Editor’s observe: This article was produced with help from the Schooling Writers Affiliation Reporting Fellowship program.
In a state stuffed with rural, tucked away corners, Lincoln County is considered one of Montana’s most rural and tucked away.
The county of 20,000 individuals is positioned within the state’s far northwest nook, bordering Canada and Idaho’s panhandle. Its communities are dotted across the Kootenai Nationwide Forest, whose 2.2 million acres of firs, pines, spruces and towering mountains outline the craggy panorama.
Libby, the county seat of three,100 residents, is 69 miles from Eureka, the county’s second-biggest metropolis of 1,500 residents.
Lincoln County is rural and rugged, solid by trade and ecology and steeped in an advanced historical past of extraction, exploitation and financial wrestle. It’s a place the place everybody is aware of somebody who is aware of your cousin — a spot the place the long run continues to be being dug out of the previous.
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Montana’s altering economic system is palpable in Lincoln County, the place formidable mills and mines as soon as powered its small cities. The realm was once a historic powerhouse of timber and vermiculite manufacturing earlier than shifts within the pure useful resource economic system within the Nineties and 2000s marked the closure of almost each native timber plant and Libby’s vermiculite mine, leaving hundreds unemployed.
On the vermiculite mine, staff for many years had been uncovered to lethal asbestos fibers that killed a whole bunch, and trains carrying asbestos merchandise blew poisonous chemical compounds throughout city. As of 2021, 694 Libby residents had died of asbestos associated illnesses. The mine’s proprietor, the W.R. Grace Firm, saved staff at the hours of darkness concerning the risks of asbestos publicity.
It’s underneath the shadow of the shuttered mills and mines that Lincoln County is forging forward, crafting a future that group leaders hope will honor its historical past whereas breaking free from its dependence on extractive industries. On the middle of that future is a area people school, which helps Lincoln County residents adapt to a courageous new world, constructing careers near dwelling and granting them a as soon as elusive future in the neighborhood that raised them.
It’s a future that, in line with Megan Rayome, the director of the school, is constructed on the premise that Lincoln County “hasn’t been left to die.”
“It was virtually like a assured job,” Kathy Ness, government director of the Eureka Chamber of Commerce, stated of the logging trade in Lincoln County.
On an early summer season day within the small city, Ness recounted her personal journey to Eureka.
Ness “married in” to Eureka, settling within the city along with her husband who was raised there. She’s been in Eureka for 45 years, a interval throughout which she watched the economic system ebb and circulate, together with her husband’s now lengthy gone profession as a logger. Her kids and grandchildren have largely left dwelling, searching for jobs in larger markets. Whereas they’d like to return dwelling, “There’s not quite a bit in Eureka,” Ness stated.
After a long time of robust timber markets in Montana, a confluence of native and world components started to gradual the trade’s manufacturing in Lincoln County. Overharvesting led to a downturn in timber availability on Nationwide Forest land. Financial uncertainty within the Nineties and 2000s pressured fluctuations in demand. Environmental litigation shut down operations. 4 mills in Lincoln County shut down between 1993 and 2005, leaving greater than 500 residents with out work.
Following the closure of Libby’s vermiculite mine in 1991, the county’s unemployment fee reached 29%. A decade later, after Libby’s Stimson Lumber Mill closed in 2002, unemployment hit 15.8%.
“It was very damaging to the general psyche,” Rayome, who grew up in Libby, stated.
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Rayome is the director of Flathead Valley Group School’s (FVCC) Lincoln County Campus (LCC). LCC is a satellite tv for pc campus of FVCC, which for 4 a long time has supplied profession coaching and school programs to native college students. It’s a small campus, boasting seven staff who work in its sole constructing close to downtown Libby.
As a child, Rayome remembers when the U.S. Environmental Safety Company arrange store in Libby within the late Nineties, tearing up lawns and attics with a view to take away poisonous asbestos. She remembers her father, a former miner, attending courses at LCC to be taught pc abilities in hopes of constructing a brand new profession. She typically attended courses with him when he couldn’t discover childcare.
Rayome additionally remembers shifting to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, throughout her youth in order that her mom may pursue a level in nursing. Whereas essential for her mom’s profession, the transfer was disruptive for Rayome, who had identified nothing however Libby her whole life.
“I didn’t get pleasure from that my mother moved me from my childhood dwelling,” she stated. “It’s a small city the place you may have the identical buddies and your loved ones is all there. It was troublesome for us, in a variety of alternative ways, for our household.”
Rayome completed highschool in Idaho, then moved to Arizona for school, the place she earned her bachelor’s and legislation levels from Arizona State College.
Whereas in Arizona, Rayome examine how individuals from rural communities who sought superior levels had been usually pressured to depart dwelling to take action, many by no means returning. The phenomenon, usually referred to as rural “mind drain,” caught along with her. She knew she wanted to return to Lincoln County.
After legislation faculty, Rayome returned to Libby to apply legislation. When LCC wanted a director in 2020, she jumped on the alternative.
Lincoln County’s first school program was born in 1979, after a gaggle of native stakeholders recognized a necessity for a college-level course in supervisory and administration abilities to satisfy trade wants. The coalition of native residents partnered with FVCC in Kalispell to deliver a supervisory administration certificates to Libby the following 12 months. It proved so profitable that the Libby Chamber of Commerce fashioned a committee to research increasing larger schooling.
4 years later, FVCC and the county reached an settlement to open a satellite tv for pc campus in Libby. LCC courses had been initially held in native excessive colleges earlier than the school discovered a house in an old-fashioned constructing on Mineral Avenue.
By 1987, the campus enrolled 73 full-time college students, starting from youngsters to middle-aged moms heading again to work. In line with native reporting, the campus’ “bread and butter” was non-traditional school college students, together with those that had been in search of job adjustments, dealing with career-altering accidents or rebounding from layoffs. By 1994, enrollment had risen to 150 college students.
A monetary dispute between LCC and FVCC’s important campus in Kalispell almost severed the universities’ ties within the late Nineties, however the campuses had been capable of make amends.
In 2002, LCC moved to its present constructing, which was previously occupied by the U.S. Forest Service.
“For the primary time within the historical past of the LCC, we are going to tackle the picture of being a viable school in Libby and Lincoln County,” interim director George Gerard instructed the Each day Inter Lake on the time of the transfer.
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LCC Director Pat Pezzelle in 2004 made native headlines after showing at a board assembly just about — a rarity on the time — by means of the campus’s first interactive, video teleconferencing (ITV) gear. The space studying classroom additional expanded entry for rural college students. It was acquired by means of a $350,000 grant championed by then-U.S. Sen. Conrad Burns.
In line with school leaders, LCC’s success has been grounded in a collective affect framework that designs packages from the bottom up, relatively than the highest down. It’s a mannequin that responds on to trade wants, carving out diploma packages with native relevance and, for graduates, long-term financial advantages.
After the Stimson Timber layoffs in 2002, school leaders vowed to retrain Libby’s almost 300 displaced staff.
“We’ve got to determine what sort of coaching we will present to make these individuals employable,” LCC teacher and advisor Chad Shilling stated at a workers assembly after the closure, in line with newspaper archives. “I don’t know in the event that they’re going to be right here for the long-term dedication, however we’re going to be right here to deal with their fast wants the perfect we will.”
FVCC President Jane Karas stated she has “numerous these sorts of tales” about locals who confirmed up on the school’s door jobless and left with a brand new profession.
Karas described one scholar who, earlier than being laid off by the Owens and Hurst Mill in Eureka within the mid-2000s, had “by no means completed something however run logs by means of this mill.” After enrolling in FVCC, he accomplished a level in pc science and went to work in IT.
In 2011, the school educated its first batch of welders by means of a 10-week program that catered to staff who had been laid off from mining and timber jobs. This system was designed to put staff at Stinger Welding, an Arizona-based bridge constructing firm that introduced 70 jobs to Libby earlier than its closure in 2013.
When Kalispell-based Nomad World Communication Options (GCS) introduced its enlargement into Libby in 2022, the necessity for welders and machinists grew. LCC labored with the native faculty district to launch a night welding class at Libby Excessive College. In its first-class, the school stuffed seven of eight welding cubicles with keen learners from all walks of life.
By the Working Begin twin enrollment program, eight Libby Excessive College college students this spring handed their 3G 3/8 Welding Qualification in a college-level course. Many stated they plan to broaden their abilities subsequent 12 months in pursuit of the 6G take a look at.
With their welding certification, Karas stated, college students are filling the necessity for expert staff that new trade has dropped at Lincoln County.
“We give attention to the right way to be most cost-effective, help our group and meet the wants of our college students and our employers,” Karas stated.
“What the school did, that’s extraordinarily essential when it comes to working with smaller rural communities, is to exit and set up a relationship,” Lisa Clean, government director of workforce improvement for FVCC, stated. “Not ready for them to return to you, however you going out to them.”
Clean acts because the conduit between FVCC, companies, the Montana Division of Labor and Business, public colleges and college students, all of whom have a vested curiosity within the school’s profession packages. Her job was created particularly to streamline communication between these stakeholders.
“There have been numerous issues happening on campus — nice alternatives — however they weren’t essentially synergistic or built-in,” Clean stated. “One of many duties that this place was given was to give you a strategy to combine the hassle in order that we will higher leverage it for the usage of college students.”
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Clean sought out grants to broaden LCC’s capability in welding, industrial driving and Laptop Numerical Management (CNC) machining following the expansions of Nomad GCS and Alpine Precision into Lincoln County. She helped to create a totally on-line land surveying program, which is able to start this fall. She labored with the Montana Logging Affiliation to purchase a $100,000 state-of-the-art forestry simulator to organize college students for jobs in logging.
Clean says the school is the “linchpin” that holds collectively stakeholders in Lincoln County, however that it’s not alone. Clean works intently with the Libby College District, Libby Job Service, the Division of Labor and firms in fields from healthcare to heavy machining.
“Everybody must be on the desk,” she stated.
For Rayome and LCC directors, the school’s work goes past creating arduous abilities. It’s an establishment that breaks down lots of the obstacles to larger schooling confronted by rural college students.
“Being rural is difficult,” stated Tabitha Viergutz, a longtime Libby resident and the local people officer for the LOR Basis, a group improvement fund that works in small cities throughout the West.
Sitting in a mixed espresso store and carpet retailer in downtown Libby, Viergutz described her personal arc on the school, one which introduced her to her present work in the neighborhood.
Viergutz moved to Libby 13 years in the past as a nail technician. Unable to get her esthetician enterprise off the bottom, she struggled to feed her household. She determined to enroll in LCC with the purpose of incomes an associates diploma in social work. Whereas on the school, she took a mix of in-person and digital courses by means of the ITV system, which she described as “wonderful.” When LOR wanted an area chief to run its Libby department, mentors from the school tapped Viergutz.
“I wouldn’t have gone again to varsity had LCC not been right here,” she stated.
Viergutz’s story is frequent in Libby. A younger mom, the thought of shifting to Missoula or Kalispell for school was out of the query. The price of full-time enrollment was daunting. So, too, was the thought of changing into a non-traditional scholar in a standard classroom setting.
Earlier than monetary help — which, FVCC officers observe, there’s loads of — a full semester of tuition and charges for an in-district scholar at LCC prices $2,810. Comparatively, an in-state resident on the College of Montana in the identical semester can pay $4,273. At Carroll School, a personal college in Helena, a semester prices $20,066 earlier than help.
“While you develop into a resident of a small, rural space, that’s the place your coronary heart lies,” she stated. “The concept of going to a big school simply isn’t within the playing cards.”
Jayne Downey, director of the Middle for Analysis on Rural Schooling at Montana State College, stated that past being smaller and extra inexpensive, rural faculties like LCC are ready to attract on the “distinctive strengths and belongings” of their small cities, constructing curriculum and making ready college students for careers in a method that’s rooted in particular group wants.
“These smaller graduating courses, all people is aware of all people. You’re identified. You’re cared for. Your educational wants may be addressed individually,” she stated. “The locations the place our colleges are located — the communities are a wealth of information and sources, of historical past and tradition, of science and expertise. It surrounds them.”
Viergutz is an unofficial spokesperson for the brand new Libby. She stated the city is “altering our focus to what we’ve versus what we misplaced.”
Libby’s first brewery, Cupboard Mountain Brewing Firm, simply celebrated its tenth anniversary. A kickboxing studio got here to city final fall. Within the new Kootenai Enterprise Park, a former Stimson Lumber facility, there’s a pickleball court docket and a big Nomad GCS workplace. Greenback Normal is now in Libby and Eureka.
“I believe that Libby continues to be very a lot ingrained in our historical past, and really a lot would like to see these industries come again,” Viergutz stated of mining and timber. But, she added, there’s “a ahead dealing with view on actuality.”
Rayome stated Nomad GCS’s arrival on the town “elevated the upward spiral of hope.”
“We’re seeing individuals not simply coming in to ogle at our unhappiness,” Rayome stated.
Clean, FVCC’s workforce improvement director, stated the way forward for LCC’s success lies not simply in coaching staff, however in creating native leaders who can spearhead packages and assist recruit a subsequent technology. Cultivating homegrown management is a part of the group resilience mannequin that Clean bases her work off of.
“We need to construct management in these communities,” she stated. “They know what they want most, and they’re going to at all times know higher as a result of they stay there.”
Sooner or later, Rayome hopes to open a devoted constructing at LCC for hands-on trades schooling. She desires to put money into new expertise, revamping the school’s ITV infrastructure. Like Clean, she desires to proceed to foster leaders who had been born and raised in Libby — those that need to assist the city transfer into the long run. As extra jobs arrive, so too will demand for eating places, healthcare amenities, houses, colleges and the employees who energy them. It’s all a part of the “upward spiral of hope” that she described. Although it will likely be difficult, Rayome stated, Lincoln County will adapt to a brand new financial future.
“They’re doers. They imagine in themselves,” she stated of Libby. “It’s a group of survivors.”
