Exactly who paid for the trips, and at what cost, also largely remained a mystery, despite numerous requests for that information.
Early reports, however, suggest that U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs schools may be responsible for sending a significant portion of the Navajo representatives who attended the event in Honolulu.
The BIA has about 43 federally funded schools in New Mexico. Of those schools, The Daily Times was able to learn how 35 of them performed on Adequate Yearly Progress standards for the 2005-06 year. According to records of the Office of Indian Education Programs, a part of the BIA, only nine of the 35 made AYP, about 25.7 percent, which is far lower than the state average — 45 percent of New Mexico public schools made AYP. The AYP status of the remaining eight schools could not be
The BIA funds 184 elementary and secondary schools serving approximately 47,000 American Indian children in 23 states. Tribes operate approximately two-thirds of the schools. The rest are operated by the bureau.
Though The Daily Times sent out at least 55 Freedom of Information requests to schools and districts on and off the reservation in New Mexico with significant American Indian populations asking for the number of people the schools sent and at what cost, few schools have replied.
The public schools that did respond sent a scant number of representatives to the Hawaii conference.
Limited participation
Approximately 10,000 of Gallup-McKinley County Schools' 12,000 students are American Indian. Only three representatives of the district went to Hawaii, and the trip of only one person — the school board president — was paid, said Carmen Moffett, No Child Left Behind Consolidated programs director for the district. None of the district's 30-plus Indian Education Committee members attended, she added.
The reason why? Moffett did a cost-benefit analysis and concluded the trip would not be worth it.
"I look carefully at travel and at how much are we spending, and what are we getting out of it? And are we traveling because we want to travel, or if we're getting something out of it?" she said.
The travel philosophy Moffett has is that a few representatives should be able to obtain and return with all the relevant information to share it with the rest of district staff. Even on trips to Albuquerque, she said she still limits the numbers of travelers.
Several other public school districts responded to The Daily Times to say they did not send a single representative. Albuquerque Public Schools, which has 4,867 American Indian students, or 5 percent of its enrollment, sent no representatives to the Hawaii conference.
That also was true of the Dulce Independent Schools, whose more than 600 American Indian students comprise 92 percent of the population; Pojoaque Valley Public Schools, with 381 American Indian students; Ruidoso Municipal Schools, with 420 American Indian students; Taos Municipal Schools, with 232 American Indian students; and Tularosa Municipal Schools, with 211 American Indian students.
In contrast, the Central Consolidated School District paid for eight employees to go to the convention when the district has a little more than 6,000 American Indian students.
Darrell Watchman, Navajo Nation program director for Johnson O'Malley and the Department of Diné Education, said the only public school district that used federal Johnson O'Malley funds to send numerous people to the Hawaii convention was CCSD.
"If any other schools went, they used a combination of other funds," he said. "These school districts may have sent people, but they used other funding sources."
Neither Watchman nor any of his program staff went to Hawaii.
"Our funding is insecure. We couldn't afford to go," he said.
The BIA schools
Baca Community School in Prewitt and Taos Day School in Taos both responded to say they sent no one. But overall, the response from Bureau of Indian Education schools around the state was minimal as of late Friday.
Melissa Culler, executive director of Shiprock Associated Schools, formerly Shiprock Alternative Schools, told The Daily Times that her school sent six people — five board members and Culler, at a cost of $2,200 per person. The school has about 550 students.
Apart from the benefits of attending the National Indian Education Association Convention, which include learning about lobbying efforts happening to improve Indian education funding and saving indigenous language, Culler said that her school was so well represented because one of its board members — Eva B. Stokely, who has a school named after her in Shiprock — was receiving a lifetime achievement award. The school wanted its whole board to be present for the honor.
"It's not just site-seeing," she said.
Culler takes offense at the suggestion that the Navajo Nation sent 362 people. The people who identified themselves as being from the Navajo Nation were board members, American Indian students who were going there to perform, administrators and others, she said.
But Culler did admit having noticed that there were schools that appeared to be excessively represented.
There were "smaller schools that sent all of their school board and I would wonder why," she said.
Last year, when the convention was in Alaska and Eva B. Stokely was not being honored, Shiprock Associated sent three members.
The money to pay for the Hawaii trip came out administrative funds that the school receives from the federal government. None of it came from academic funds, Culler said.
The Daily Times sent Freedom of Information requests to practically every listed Bureau of Indian Affairs school in New Mexico, including schools that have no Navajo populations — schools like Ohkay Owingeh Community School in San Juan Pueblo, whose students have to be of the Tewa Pueblo to enroll. That school sent two representatives: a board member and the executive director of education. The cost to send both was $4,604; the director's way was paid in full, and only the board member's registration fee and hotel accommodations were paid.
Many people have defended sending multiple delegates. The convention is one of the best and most important in the country regarding Indian education matters, and much good comes out of it, they argue.
NIEA convention not a vacation'
The prevailing image of Hawaii is one of sandy beaches, clear-blue ocean scenes and plenty of tropical fun.
But that image has little to do with what happened at the 2007 National Indian Education Association Convention, said Noreen Sakiestewa, the director for the Department of Education for the Hopi Tribe.
Some people "looked at it as a vacation rather than a conference where we did serious work. Our schedules were so full, we were very busy," Sakiestewa said. "If you were diligent about attending, you learned a lot, especially about another culture."
American Indians who attended the convention were not spending the days getting a deep tan on the beaches, she said. They were learning about pressing issues, such as culture and language retention.
The Hopi tribe, which has roughly 13,000 members on and off the reservation, preregistered about 55 delegates to the conference. Sakiestewa said that while she didn't know the exact expenses, their trips were funded through federal grants and contract money.
Calls made to the Washington, D.C., Office of Public Affairs for the Bureau of Indians Affairs were not returned. Calls made to local branches were forwarded to the Washington office.
Font Resize