Tribal push breathes new life into Indian ed bill

By Zsombor Peter
Staff Writer

GALLUP — A funny thing happened to S.B. 1363 on its way to the Arizona House of Representatives: it became a whole new bill.

Originally written to give teachers a little extra protection from bad evaluations, it now calls on the state to create an Office of Indian Education.

"It was revised by what we call a striker," said Sen. Albert Hale, D-Window Rock, whereby a committee strikes the original language of a bill and replaces it with something completely different.

And thereby did a handful of state legislators revive tribal dreams of an office within the Arizona Department of Education devoted to helping the more than 56,000 American Indian students who attend the state's public schools, dreams that only weeks ago appeared all but dead.

Heading into this year's legislative session, the Navajo Nation's education leaders had high hopes for a bill calling for the creation of a new Office of Indian Education for Arizona. But by early March, Hale, one of the bill's sponsors, declared that "for all intents and purposes, it is dead."

First introduced in the House, the bill passed the Education Committee with little trouble.

"But it also had an appropriation in it," said Hale, "which means it had to go to the Appropriations Committee."

And there, he said, "it got stopped in its tracks."

The committee had only so long to vote on the bill; because the committee never did, the bill died.

But Navajo Nation leaders weren't ready to give up on an Office of Indian Education just yet. According to Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley Jr.'s spokesman, George Hardeen, the president traveled to Phoenix to meet with the House speaker in person. Along with a few tribal delegates and staff from the Navajo Nation's Division of Din Education, he headed back a few weeks later to meet with the House of Representative's Education Committee.

"I think his presence really did help to revive (the bill)," Hale said.

That same day, the committee passed S.B. 1363, taking out everything the Senate had approved and replacing it nearly word for work with the same bill the Appropriation Committee had killed.

That's good news for the Navajo Nation and the other 21 tribes the bill could help, but they're hardly in the clear. Plenty of obstacles remain.

The bill has been stuck in the House Rules committee for weeks now. If it ever makes it out, it's the full House's turn. Once it's through the House, the bill moves on to the Senate. There, said Hale, they'll need the support of the lady whose bill they rewrote: Sen. Toni Hellon, R-Tucson.

If she consents, the bill goes on to the governor's office. If not, there's still hope: Democrats and Republicans can try to work out a compromise in a bipartisan conference committee, though it shouldn't come to that. Hellon said she's already given the "striker" her blessing.

All that's to say that hope for an Office of Indian Education in 2006 remains, but it will take some work yet.

With a quarter-million American Indians and 22 tribes the Navajo Nation the largest among them Arizona would seem a good candidate for the office.

The bill broadly charges the office with assisting the state's public school districts and tribes to "meet the educational needs of (American Indian) students" by helping them plan, develop, implement and evaluate "culturally relevant" curricula and instructional materials. It would establish an advisory council and a fund to support the office's work. It would also require the office and all districts with tribal lands to regularly report on the performance of their American Indian students.

While tribal leaders would welcome the addition to the state's Department of Education, it's not all they could have hoped for. For one thing, it leaves out any specific references to promoting American Indian languages references conspicuously stripped from an earlier version of the bill.

While the move sets the bill in line with Proposition 203 a law voters approved in 2000 that restricts bilingual education for students not yet proficient in English it sets the bill at odds with tribal officials. They've condemned the proposition as an attack on their very sovereignty. Armed with data that bilingual education can actually help their students learn not only Navajo and English but all subjects better, the Navajo Nation's education specialists have also blamed it for holding their students back.

Hale takes issue with the bill for charging the office with merely giving "assistance" to the school districts, which may not go about their new job as enthusiastically as the tribes might like. He'd rather see the office in charge of the "planning, development, implementation and evaluation" itself.

The revived version of the bill also cuts the proposed appropriation for starting up the office from $475,000 to $275,000. No one seems sure if that will be enough. Hale said it was, at the very least, a start.

All in all, Hale and Navajo Nation officials consider the bill a big step in the right direction. If it passes, they can thank another bill that had nothing to do with Indian education in the first place.