From Deseret News archives:
Tribes' schools are crumbling
Tribal officials say the entire campus should have been rebuilt years ago.
"Our children need to be educated, and if we have deteriorating, burned and condemned buildings to educate them in, I guess it just makes us feel helpless," said Crystal Kirkie, a member of the Crow Creek Sioux Tribal Council.
Around the country, Indian tribes are frustrated by what they say are inadequate federal funding and long delays in replacing aging buildings at the 184 schools supported by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs.
About 48,000 students attend BIA day schools and boarding schools on or near 63 Indian reservations in 23 states. The BIA directly operates about a third of those schools; the rest are run by tribes with BIA funding.
The federal government not only takes a long time to replace schools, but also fails to maintain them, said Jacqueline Johnson, executive director of the National Congress of American Indians.
"Children can't get good educations and a fair start for the future if they're continually being put in these areas where they have to worry about their safety on a day-to-day basis or shift them from room to room depending on leakage or something else," Johnson said.
The Bush administration has said the situation has improved in recent years. In 2001, 35 percent of BIA schools were in good or fair condition, with the rest in poor condition. But spending planned through next year will leave 65 percent in good or fair shape, the administratoin said.
"In the last few years, there has been a lot of money put into school construction," said BIA spokeswoman Nedra Darling. In addition, the BIA has improved its procedures to try to speed up the replacement of schools, Darling said.
The BIA, which has a school construction budget this year of around $260 million, reported that funding was approved for 34 replacement schools between 2001 and 2004, and nine of those projects have been completed and opened.
In South Dakota, the Crow Creek Sioux have sought federal funding for more than three decades to rebuild the middle school and high school in Stephan, which serve about 420 students and are more than 40 years old.
But the campus is ninth on the BIA's priority list of 14 schools due to be replaced, which means it may be three or four years before it is rebuilt — a project estimated to cost as much as $40 million.
