Clark retires from Nishna Productions

After a career spanning four decades, Nishna Productions executive director Sherri Clark has announced her retirement. Her last day in the position was Jan. 31.
Prior to her tenure with Nishna Prodictions, Clark said that in October of 1977, she started to work for the Iowa Department of Human Services as a social worker in a shared position between two counties in northwest Iowa, Clay and Palo Alto.
“My entire caseload was people with disabilities, I really had not had any experience with people with disabilities prior to that, but that’s what got me going. As a social worker, I traveled the state to places where those two counties had clients placed, and visited agencies and monitored services and set up new services for people with disabilities, and worked very closely with families to get the services that they need. Services were much different back in the ’70s and ’80s.”
Clark said she stayed in that position until 1979, until she was asked to assume a role as a service supervisor over social workers for DHS specifically in Palo Alto County, and was given a number of other tasks. From there, Clark said she was offered something different in Emmetsburg.
“There was an organization called Willing Workers at the time. I had spent a lot of time there as the case manager for most of the people who were attending there. They were without an executive director, they had lots of issues, and so I thought, ‘well, let’s give private rehab a try for a while.’ I was there from the early ’80s until August of 1984,” commented Clark.
After that, Clark came down to Southwest Iowa and Nishna Productions, though not as an executive director.
“I specifically was recruited to be, I believe, director of operations. Back in those times, all agencies that were doing vocational services were required to have an accreditation from a national accrediting body. And in Iowa, a CARF, Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities, seemed to be the preference. I had helped Willing Workers get that, and I was close friends with the gentleman who was the executive director at Nishna at the time, John Lapitz. We’d worked together for DHS,” advised Clark. “He recruited me to come down here to help get Nishna accredited. I arrived on Oct. 15, 1984,” Clark stated. “Our first accreditation survey was in January of 1985. We had to do mass production of policies and procedures. The very first year, we only achieved a one-year accreditation. You can get zero, one, or three. They came back then in 1986, and from that time forward, we’ve always been fortunate enough to achieve the three-year accreditation with them. And we maintain that today.”
John Lapitz served as the executive director until November of 1988 before stepping down due to a commute from Omaha, Neb., and some health issues. Clark then moved into the executive director position, and has maintained the role since then.
The biggest issue Clark said she faced when she began her new role was solving some of Nishna’s financial issues.
“Back in those days, the local counties funded most of what we did with the property tax dollars. At that time, the only way you could get a new reimbursement rate, no matter what your expenses were, was if something happened, something new happened. We were never really able to get increased reimbursement rates between the period of 1984 and April of 1985. In fact, when I came here, the agency was up for sale because of its financial issues.”
On April 1,1985, Clark said REM assumed ownership of most of Nishna Productions, including most of the properties. Most of the properties that Nishna owned went over to new owners, and they didn’t negotiate new reimbursement rates with the counties, they just set them.
“To give you an example, back then we were paid by the day for the workshop services that we provided back then, and I think the reimbursement was something like $23 a day. When REM came in, they jumped it all the way up to somewhere in the $30 range, and the counties had not prepared for those increases in reimbursement rates, so the only way that they could manage to pay the bills was to cut back on the units of service they were providing. So almost immediately, clients got to come to work less days. If a client was coming to the workshop five days a week, they might get to come two days a week,” Clark explained. “There were fiscal impacts to REM because they were anticipating receiving additional revenue. So from April 1 of 1985 to June 30 of 1985, we were owned by REM, and then Nishna Productions came back into being on July 1st because REM couldn’t operate under those terms.”
After the ownership change, Clark said the financial problems hadn’t gone away, so they just had to work very closely with the counties over the next several years. The organization  also received assistance from the Shenandoah community including banker Robert Fishbaugh, attorney Robert Norris, and John Kidd.
“Through a series of maneuvers, we were able to get the counties to agree to support us financially at an increased reimbursement rate. And that really, quite frankly, began the process of helping this agency survive. We also moved to buy back the properties that REM owned. We worked with USDA to help us be able to do that at a much more reasonable interest rate. All of that together started a process of us being able to start getting ourselves back in a situation where we were beginning to show some financial stability. Obviously, we couldn’t have done it without the support of the local counties, Fremont, Page, Mills, Montgomery. But that’s where it started, and that was still in the day when the property taxes paid for services. All of that changed in 1994 when Iowa began to introduce Medicaid as a funder for our services. Today it’s all Medicaid money. 95% of our income is Medicaid. It’s a match of federal Medicaid money with state of Iowa Medicaid money, and that’s what funds our services. Over time, with the changes in funding and reimbursement that have been put in place, we’ve gone from being not financially stable to being financially stable. And that’s what’s allowed us to do a lot of the things that you see in our world today.”
Clark said she’s happy to be in the place the organization is in, as in those earlier days, it was a lot tougher.
“It hasn’t been all that long ago when we were doing our payables every week. And every week, our director of finance would have to sit down, go through the bills, and decide which ones we could afford to pay and which ones would have to be put on the back burner in hopes of still being able to pay them in time. And part of that was because the money tended to flow to us fairly slowly. Even today, we don’t get reimbursement rates from the managed care organizations very quickly. But that was part of the problem. But in 2017, Iowa HHS, DHS then, changed some of the ways that they fund the services that we deliver. That has really helped us get to where we are today.”
The growth in the people that Nishna supports and assists is what she’s found most rewarding about her tenure.
“We have people that live independently or semi-independently in the community today, who, back in 1985 and into the early ’90s were living in one of our structured, 24-7, supervised living arrangements. They’ve gained the skills to be able to live in the community with minimal support and assistance. I’ve been able to see people who were used to working in a sheltered workshop and getting a paycheck, be able to have jobs in the community with whatever level of support they need to have them. I think those are things that I’m very proud of,” commented Clark.
Clark added she is also very proud of the ability to serve those people that came out of Glenwood.
“We were told those people will never be able to live outside of the institutional walls. But, I’m telling you, they’re living in houses in the communities here in southwest Iowa. Their quality of life is so enhanced and they’re doing so well that it’s amazing to just to watch that all unfold. One of the last individuals that we took from Glenwood was an individual that has some behavioral challenges. He is living successfully in the community,” Clark stated.
As for why she’s decided to retire, Clark said she has always had a target date in mind, though she admitted she remained undecided for awhile.
“I’ve pretty much devoted my life to this place for 40 years. So I kind of want to devote my life to something else. The decision has not been an easy one. It was a year ago that I sort of decided it was time, and I’ve just waned back and forth. But as the date has come closer and closer, I have a much greater comfort level with it. I have things that I want to do. I haven’t really had hobbies and that sort of thing. I’m really into sports. I’m really into Iowa State and the Kansas City Chiefs and that sort of thing. But other than that, I’ve never really had hobbies. And so this will give me a chance to do some of the things that I really haven’t done previously,” Clark said.
While she is stepping down from the role, Clark said her exit from Nishna Productions will not be immediate, so it made the decision to step down a little easier.
“ I will continue to work here part-time in a support fashion, simply to answer questions. I have a lot of the connections that the new executive director has not yet established. So I’m here to work part-time for a little while. My husband is younger than I am, so he still has to work. So I might as well be doing something once in a while while he’s working,” commented Clark. “To quit completely is like doing something cold turkey, and this will give me a chance to transition out of it. And I think for me, that for my internal workings, that’s probably a good idea. I’ll still feel like I’m doing something worthwhile. I’m happy to be a support person and to help where I think we have some gaps at the moment, and while we’re waiting for some other things to happen.”
As for the new executive director, Clark said she has already been selected. Monica Bartlett will be taking over. Clark said she suggested Bartlett as her replacement.
“She’s from Shenandoah. Monica’s a Shenandoahan all her life. She came to work here 18 years ago, and she’s had a lot of different responsibilities while she’s been here. She knows a lot. She’s very bright. She’s achieved a master’s in public administration from Bellevue, and she knows the rules. She knows what needs to be done. So in my mind, it’s much easier for an agency to transition to somebody internally, than it is to bring somebody completely new from the outside, because you don’t know. Ultimately, it was the board’s decision, but I think for them and for Mission, it was the absolute best decision that they could make,” Clark said. “She is a Southwest Iowan. She’s lived here all her life. Actually was a factory girl at Pella for a very long time, a very hard worker, her and her husband both. She went back and got a degree from Bellevue, and that’s where she got her Master of Public Administration.”
Clark hails from northern Iowa, and said she may head back that way to be closer to her nieces, but nothing has been decided as of yet.
While she’s pleased with her accomplishments, Clark said she was disappointed that the legislature was never able to reconcile the can redemption issues.
“We’re not in the can recycling business per se anymore, at least not the way that we were. We work with the people from Droppett to run this one out here. We keep the building cleaned out, and we store the stuff that they come and get on Tuesdays, and we get a share of their three cents. That law is just, it’s been so mixed up since it came into being in the late ’70s. As your costs continue to go up, that amount should continue to go up, but I don’t see any effort. I don’t hear any effort at this point from any of the recycling folks to try and increase it beyond the three cents, the part that boggles my mind is the amount of money that the distributors make on the unclaimed cans, and they just allow that to continue to go on. I mean, it’s in, it was in the millions, and that’s just ridiculous.  But the Droppett system is working very well for us. They have them in other communities, but this one here in Red Oak has by far been the most used and most successful. I don’t know if it’s just because we did our, we worked with them, Red Oak, to do a better job of advertising its availability.”
Clark had a special message to everyone inside and outside the Red Oak community that has helped her over the years.
“Clarinda is where Nishna began, but Shenandoah is kind of where they got their best start. We didn’t come to Red Oak until the early ’90s, but Red Oak has always been a fantastic supporter of Nishna Productions. I talk about the fact that if we wanted to develop jobs for people with disabilities in the community, the employers have always been very willing to allow that to happen. Our residential program, a good share of it is concentrated here. The community has always been very accepting of the folks that we provide services to, very supportive,” Clark advised. “I appreciate that support. I appreciate the support of everyone in Southwest Iowa for myself and Nishna Productions and the things that we’ve been able to accomplish for people with disabilities. What we do is a partnership, and it’s not just a partnership between me and one or two people, it’s a partnership with the community and the government and the legislature and everybody, and we wouldn’t have been able to do that if people had not been willing to listen and participate. I just thank the community. I thank Red Oak and all of Southwest Iowa for the support that they’ve given Nishna, and I’m convinced it will continue into the future.