job – and $40,000 in student-loan debts, White said he doesn’t regret his decision.

"I discovered a new value system here I was not aware existed before," he said recently after a morning of final exams. "Where I come from, people know the value of work that pays off materially.

"Education allows me to see the value of living a life well-lived and a life spent helping others," he said.

"Even if my boss had offered me $18 an hour, it wouldn’t have done it for me," he said. "Here I’ve discovered what I was meant to do."

White laughs when people back home say he’s chosen teaching because he doesn’t like work.

Now, with lots of practice time under his belt, he knows another truth.

"Teaching is like painting – it’s all in the prep work, and that never ends," he said. "It is much more work than I have ever had in the blue-collar sector. It’s an incredible challenge but it brings incredible satisfaction."

He said it bothers him to know that others may not have a chance for the discovery he’s experienced if tuition continues to climb and budgets to hire professors shrink.

"It’s a real problem," he said. "Students don’t want huge classes and if departments don’t have the funding to keep good instructors, word gets around and pretty soon the system decays."

"To maintain what this place represents – a good system with good students – it takes a perpetuating cycle," he said. "When you lose a good professor, it has a huge impact. It affects morale, it affects class size, it affects teaching quality, it affects all of us. We need more good teachers to keep this cycle going."

"I think as a society, we have to decide what is going to be important to us and when higher education is at risk, we lose more than jobs and students: We lose the insight into who we are."

Balancing Act

The 2003 Legislature will convene in early January to tackle a state budget that’s certain to be hundreds of millions of dollars in the red. It will be a legislative session brimming with unusually tough decisions.

Over the course of the next six weeks, Montana’s Lee newspapers, led by the reporters of our State Bureau, will detail what’s behind those tough decisions: How did the shortfall develop? What state services truly are at risk? What options do legislators have?

The series

* Dec 1: How the shortfall developed – and what the state’s general fund pays for.

State budget at mercy of falling revenue

General fund spending grows faster than income

Missoula man counts on state help

State’s biggest pool of cash dries up completely, quickly

Montana 1 of 5 states without sales tax

Perspective: Deficit a big woe for ’03 Legislature

Welfare worker gave up her job

Laid-off employee can’t leave Forsyth

Glossary of terms

* Dec. 8: How other states are coping with shortfalls – and what lessons those states can teach Montana.

Recession, health care costs weigh down state budgets

Many strategies used to balance the books

Idaho sees some hopeful signs

5 special sessions needed in Oregon

North Dakota’s fiscal house in order

South Dakota looking at $40M shortfall

Coal, oil, gas keep Wyoming in the black

Big pile of bills ready for 2003 Legislature

* Dec. 15: The issues facing Montana’s Department of Corrections, which takes about 10 percent of the general fund.

Release plan gives woman 2nd chance

DOC gets creative in deciding fate of inmates

Budget woes hurt inmate treatment

’91 prison riot, war on crime pushed up inmate population

Women get little to cut boredom in prison

Victims of crime still get attention

* Dec. 22-23: The issues facing education in Montana, which takes about 55 percent of the general fund.

Educators hope for meaningful dialogue

Teacher sets up forum on school funding

Gifts keep school athletics going

Education funding lawsuit could affect legislative action

No Child Left Behind: More questions than answers

70 education bills await lawmakers

Higher ed faces funding crossroads

Community college offers second chance for discovery

Smaller colleges branch out for new students

Program helps single mother pay bills, realize her dreams

* Dec. 29: The issues facing health and human services in Montana, which accounts for about a quarter of general-fund spending.

* Jan 5: What you’re likely to see when the Legislature convenes.

Copyright © The Billings Gazette, a division of Lee Enterprises.

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