Sen. Jon Tester (MT), ranking member on the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, and Sen. Maria Cantwell (WA) introduced a bill specifically geared to address the abysmal conditions of schools run on reservations.
We have followed the national press exposing the dilapidated condition of many federally run schools under the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) and lobbied on increased funding with our faith partners. The Omnibus funding bill Congress passed in December took steps to address the condition of some BIE schools, allocating just enough money for the first priority list of schools to be completed and $8 million to start on the next priority list of schools in need of replacement. In total, Congress allocated about $64 million more for BIE school construction and repairs than the previous year, which was $5 million more than the President’s initial request.
While this is certainly promising for the future of school facilities on reservations, there is more work to be done. It has been over ten years since the first priority list was compiled in 2004 and the backlog needed to fully address the disrepair of over 63 schools still clocks in at about $1.3 billion. The report language in the funding bill strongly encouraged the Department of the Interior to reassess how they address this issue, given the severe backlog and incremental movement on the 2004 priority list. It also suggested that the BIE remodel mirror the Department of Defense school renovation plan which took place over 10 years and cost $3.7 billion to replace or renovate 134 schools.
The bill, S. 2468, the Safe Academic Facilities and Environments for Tribal Youth (SAFETY Act) of 2016 seeks to address this head on by requiring the Bureau of Indian Education and the Office of Management and Budget to develop a 10 year plan to address the condition of BIE schools. It puts into place a demonstration program that would allow tribes to help accelerate the construction of BIE facilities. The bill also addresses other schools on reservations, including tribal colleges and Impact Aid schools – which are public schools that have limited tax income since most reservation residents are exempt from state tax. For all three types of rural schools, the bill authorizes housing assistance for teachers to help fill vacancies and increase teacher retention. It also requests separate comprehensive government reports on both BIE and public Impact Aid schools to better understand and assess the needs, best practices, and next steps for renovating reservation-based schools.
