Clothing program misses out on funding

By Zsombor Peter
Staff Writer

GALLUP — Thanks to a few Navajo Nation Council Delegates trying to squeeze a little extra pork fat out of the tribe's undesignated, unreserved fund in the final hours of their winter session last week, 8,000 low-income Navajo students won't be getting the clothes they've asked for.

Since the mid 1950's the Navajo School Clothing Program, run out of the tribe's Social Services Division, has been providing clothing to thousands of needy Navajo students across the reservation.

The program spent nearly $1.3 million buying jackets, jeans and running shoes for some 30,000 students last year. But with demand on the rise and the annual appropriations falling, said Drucilla Gould, an office specialist with the Social Services Division, the program turned to the Council for supplemental funding for the first time she could recall this year. The program asked the Council for $500,000 from the tribe's undesignated fund to help an additional 8,000 applicants.

Before the Council could vote on the request, however, some delegates managed to add a few amendments to the bill to the tune of several hundred thousands of dollars that ultimately proved too much for the bill to bear. The 41-30 vote was not enough to secure approval for digging into the tribe's undesignated fund; however, concerns about the program itself may have turned off some delegates.

The program has been the target of accusations of favoritism for almost as long as it's been around, facing charges that delegates and chapter officials use their influence to secure clothes for unqualified family members, for example.

Some delegates Friday also suggested offering families vouchers instead of the clothes so that the students like them enough to wear them instead of throwing them away, as some said they've seen students do.

Still, the clothes seem important to some.

"Oh, rats!" said Lucy Hatathlie-Nez, a social worker at Tuba City High School, upon hearing the news that her students would be among those not receiving their requests.

While there are only three students at the school who applied this year, she said, "the ones that do apply do need the clothes.

"I think my students are going to be disappointed," she said. "It's important to them."

With the Council having denied it the $500,000, said Gould, the program will just have to make do.

"We're just going to serve as many schools as we can with the money we have left," she said.