WASHINGTON -
In order to uphold the United States government's trust responsibility to provide a quality education for Native American students, U.S. Senator Tom Udall joined a bipartisan group of senators to demand that the U.S. Department of the Interior prioritize the next list of construction projects at Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) schools in a more accurate and transparent manner. One-quarter of tribal schools are in New Mexico, and many are in very poor condition.
In a letter to Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, the senators urged the Interior Department not to develop a construction priority list until it incorporates recommendations from an ongoing Government Accountability Office study on BIE facilities, which will be available later this year, and includes meaningful input from tribal leaders. Sens. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Al Franken (D-Minn.), Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), John McCain (R-Ariz.), and Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) also signed the letter.
"Failure to address dangerous and outdated school conditions in a timely manner weakens the literal foundations of the federal government's trust responsibility," the senators wrote. "We cannot allow poor BIE planning and lack of stakeholder communication to leave this problem unresolved for another 10 years."
The BIE School Construction Priority List is an index from the 183 BIE schools and facilities in need of construction or repair. The Interior Department last produced the list in 2004, and is scheduled to release a new list this year.
According to the "
Broken Promises, Broken Schools
" study, 34 percent of BIE schools are in poor condition, which can contribute to lower student achievement.
The full text of the letter is
HERE
and below:
The Honorable Sally Jewell
Secretary
U.S. Department of the Interior
1849 C Street NW
Washington, D.C. 20240
Dear Madam Secretary:
We are writing to express our commitment to seeing the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) produce a fair, transparent school construction priority list. There are immense infrastructure needs in Indian Country, particularly at our schools, and we look forward to working with you to improve those conditions.
As the Department of the Interior works towards completing the 2004 school construction list and publishing a new one, it is imperative that any new list be composed in a fair manner that leads to the efficient and effective utilization of federal funding. It is our hope that the BIE incorporate significant tribal input and elements of the formula framework developed through the 2011 negotiated rule-making process. In addition, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) is currently conducting a study of BIE facilities that will provide recommendations for improving those facilities.
In December 2011, the No Child Left Behind School Facilities and Construction Negotiated Rulemaking Committee, comprising both tribal and federal officials, published its report, "Broken Promises, Broken Schools." The report outlined the needs of Bureau-operated schools and provided recommendations for the BIE to reform the school construction process. Incorporating those recommendations is a necessary step to composing a fair school construction list.
It is also our hope that this process includes a plan to address all of the school construction needs in Indian Country.We urge you to review the recent plan by the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA), the only other federal school system in the United States, to upgrade and modernize its school facilities. In 2010, DoDEA began a multiyear, $3.7 billion construction initiative to renovate or replace its schools worldwide. We encourage you to work with the Office of Management and Budget and the Congressional Appropriations Committees as you develop this plan to achieve similar levels of strategic efficiency.
In February, the GAO testified before the House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee that their study's "preliminary results indicate that issues with the quality of data on school conditions - such as inconsistent data entry by schools and inadequate quality controls - make determining the number of schools in poor condition difficult." What assurances and safeguards are in place to ensure that incomplete facility data will not contribute to the misidentification of a school's needs? We encourage you to work with the GAO to implement effective strategies to improve the condition of facilities throughout the BIE system.
As you know, the United States Government works to uphold its trust responsibility to provide education for Native students through the BIE. Failure to address dangerous and outdated school conditions in a timely manner weakens the literal foundations of that responsibility. We cannot allow poor Bureau planning and lack of stakeholder communication to leave this problem unresolved for another 10 years.
We look forward to learning more about your progress in this area. Please contact Kenneth Martin at the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs at (202) 224-2251 or via e-mail at kenneth_martin@indian.senate.gov with any questions.
Sincerely,
Tom Udall
Jon Tester
John McCain
John Barrasso
Al Franken
Jerry Moran
Heidi Heitkamp
