School Board Cuts Native Life Program Board Won’t Replace Lost Federal Funding With Local Dollars, After-School Center For Native Americans To Close Aug. 15

Native Americans clashed Wednesday with the Spokane School Board for failing to rescue an after-school program that strives to keep kids from dropping out.

It was the only major controversy raised during a three-hour hearing over the school district’s “status quo” $193 million spending plan.

Board members wound up adopting the budget - minus the $200,000 sought by supporters of the Native Life Center.

Before losing that money in federal cuts, the center offered 320 students counseling, tutoring and instruction in Indian culture. The center closes August 15.

Advocates say the 2-year-old program is sorely needed to prevent more youths from giving up on school.

Native American students drop out far more often than whites in Spokane public schools, and they are disciplined twice as often as whites, studies show.

“We started this program to try and help kids who didn’t have anywhere else to go,” said Jenny Egly, a counselor at the center. “Where are they going to go now?”

Spokane School District 81 administrators said they lobbied state lawmakers - unsuccessfully - to support the program.

Superintendent Gary Livingston recommended against using district money to save the program.

“It’s a tough call, but we try not to replace federal grants with local dollars,” he said. “We’d have to cut from some academic program.”

Instead, the district is applying to Washington Water Power and other companies for grants that could be used to operate the center, said Assistant Superintendent Walt Rulffes.

In the meantime, more Native American students will drop out, predicted Toni Lodge.

“The word that comes to mind for me is ‘genocide,’ the genocide of a people,” said Lodge, executive director of the Native Project in Spokane. “Two-hundred thousand is nothing in a $193 million budget.”

The district has $455,000 in federal money budgeted for Native American education next year. There are 1,200 Native American students in the district, about 3 percent of the general population.

Board members gave unanimous approval to the 1996-97 budget.

The district is conservatively projecting no new students and is launching few new programs.

“It is a really status quo budget,” Livingston said.

Elementary and middle school extra-curricular sports teams will be expanded, with $120,000 set aside for new coaches.

Technology was highlighted in the budget. All five high schools, the Havermale Alternative Center and the Skills Center will be equipped with 96 new computers at a cost of $141,764.

Livingston said board members can expect plenty of controversy a year from now, when the district receives about $6 million less in property taxes.

“It’s going to be a crisis in a year from now,” he said.

The cut comes because the Legislature in 1992 gave Spokane and other big school districts a temporary waiver allowing them to collect extra-large property-tax levies. The waiver expires in 1997, forcing districts back to the legal limit.

“We’ve cut all the easy stuff over the last few years,” said Livingston. “Next year, we can expect a room full of concerns.”

, DataTimes