Speech Therapy
A new partnership was formed in 2023 between Boone Hospital Center and Our Lady of Lourdes Interparish School (OLLIS).
This partnership started as OLLIS was looking to expand services to students with special needs. “It was very obvious as we watched students do speaking parts at Mass, that there was a great need to provide speech services to our students,” says Elaine Hassemer, OLLIS principal.
Jeri Schoemehl, Speech Therapy Supervisor, has children who attend OLLIS and knew they were looking for a Speech-Language Pathologist. “I’m always looking for ways to promote speech therapy and had the idea ‘what if Boone could partner with OLLIS to provide these services?’ OLLIS has a history of excellence in education and Boone is known for excellence in providing care. It seemed like a partnership that could work for both parties,” Jeri explains.
The next step was finding the right speech therapist for this position. Jeri knew that Angie Rentel was the right person for the job. “She’s the person I had in mind,” Jeri says. “We’ve worked together for 23 years. Angie has experience working with other schools in her area, she’s great with kids, an excellent therapist, she’s Catholic by faith and familiar with the Catholic school system and this would be a perfect fit for her.”
Angie’s first assignment was to screen the entire school. Every Kindergarten through 8th grade student who consented was screened – all 629 students. They came two days a week and Angie was able to identify all the students who would benefit from speech therapy – 65 students, which was right at about 10% of the population. Realizing Angie had more students than she could handle by herself, a second speech therapist, Brianne Graves, was brought in to help.
“This is an incredible service for our families,” Elaine says, “as it is often difficult to pick a child up during the school day, multiple times a week, to access speech services. And often times, private services are not covered by insurance or are very costly to the families.”
“Parents work during the day,” says Jeri, “so to have this in-house is just such a gift for the students and so helpful for the parents.”
In larger schools, therapists may be seeing up to 4 students at one time, which makes it really tricky for the therapist to make sure each child is getting their own individualized time. Angie is able to see students individually or in groups of 2, so students are still getting individualized attention. “We keep the therapy play-based to make it fun and engaging for the students. We want them to want to come back and we want them to have a good time,” says Angie. “But we are also getting them lots of practice with their articulation targets so they can be more efficient, set them up for success and help them reach their goals.”
After working with adults and with pediatrics for 25 years, this was the change Angie didn’t know she needed. “The kids are delightful and keep me laughing,” says Angie.
When it came time to evaluate the need for speech services in the upcoming school year, Boone and OLLIS agreed on increasing the number of days Angie was on-site from 2 – 3 days. “The size of this school is enormous. With 4 new Kindergarten classes starting in the fall, that will bring in an additional 72 students. Adding the 3rd day allows me to accommodate more students,” Angie says.
“Being a former public school administrator, I saw firsthand the impact of providing service to students. Additionally, my husband served as the executive director of ACT (now Impact Support Services) for numerous years. Special services is something very important to our family,” says Elaine.
“OLLIS has welcomed us and made us a part of their school community. The faculty and the families have been so supportive as we worked to establish this service within the school. We look forward to continuing our partnership next year!” says Jeri.
By Erin Wegner