Finalist: Star-Tribune, by Jill Burcum

By Jill Burcum

 

LEECH LAKE INDIAN RESERVATION, MINN. -- ‘Watch. This is the coolest moment of my day,’’ science teacher Allison Barta says, unlocking the door to her classroom at the Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig High School.

 

Inside, a freshwater aquarium takes up much of the back wall, providing the only light in the windowless space. For a moment, the room resembles an environmental science lab. Then Barta flips on the lights.

 

The decrepit conditions at Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig are not unusual in the BIE system, which sprawls over 23 states and 64 reservations. Many of the schools serve some of the nation’s poorest and most remote communities. Test scores for the system’s 49,079 students lag those of both Indians and non-Indians in public schools. Yet the estimated $1.3 billion needed to put all BIE schools into good condition has long failed to materialize.

 

For more than a decade, school officials and leaders of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe have tried to convince federal officials that Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig needs to be rebuilt. Plans for a project with a price now estimated at $27 million were completed four years ago. Hopes rose across the reservation in August when U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell toured the school. Jewell, whose Department of the Interior is the parent agency for the BIE and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, came just two months after President Obama traveled to North Dakota’s Standing Rock Reservation and repeatedly underscored his commitment to tribal relations and education.

 

But at Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig, the cold reality for the 100 students is that no date has been set — or likely is close to being set — for replacing the school building. Nor does it appear that improvements will come soon enough to spare another generation from having to endure the 62 other BIE schools rated in poor condition.

 

They are not the only schools in America in disrepair — about 3 percent of public school facilities are in similarly poor condition, according to the National Center on Education Statistics — but a far greater share of BIE schools has been ignored.

 

Funding for replacement schools, improvements and repairs to BIE schools has fallen by 76 percent over the past decade. Despite its rhetoric about various tribal relations initiatives, the Obama administration has ignored the system’s fundamental need for safe, functional schools. Even more frustrating, the administration is standing by while BIE learning environments fall drastically behind those of the other federal K-12 system: Department of Defense

(DOD) schools serving children of military families and civilian employees.

 

The DOD launched a $5 billion construction surge in 2010 to renovate or replace 134 of its 181 schools by 2021. Seventeen new schools have been completed, 23 are under construction and 37 are in the design phase.

 

In contrast, the Interior Department has requested just $3.2 million in replacement school construction funding for one Indian school in 2015. Funding for new BIE schools over the past four years totaled $39 million — less than the cost of one large DOD elementary school that will open next year in Virginia.

 

The Interior Department also zeroed out its budget requests for BIE school replacement construction in 2013 and 2014 — more evidence that the agency and the Obama administration’s Office of Management and

Budget view the BIE system as nothing more than a place to find savings.

 

No American should begrudge the investment in DOD schools: Our military families deserve the best. But under the watch of Obama, Jewell and Education Secretary Arne Duncan, the BIE system has increasingly and inexcusably

become what advocates for Indian schools and U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn., have described as “separateand unequal.”

 

On South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, which has four deteriorating BIE schools, former tribal President Cecilia Fire Thunder summed up what many tribal students, educators and leaders are wondering about federal officials: “Why aren’t they fighting for us?”

 

Federal neglect is handicapping learning at BIE schools nationwide, according to a 2014 report commissioned by Jewell and Duncan. But students in the Upper Midwest and the Southwest may be suffering the most.

 

Those two regions have the nation’s largest clusters of BIE schools — the legacy of being home to large, influential Indian nations that ceded land and signed treaties with the U.S. government as settlers pushed west in the mid-1800s. The federal government assumed educational obligations as part of this exchange for tribes’ ancestral lands. The government’s ongoing trust responsibilities are recognized in modern law and unchanged by the advent of tribal casinos. In any case, there aren’t enough profitable casinos to fund the BIE system’s construction needs.

 

As deplorable as the conditions are at Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig, Minnesota is fortunate that it’s the only one of the state’s four BIE schools currently in poor condition. The others are in Onamia, Cloquet and White Earth.

 

Twenty-eight of Arizona’s 54 BIE schools are listed in poor condition, and two — Cove Day School and Little Singer Community School — have been on the BIE’s priority replacement list for a decade. BIE officials who oversee the Arizona schools say there’s little they can do.

 

“They keep telling us that Congress doesn’t have the money,’’ said Deborah

Belone, who oversees Cove as well as Red Rock Day School, another school in such disrepair that it needs replacement. In addition to mold, a faulty roof, a failing cooling system, asbestos and an inadequate number of classrooms for a growing student body, Red Rock’s dated electrical system is so overloaded that teachers can’t use their classroom “smartboards,” the modern equivalent of a chalkboard, all at the same time.

 

Ten of South Dakota’s 22 BIE facilities, and four of North Dakota’s 11 schools, are also considered in poor condition, generally meaning that the backlog of needed repairs or renovations is so extensive that it’s more economical to put up a new structure.

 

At the Little Wound K-12 school in Kyle, S.D., part of the elementary school still in use was built in 1939. The nurse’s office for a school serving about 800 kids is on an auditorium stage; there’s no other place for it.

 

The middle school is housed in two structures, one of which is a pole barn that was supposed to be temporary but is now 21 years old. To get to classes in the barn, eighth-graders like Shadow Red Owl, George Killsback and Ryder Tobacco pass through a covered walkway frequented by bats and draped with hanging electrical cables. School officials aren’t sure if a nearby portable classroom — which has boarded-up windows, a rotted foundation and an obscenity spray-painted on it — has been condemned yet.

 

But elementary Principal Ardis Iron Cloud doesn’t dream of a fancy new facility or high-tech computer labs. She simply wants her students to have access to books. “If you want to raise reading scores,” Iron Cloud said, “you have to have a library.’’

 

Asked how the inaction on BIE school construction squares with the Obama administration’s commitment to Indian education, Interior Secretary Jewell blamed Congress.

 

“I will not promise what I cannot deliver, and tribal leaders and educators have heard me say this, because I’ve had conversations with them about the budget atmosphere in which we work in Washington, D.C.,’’ Jewell said. “We have a huge problem on our hands, a problem that is not easily solved. But I want to do what I can administratively, and that means I will continue working with my colleagues in the Cabinet and working with leaders and tribes to see what we can do with the hand that we’re dealt right now to begin to make a real difference for Indian children.’’

 

Jewell’s frustration with Congress is fair. Interior belongs to the part ofthe federal budget hit hard by automatic spending reductions made as part of Washington’s 2011 debt ceiling deal. In 2013, these cuts to BIE totaled $58 million.

 

Congress funded BIE school replacement construction at more robust levels during the administration of former President George W. Bush — hitting a high-water mark of $140 million in 2004.

 

Minnesota’s Democratic U.S. Sen. Al Franken, who has held field hearings on BIE schools’ plight, has publicly urged Jewell to ask for additional funding in fiscal 2016, the budgetary details of which are being worked out right now and are not yet public. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Native Affairs, has held hearings on deteriorating schools. That Jewell hasn’t been before the committee in 18 months, while her agency is tardy in replies to inquiries from members, has been noticed.

 

Tester’s message to Jewell couldn’t be clearer: Get going and give us a plan. “The BIE must work with tribes to develop a comprehensive long-term plan to address the education needs of Native students. The infrastructure needs at BIE schools are incredibly serious, and it iscritical that the BIE’s next budget proposal include a plan to address the dismal state of so many BIE schools across Indian Country,’’ he said.

 

Even with a plan, getting funding approved is a daunting challenge, which is why Jewell needs to personally sell it once it’s developed. She’ll need help from Education Secretary Duncan, whose agency is larger and more influential. The two also need to forcefully advocate for other funding solutions, including one devised by a Minneapolis banker that has already been partly passed by Congress. It would allow tribes to tap into private financing to replace school buildings.

 

If Duncan is serious about addressing educational disparities, which has been a focus of his, he can’t be absent without leave on the buildings in which some of the nation’s most disadvantaged students are trying to learn.

 

It isn’t just Indian nations that have placed their trust in Jewell’s agency. States that are home to large Indian populations, like Minnesota with its seven reservations and four Indian communities, are depending on BIE schools to educate a new generation of citizens and workers with skills critical for the future.

 

Kids shivering in thin-walled classrooms or studying under leaky roofs year after year aren’t getting the education they need or deserve. With the larger community’s visible neglect all around them, they receive the wrong message about the value of education.

 

During his June visit to North Dakota, Obama inspired the crowd when he said, “We can break old cycles. We can give our children a better future.” Providing BIE students with adequate schools is the place to start.

 

In this age of classroom shootings, the school also falls well short of modern security needs. Its thin walls could be easily pierced by bullets, and classrooms often lack doors or doorknobs to protect those inside.

 

Plans were drawn up four years ago for a 72,000-square-foot addition to the elementary and middle-school building. The current estimated cost: $27 million.

U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, whose Department of the Interior is the parent agency for the BIE and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, visited the northern Minnesota school last August. But in response to questions from an editorial writer, neither she nor BIE’s director would say when the Bug school or the 62 other BIE school facilities in poor condition would be overhauled.

 

Conditions are so alarming at the Bug school that John Parmeter, the school’s

head of security, makes a daily inspection as sunrise peeks through the tall, green curtain of jackpines sheltering the rural campus. The school’s elementary and middle-school building is of more recent, traditional block construction and in good shape. Parmeter’s pace is brisk as he inspects it, along with the nearby portables used for the school’s language immersion classes, and the log cabin housing the information technology office.

 

His pace slows as he approaches the high school and scans it for any safety hazards that have developed overnight. His gaze lingers on the roof.

 

On a recent fall morning, Parmeter OK’d the building’s use for a day, but a few hours later the heating and cooling unit malfunctioned. Members of the repair crew from nearby Grand Rapids shook their heads at the system’s age and the repairs made to get it through past winters. The cost to completely fix the problem? About $110,000.

 

“This building was never meant to be a school,’’ Parmeter said.

 

The Bug school attracts students today for the same reasons it did when it first opened in 1975 in another location. After decades of federal policy that nearly eradicated Indian culture, students, parents and teachers in Minnesota and elsewhere left public schools that ignored their culture and started new schools that incorporated it.

 

Today, public schools near reservations typically offer language or culture classes. But, “basically it’s just the western system with a little bit of Ojibwe injected into it,’’ said Mike Schmid, a social-studies teacher at the Bug school who was part of the founding effort. Schmid also still teaches part time at nearby Cass Lake-Bena public schools.

 

Language and culture are at the core of a BIE school day instead of at the periphery, offering an alternative educational approach for American Indian students, whose graduation rates have been the lowest among any ethnic group. In addition to ongoing “seasonal” classes like Armstrong’s, there are Ojibwe language courses and analysis of traditional Indian stories. Saging ceremonies, a spiritual cleansing ritual, often kick off the day or week. Many schools have flag-draped spirit poles where students can seek out peace during a hectic school day.

 

Elders from the community also come to share their skills and forge relationships with younger generations. Several of the elders who teach at the Bug school are among the last “first language speakers” of Ojibwe in the state. Leona Wakonabo and Gerri Howard work in the elementary’s Niigaane Ojibwe immersion program, and Marlene Stately teaches at the high school. They dispense hugs along with the correct pronunciation of a language said to be one of the hardest to learn.

 

“There’s nobody left like them,’’ said Ben Bonga, who speaks Ojibwe as a second language and teaches in the immersion program. By starting kids early, it’s hoped that they will achieve the fluency that their parents did not.

 

To Bonga and many others in the community, the risk of not having schools like Bug-ONay-Ge-Shig, or losing students because the facilities are inadequate, is that the Ojibwe language and traditions will die out. “We are at a turning point. It’s crucial that we get the right help, the right money, to prevent that,’’ Bonga said.

 

Because BIE students’ math and reading scores nationally lag those of Indians and non-Indians in public schools, there are questions in policy circles about the schools’ educational niche. But there are also a growing number of studies underscoring the potential of a Teacher Kim Anderson and student Jaiden Lightfeather, center, drummed in the outdoor classroom. culture-based education to improve outcomes. The success of tribal colleges in dramatically increasing the number of Indians with postsecondary degrees is also potent evidence of the value of culture-based education.

 

As for those who advocate simply putting students into public schools, Bug-O-NayGe-Shig Superintendent Crystal Redgrave noted that scores for Indian students in public schools remain dismal. She said culture-based curricula need to be strengthened and given more time to deliver.

 

She and educators at the school are working on a math textbook that would use traditional seasonal activities to teach key concepts. Bravery and resilience would also be a theme in stories and activities used in grades three to five. On reservations, “that’s when many children lose a grandparent or parent or other family members,’’ she said.

 

Western education “has had 150 years to prove itself” for Indian students, Redgrave said. “It doesn’t work. It is time to change Indian education to Native education.’’

 

At the Bug school, traditional activities and dedicated teachers keep students coming to class as they deal with troubles at home or in communities plagued by crime, alcohol and drug abuse.

 

The Leech Lake Indian Reservation has a child poverty rate (those under 18) that’s nearly three times higher than the state average of 12.8 percent. Nationally, Minnesota has the thirdhighest percentage of Indian families living below the poverty level, at between 30 and 33 percent, according to a 2013 Bureau of Indian Affairs report. The diabetes clinic, one of the first sights that visitors to the reservation encounter, also attests to the widespread health problems and lower life expectancy on the reservation.

 

Chaz Roper, 17, a senior, lost his dad this fall and has lived with his older sister, Rochelle Roper, and her family for about the past three years. His mom, who has serious health problems, has struggled to be a part of his life.

 

An amateur boxing champion, Roper never felt at home in public schools. He transferred to the Bug school and found solace in its small size and traditional activities. “He’s always been very interested in his native culture,’’ said Rochelle Roper, who graduated from the Bug school herself. “It seems like since he started the Bug school, he’s been on the right path. He comes home on time. He listens to me. He has respect for me. If I need something, he does it. He’s a really good kid.’’

 

Senior Seneca Keezer, 18, also attended public schools and felt adrift before transferring. She lost her mother to kidney failure and pneumonia when she was 10. For the last eight years, she’s been a second mom to her two younger sisters, coming home each night to cook dinner for them, watch over their homework and put them to bed.

 

Her father is seriously ill, with diabetes-related amputations leaving him in a wheelchair and requiring nursing care. Keezer shares these duties with her aunt, somehow finding time to do her own homework and to have led the school’s Native Knowledge Bowl team to a second-place finish in a recent tournament.

 

The cultural touchstones emphasized at the Bug school, and its caring teachers, have helped Keezer during her grief and adjustment to new family roles. “I’ve gone to sweat lodges, ceremonies with big drums, powwows, things like that,” Keezer said. “When I’m doing them … I let go of all the negative stuff that has happened.’’

 

The Bug school’s construction woes are not of Minnesota’s making, but state-based solutions should be explored to prevent Seneca’s little sister, a fourth-grader who attends the Ojibwe immersion program, from going to high school in the same decrepit building.

 

Unlike Minnesota’s public school system, BIE schools rely primarily on federal dollars — a legacy of land treaties specifying future education obligations. That means faraway bureaucrats ultimately decide whether new schools are built.

 

Federal officials may be fine with Bug school conditions for now, but Minnesotans shouldn’t be. Children in a state that has long relied on an educated workforce as its leading economic asset should not be getting their education in a school that is an unsafe impediment to learning.

 

There’s precedent for Minnesota to provide state aid: The state already supplements BIE schools to address disparities between rich and poor districts.

The biennial appropriation for the program is $2.2 million.

 

That’s not even close to the sum needed to make the new Bug school a reality. But a stateled focus on the school could attract philanthropic assistance. Officials for the Minnesota Department of Education and northern Minnesota’s respected Blandin Foundation, which has long worked with the Bug school, told an editorial writer that they were interested in evaluating new strategies to provide help.

 

While the price tag for a new school may seem daunting, “with enough partners you can get that done,’’ said Kathleen Annette, Blandin’s president and CEO.

 

Minnesota is also home to the profitable metro-area Mystic Lake Casino run by the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community. While casinos don’t negate the federal government’s obligation to BIE schools — and there aren’t enough highly profitable gambling operations to support all of the federal system’s needs — with $28 million in 2013 donations this southmetro tribe is known regionally for its generosity. Helping the Bug school would fit the tribe’s philanthropic mission.

 

A state-led initiative would essentially let the federal government off the hook when it comes to its educational trust obligations to the Leech Lake Reservation. But the conditions at the Bug school are at the point where action is needed now. Gov. Mark Dayton should appoint a task force to kick-start the effort.

 

“Physical space matters,’’ said Anton Treuer, executive director of the American Indian Resource Center at Minnesota’s Bemidji State University. “You become who you hang out with, and you become what you hang out in.”

Why does the federal government fund tribal schools?

 

Federal funding flows from land treaties signed by tribes and the U.S. government. The federal government assumed certain obligations, including education and health, as part of these agreements. “Beginning with the 1794 Treaty with the Oneida, over 150 treaties between tribes and the United States have included education provisions. For almost as long a time, Congress has legislated to provide for Indian education generally,’’ according to the respected “Cohen’s Handbook of Federal Indian Law.”

 

Federal Bureau of Indian Education school funding is one modern iteration of these treaty responsibilities. In 2001, the Native American Education Improvement Act codified the federal government’s “special responsibility” for Indian education.

 

The U.S. Constitution also explicitly recognizes the special status of treaties entered into by the U.S. government as the “supreme Law of the land.” Those who dismiss treaty obligations as antiquated should review Article 6 for a reality check.

 

Why don’t tribes pay for new schools with casino money?

 

Treaties don’t have an escape clause releasing the U.S. government of its educational obligations because casinos have come on the scene. More directly, federal law directs government to fund BIE school construction, according to the Cohen handbook.

 

The idea that individual tribal casinos could fund the system is also off-base. Only 198 of 558 federally recognized tribes have gaming operations, according to the National Indian Gaming Association. The top 20 operations make up 56 percent of the revenue, generally because they’re located near big metro areas. BIE schools tend to be located in remote areas, far away from the crowds needed to bring in big profits, and many schools are on reservations whose tribes do not operate casinos.

By Jill Burcum

 

PINE RIDGE INDIAN RESERVATION, S.D. – Impassioned tribal leaders and educators here are eager to make their case for replacing deteriorating school buildings. But the most powerful argument may be in the blazing lights and nonstop activity at the Little Wound school in Kyle.

 

One of seven federally funded Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) schools on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, and one of four rated in poor condition, Little Wound opens around 7 a.m., with the cafeteria quickly filling up as students arrive early for breakfast.

 

The pre K-12 school, with an enrollment of about 900, bustles long after the school day ends as parents cheer on the Mustangs girls’ volleyball team and admiring students watch the school’s 7-foot Division I basketball recruit, Nate Brown Bull, as he practices jump shots nearby.

 

Outside, kids shoot hoops at the crumbling elementary school playground, and skateboarders show off near the main entrance. Even as darkness descends on the prairie, more kids head toward the school than away from it. Boys’ basketball coach Jay Jacobs closes the gym at 8:30, but it takes time to shoo everyone out before the lights dim.

 

• • •

 

On a sprawling reservation known for its Third World conditions, schools like

Little Wound offer a haven to some of the nation’s most disadvantaged learners. The buildings where students spend most of their day should be in safe, modern learning environments that send a strong message to students: Your education is a priority. Instead, the four worn-out BIE schools here reflect the poverty around them.

 

After a decade in which funding for BIE school construction and improvement has declined sharply nationwide, about a third of the 23-state system’s 183 schools need to be replaced. South Dakota has the thirdhighest number of BIE schools in poor condition, and the Pine Ridge reservation has one of the largest clusters nationally — a reality that’s unlikely to change soon without stronger advocacy from the Obama administration.

 

“These are our future teachers and our future leaders,’’ said Maria Kirkie, a mother of three and a teacher at Little Wound. “We need to invest in them.’’

 

There’s a clear weariness on the reservation from being held up for decades as one of the poorest places in the United States. Students know why outsiders — known pejoratively in the Lakota language as “wasichu’’ — often come here, and they’re reluctant to see their community’s troubles in the spotlight again.

 

“Sometimes when people come here, they think we’re trashy and stuff … that we’re homeless and we starve all the time. That’s what kind of hurts,’’ said Kristina Looks Twice, 13, an eighth-grader at Wounded Knee District School, a K-8 facility in Manderson. Wounded Knee is another of Pine Ridge’s four BIE schools rated in poor condition. It’s located close to two potent symbols of the U.S. government’s long, tense relationship with tribes: the memorial

marking the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre and the hamlet occupied by Indian activists in 1973.

 

Cecilia Fire Thunder, a former president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe and current member of the Little Wound school board, says visitors need to look beyond the economic challenges here and see the value of the strong family ties and the richness of Lakota traditions. “Yes, we have a lot of poverty, but it balances out because we don’t have cultural poverty,’’ said Fire Thunder, who was relocated to California in her youth by U.S. government policies but eventually returned home to embrace her heritage and become a leader for her Oglala

Lakota Nation. The tribe has 45,364 enrolled members; the population of Pine Ridge is estimated at 30,000.

 

Still, the depth of the poverty on this 3,468-square-mile reservation — bigger than Rhode Island and Delaware combined — is what makes federal neglect of BIE school buildings here and on other reservations unconscionable. Unemployment on the Pine Ridge reservation, about nine hours west of the Twin Cities and about 90 miles southeast of Rapid City, has been estimated at 70 percent or more. Roughly half the residents in Shannon County, which lies within the reservation’s borders, fall below the poverty level, compared with 13.8 percent of the rest of the state. Per capita annual income is $9,136 and the median home value is less than $20,000, according to U.S. Census data.

 

In Manderson, where the Wounded Knee school is located, these figures morph into grim reality. Manderson is on the western side of the reservation, where the prairies give way to the barren, rose-hued buttes of the Badlands.

 

 

They could, but it’s not realistic to expect local school districts to absorb the federal government’s education obligation to American Indian children. These federal responsibilities flow from land treaties signed with tribes in the 19th century. Local school districts, which typically depend on state and local funding, have their own challenges and needs. That’s especially true of those near reservations. Many districts in areas with extensive federal or reservation acreage have weaker property tax bases. A decades-old federal program called

impact aid already supplements many of these schools to make up for this.

 

By Jill Burcum

 

MARINE CORPS BASE QUANTICO, VA. If federal officials need inspiration and a model for fixing broken-down American Indian schools, they should get out of their Washington, D.C., offices and head a few miles down the road to this military installation in northern Virginia.

 

Nestled in a quiet, wooded spot on the Marine Corps base is the squat, 62-year-old Russell Elementary. Like many aging schools in the federal government’s two separate K-12 school systems — serving the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) and the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) — Russell’s worn-out structure and mechanicals have pushed the building past its expiration date.

 

But while funding for BIE replacement schools has faltered due to bureaucratic neglect and congressional indifference, most students in DOD schools will soon attend classes in new buildings.

 

The agency is in the midst of a decadelong, $5 billion push to rebuild 134 of its 181 schools. Next spring, students from Russell will move just across the road into the stunning new $47 million Crossroads Elementary.

 

Among the 129,577-square-foot building’s features: flexible “learning neighborhoods” instead of standard classrooms; a soaring, two-story media center; geothermal heating; an abundance of natural lighting, and a rooftop garden that will serve as both patio and environmental science laboratory. This is what state-of-the-art school design looks like, which is why education officials from around the nation have traveled here to tour Crossroads.

 

The question is why one federal school system is adequately funded while the other is not. Students both on military bases and on remote Indian reservations deserve modern schools that maximize learning opportunities. But without more focus from the Obama administration, BIE schools will continue to be left behind.

 

“The old approach did not allow education to prepare kids for the 21st century,’’ said Mike Smiley, an Air Force veteran who is chief of facilities for the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) office. “Where we’re going is the future. It’s a student-centered future that focuses on what do students need to succeed.’’

 

The Minnesota kids who attend class in the pole barn serving as the Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig High School on the Leech Lake Indian Reservation would no doubt agree that a new approach to school buildings is needed.

 

The Bug school is one of 63 BIE facilities — about one-third of the system’s total schools — rated in poor condition, meaning they need to be replaced or extensively renovated. So little progress replacing failing BIE school buildings has been made over the past decade that a 2011 report — one that urged federal officials to launch a massive school rebuilding effort like the DOD’s — estimated that it would take six decades to work through the construction backlog. BIE schools serve about 50,000 students.

 

No American should begrudge the progress being made at Crossroads and the other DOD schools. For families with loved ones on the front lines, state-of-the-art schools offer peace of mind that kids at home are getting a top-notch education. In addition, DOD schools serve as critical community hubs for families living in foreign countries, with the system serving 76,559 students worldwide in the United States, Europe, Cuba, Japan and other Asian-Pacific locations.

 

Smiley and the rest of his smart, energetic team at the DoDEA inspire confidence that the investment in DOD schools will pay off. In an era marked by widespread cynicism about government, the agency’s modestly named “21st century education initiative” is farsighted and well-executed.

 

Renderings of schools being built or planned are displayed in an alcove outside Smiley’s office at DoDEA headquarters in Alexandria, Va., giving it the appearance of a school construction war room. Since the initiative launched in 2011, 17 schools have been completed, construction is underway on 23 and another 37 are in the design process. In contrast, only 11 BIE schools put on a priority replacement list in 2004 have been completed, and 63 must be rebuilt or upgraded.

 

Education “is a huge quality-of-life issue. We have challenges that other folks don’t, with deployed parents and frequent moves for families, remote locations. That makes resourcing the education of our family members a high priority,’’ said Robert M. Brady, a Marine Corps veteran who is the DoDEA’s associate director for financial and business operations.

 

While the school’s price tag may seem daunting to other schools looking to emulate this philosophy, DOD school costs reflect higher foreign land costs and the need for heightened security after 9/11. The price tag would be more reasonable for public schools that want to embrace this design philosophy. “The focus is now on the student. How do we enhance student performance? How can the facility better complement what education needs to do to optimize performance for each and every kid?” Smiley said.

 

The lack of concurrent progress in the BIE system is especially frustrating because Crossroads Elementary and the DoDEA team are right down the road from the White House, Congress and the office buildings that house federal officials with oversight of BIE schools.

 

The growing evidence of the chasm between the two federally funded school systems makes inaction by the U.S. Department of the Interior inexcusable. Interior is the parent agency for the BIE and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Funding for BIE schools also flows through the U.S. Department of Education.

 

The BIE system should be in the midst of a rebuilding effort like the DOD’s. Instead, officials at BIE and its parent agencies continue to drag their feet. A BIE study group report issued this year argued that the BIE system should replicate the DOD school construction initiative.

 

The Interior Department has hired Marilee Fitzgerald, former director of the DoDEA, as an adviser. But in response to an editorial writer’s questions, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell would not say when a similar effort for BIE schools might begin, leaving in limbo schools like Minnesota’s Bug school and the four schools rated in poor condition on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

 

The DOD is a much bigger agency than Jewell’s Interior Department. It also has more allies in the newly Republican-controlled Congress. The keys to its success, however, appear to have been strong leadership by former Defense Secretary Robert Gates and a detailed construction plan that gave Congress confidence that money appropriated for schools would be well-spent. No such plan exists for BIE schools.

 

Many members of the Republican majorities in the U.S. House and Senate are from the Great Plains and Southwestern states where there are large clusters of BIE schools in poor condition.

 

Jewell and her department need to rally bipartisan support for a funding initiative for BIE schools. Having a detailed construction plan is doubly important for her agency, which must overcome its backwater reputation and doubts in Congress about its ability to manage a major initiative like this.

 

Far from Washington, tribal communities have monitored the DOD school rebuilding boom. Their reaction is generally one of admiration for the new schools and the work that DOD officials such as Smiley are doing. Many Indian communities have young people serving in the military — pictures of current and former service members are often on display at schools — and there’s an understanding that DOD schools should provide a top-notch education for the children of those serving this nation.

 

At the same time, there’s disappointment over federal indifference that has left so many BIE schools lagging. Said Imogene Roy, a grandmother on the Pine Ridge reservation: “They need to invest in us, too.”

Improving academic achievement in the federal Bureau of Indian Education’s 183 schools, which serve some of the nation’s most disadvantaged learners on remote reservations, is a daunting challenge.

 

Reading and math scores for BIE students lag those in public schools, including American Indian students. Indian students overall have the lowest graduation rates of any ethnic group in U.S. schools.

 

The problems that have led to those results can’t be solved all at once, nor is there one solution.

 

But replacing deteriorating BIE schools with safe, modern facilities that have the tools and

technology that kids need to learn and teachers need to teach is a logical place to begin.

 

About one-third of BIE schools are in poor condition, meaning that new schools or extensive renovations are needed.

 

There’s research to back up making facilities a starting point. A 2009 report from the Government Accountability Office surveyed two dozen studies of educational outcomes. “A majority of these studies indicated that better school facilities were associated with better student outcomes — such as higher scores on achievement tests or higher student attendance rates.’’

 

While the studies did not prove that conditions cause better outcomes, the GAO report said, there is a correlation. It’s also worth noting that most of the studies accounted for other variables, such as poverty, that could affect student performance.

 

More research is needed to determine the impact of specific features in new schools, such as improved indoor air quality or more natural lighting. The link between school conditions and teacher quality also merits further scrutiny. Still, there’s a growing consensus that school buildings can have positive or negative effects on academic achievement.

 

“It has been said a good teacher can teach anywhere and that a willing student is capable of learning despite the setting. There may be some truth to that,’’ said a 2003 report on facilities and educational outcomes in Tennessee. ‘‘The issue is, however, whether teachers teach as well or students learn as much as they could have in better surroundings. It is simply a fact that the school environment itself has a largely untapped potential as an active contributor to the learning process.’’

By Jill Burcum

 

President Obama had the right reaction after meeting Indian students during his trip to a North Dakota Indian reservation in June. Saying he and the first lady were “shaken” by the kids’ pessimism about their futures, Obama returned home and took action.

 

He ordered his administration to “find new avenues of opportunity” for Indian youths. He instructed every member of his Cabinet to “sit down with Native young people and hear firsthand about their lives.’’ The result of his agenda-setting came earlier this month when Obama announced a series of tribal youth initiatives at the White House Tribal Nations conference.

 

The speech was greeted with cheers. It should have been met with hard questions. The new initiatives, while welcome, are small steps that do nothing to address a critical educational hurdle on reservations: the ragged conditions of school buildings.

 

Online leadership networks, a “youth listening tour” and a “White House Tribal Youth Gathering” are poor substitutes for the safe, modern school buildings that the 183-school Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) system desperately needs. About a third of the schools in this federally funded K-12 system, which serves about 50,000 of the nation’s poorest students, have decrepit facilities.

 

An effort to help Indian youths that does not include an overhaul of these 63 BIE schools cannot be taken seriously. At least $1.3 billion is required for rebuilding or renovation. What’s needed is a swift commitment to secure funding, not lightweight initiatives.

 

Beginning Nov. 23, a Star Tribune Editorial Board series called “Separate and Unequal” documented the shameful state of BIE school buildings across the nation, as well as the growing gap between them and U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) schools, the other federally funded K-12 system.

 

Northern Minnesota’s Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig High School is housed in a deteriorating pole barn. In Arizona, two BIE schools have been on a “priority waitlist” for a decade. In South Dakota, BIE schools are overcrowded and have sections of buildings that have been closed off or condemned.

 

At the same time, Department of Defense schools, which serve children of military families and civilian defense employees, are in the midst of a $5 billion, decadelong project to rebuild 134 schools and set a new national design standard for the future.

 

At the White House Tribal Nations conference, U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell called the editorials “painful” but “helpful.”

 

Jewell, whose Department of the Interior is the parent agency for BIE and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, deserves credit for recognizing the problems documented in the series. But now she needs to provide a concrete action plan to overhaul the schools — and a personal guarantee that she’ll lobby Congress for the funding needed to launch a school construction surge like the DOD’s. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan also needs to lend his considerable clout.

 

About a week ago, Congress signaled strongly that it’s willing to hear the case for improved BIE school funding with the passage of the continuing resolution/omnibus spending bill. Tucked inside the bill, thanks to a timely push by Minnesota Rep. Betty McCollum, was $20 million for BIE school replacement in 2015, nearly $17 million more than Jewell’s agency requested. The legislation also directed Interior to replace its decade-old “priority construction” list of schools.

 

But much more work needs to be done.

 

At the federal level:

 

• Minnesota’s congressional delegation must take on the BIE school cause. McCollum, as well as Rep. Rick Nolan and Sen. Al Franken, all Democrats, have long been champions of BIE schools. Powerful Republican Reps. John Kline and Erik Paulsen also need to convince their caucus that this is a worthy investment. Kline, as chairman of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, especially could make a difference.

 

• Interior Department officials should tap the expertise of DOD school construction experts. The DOD staff is setting a new standard for school design and has experience managing a large rebuilding effort.

 

At the state level:

 

• Minnesota lawmakers must take the lead on building a new Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig high school. BIE school construction is a federal obligation, but federal action remains years, perhaps a decade away. One BIE ranking of school construction needs indicated that 31 schools are ahead of the Bug school. State. Sen. Terri Bonoff’s idea to form a new partnership with federal officials to finance a new Bug school also merits support.

 

• Gov. Mark Dayton should enlist Minnesota’s nonprofit community to help build a new Bug school. The CEO of the influential Blandin Foundation has said that the organization is interested in getting involved and that covering the school’s $27 million price tag is doable with the right partnerships.

 

The conditions at BIE schools are a national disgrace, one requiring immediate attention. Obama, Jewell and Congress cannot let the nation’s two federally funded K-12 systems become one of haves and have-nots on their watch.

 

And Minnesota, which has a long history of helping communities with immediate needs that outstrip available resources, shouldn’t wait for Washington to help the Bug school. Swift action is needed to ensure that another generation of American Indian kids will not have to attend high school in a broken-down building.