Johnson and Bordeaux Blast Administration Priorities at Indian Education Hearing

Johnson and Bordeaux Blast Administration Priorities at Indian Education Hearing

Dr. Roger Bordeaux Testifies at Senate Hearing

U.S. Senator Tim Johnson (D-SD) and Dr. Roger Bordeaux, the superintendent of Tiospa Zina Tribal School, located on the Sisseton-Wahpeton reservation, last week spoke about the need for better administration of schools from the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), as well as the need for increased funding for Indian education. On Thursday, Bordeaux testified at an oversight hearing on Indian education held by the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, on which Johnson serves.

During the hearing, Johnson addressed needs specific to facilities construction, adequate line officers, and funding issues for tribal education, including at the higher education level. Johnson also spoke about the vital role of education in combating poverty on Indian reservations.

"I am enormously frustrated about national priorities," Johnson said at the hearing. "The cost of the extension of tax cuts given to people who make over a million dollars a year, will be $32 billion drained out of the Treasury in 2006, and then we say we don't have $10 million for Indian kids to get a college education. For this, the richest nation on Earth, to be essentially pulling up the ladder for academic success for a new generation of young people to provide leadership on reservations is really a distortion what I think our values as Americans ought to be."

South Dakota is home to 21 of the 184 "Bureau-funded" schools that are located on 63 reservations in 23 states. In addition, the BIA maintains approximately 2,400 educational facilities such as schools buildings, gymnasiums, and dormitories. It has been noted that many facilities experience basic infrastructure deficiencies and a backlog in construction.

Dr. Bordeaux enumerated a number of issues affecting tribal schools, including the ineligibility of tribal schools for many educational programs, improper implementation of education policy such as No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and the Individuals with Disabilities Act, the need to have more inclusion tribal governing bodies in rule making, and inadequate funding for tribal schools.

"Their solution for improving schools and improving academics for Indian children appears to be adding more SES positions and high level management positions within the Bureau," Bordeaux said in response to earlier testimony from Jim Cason, the Associate Deputy Secretary for Indian Affairs at the U.S. Department of the Interior. "I would be willing to bet part of my salary that that's not going to make a difference over time. If their going to spend $2 or $3 million I would suggest that they spend it at the school level in the classrooms instead of at senior management positions."

Along with Bordeaux, witnesses at the hearing included representatives from the Departments of Interior and Education and national Indian education organizations.

http://johnson.senate.gov/~johnson/releases/200506/2005620A25.html