Last year, the White House announced that Native American education is in a state of emergency. More than a third of all American Indian and Alaskan Native (AIAN) youth live in poverty, and only 67 percent graduate from high school. Of the students who attend Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) schools, only half graduate from high school. Even fewer make it to college.
The House Education and Workforce Committee is investigating issues in the BIE schools. Although the vast majority of AIAN youth ― 93 percent ― attend public schools, the remaining 7 percent go to BIE schools. The Bureau is housed in the Department of the Interior, as opposed to the Department of Education.
Dr. Charles Roessel, director of the Bureau of Indian Education, is faced with about one-third of BIE schools needing to be renovated or rebuilt.
On Thursday, the Committee held a hearing to examine “the federal government’s mismanagement” of BIE schools. Dr. Charles Roessel, BIE director, and William Mendoza, executive director of the White House Initiative on American Indian and Alaska Native Education, testified as witnesses. Kevin Washburn, assistant secretary of Indian affairs, although invited to testify, did not attend the hearing.
Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., opened the meeting by describing some of the problems that students at BIE schools must contend with. “The details we have learned are shocking: falling ceilings; broken water heaters; electrical hazards; rotten floors; and rodent-infested classrooms. At a school I visited earlier this year, blankets hung over the doors in a desperate attempt to keep out the cold air,” he said.
Kline referenced the Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig School, a school house on the Leech Lake Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota, part of which is housed in a former barn and was only ever intended to be used temporarily. The school’s troubles have been written about extensively in the Minneapolis Star Tribune and The New York Times. Some 200 students still attend the school, however, with no other viable option available.
About one-third of the BIE schools need to be renovated or rebuilt. Roessel said that the BIE is still slowly working on a list of schools needing repairs compiled back in 2004. Other schools that need help may be identified in a new list that Roessel said will be out at the end of the summer. Schools have until the end of June to submit applications for construction projects, and the BIE will evaluate individual cases over the summer.
