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.