Police Chief Birbeck and OISD Supt. Dr. Roach talk issues with Senator Springer

State Sen. Drew Springer made a brief stopover in Olney May 24 to discuss mental health concerns with Olney Police Chief Dan Birbeck and teacher recruitment and school funding issues with Olney Independent School District Superintendent Greg Roach.

Chief Birbeck briefed Sen. Springer about failures in the county mental health care system that led to the May 17 death of Olney resident Larry Howe.

Howe, 61, was found dead along railroad tracks in Wichita Falls a few days after his family sought help from the Helen Farabee Centers to find a bed at the Red River Hospital or North Texas State Hospital for him.

Helen Farabee provides mental health care to a 19-county service area, including Young County, under a contract with the Department of State Health Services.

Although Young County sends approximately $30,000 per year to the state for mental health care for its residents, the state hospitals have barred the county from sending patients needing emergency mental health care for the last several months because of staffing shortages, county officials said.

The hospitals continued, however, to take emergency admissions from Wichita Falls, the officials said.

In the weeks before his death, Larry Howe acted erratically – hardly leaving his room or becoming disoriented and wandering down the street trying to enter neighbors’ homes, his brother DeWayne Howe said.

“He was aware and knew how he was feeling. He needed to go to the hospital, and he said so,” Dwayne Howe said. An administrator at Helen Farabee told him to bring Larry to a clinic in Wichita Falls so that he could be admitted to a locked facility, DeWayne Howe said. The administrator assured DeWayne Howe that his brother would not be allowed to leave the facility, he said.

Two hours after DeWayne Howe signed his brother in, Larry Howe - a decorated U.S. Army and Navy veteran with four children and eight grandchildren - walked out of the clinic and was not seen alive again. Helen Farabee Centers did not contact DeWayne or his 88-year-old father, Lonnie, to let them know that Larry was missing, DeWayne Howe said.

“They haven’t contacted us or said what happened to him. The ball was dropped with that place completely,” he said. “On top of it being a broken system, I don’t think they realize how serious mental illness is and how bad it can get.”

Sen. Springer expressed concern about Chief Birbeck’s description of the facilities’ failure to follow a state law that mandates that Texans experiencing mental health crises be evaluated by psychiatrists or psychologists and taken to the closest mental health facility for treatment.

The lack of beds means that many of these people end up in county jails where their competence erodes, and they pose a danger to themselves and law enforcement officials, Birbeck said.

Sen. Springer noted that “the pandemic has done a number on Texans’ mental health and the percentage of growth we are seeing in cases has just spiked across the board.”

The Legislature recently approved $100 million in addition to the $8 billion it spends annually to build more facilities and is discussing a program to forgive student debt for nurses who work at state facilities, he said.

“It’s a bigger challenge in rural Texas because your jails aren’t of the size that you can provide mental health treatment within the jail system,” he said.

Sen. Springer said he had suggested repurposing shuttered hospitals in Bowie and Memphis as mental health institutes. “I thought once again another rural hospital had closed down; let’s repurpose that into mental health beds to be able to do that,” he said. “And I think we’re going to go back and look at that.

OISD Superintendent Greg Roach also talked with Sen. Springer about teacher recruitment and proposed school voucher programs that could negatively affect funding for rural schools.

Dr. Roach told Sen. Springer that the OISD board of trustees had recently raised teacher salaries by 5 percent but was having trouble competing for teachers with larger school districts.

“We have to make sure to keep those dollars consistent to be able to maintain [salary increases],” Sen. Springer said of state funding levels.

Dr. Roach briefed Sen. Springer on the financial difficulties that could face OISD if a plan to allow Texas students to use money allocated for the public school system at charter schools.

“I would never support anything that would defund Newcastle, Olney Graham, the great school districts they have made there,” he said. “The devil is in the details … and we have to make sure that the same dollars they get today have to be the same dollars they get tomorrow.”