With Graduation Climbing, Tribal School Makes Grade Gambling Money Goes A Long Way Toward Enhancing Indian Education

When a loud noise rings through the spanking-new Coeur d’Alene Tribal School, the students don’t know how to act.

“They say, ‘What’s that?”’ said acting Superintendent John Anderson. “We’ve never had bells before.”

When it comes to education, the Coeur d’Alene Reservation has a lot of things it hasn’t had before. There will be much to celebrate at today’s education powwow in Plummer, including:

A lot more kids are staying in school. “We’re approaching our goal of 90 percent high school graduates,” says tribal education director Dianne Allen.

Exact figures aren’t available, she said, because the public high school doesn’t track dropouts based on ethnic background.

Lewis-Clark State College is offering courses on the reservation. Five students just graduated after spending weekends and evenings studying business administration.

North Idaho College has announced an initiative to enhance the tribal presence on its Coeur d’Alene campus. A “long house” that would serve as a minority cultural center may be part of that.

Efforts to preserve the Coeur d’Alene language are steamrolling. LCSC offers classes in the tribe’s native tongue, and gives students the same credits they would receive for taking a foreign language. The classes will be offered in Coeur d’Alene starting this fall.

In February, a tribal language center opened in Plummer.

In the past five years, the number of college scholarships offered by the tribe has increased from six to 43. This year’s scholarships amount to $300,000; Allen expects 100 students to apply for money to attend college next fall.

The tribe has donated $305,000 over the past four years to public schools on the reservation, which some of its young members attend. Tribal donations to its own kindergarten-through-eighth-grade school mean that every child there has a computer.

The scholarships and donations come from money raised at Coeur d’Alene Tribal Bingo.

“It’s really hard not to be mad at people who are trying to block gaming,” Allen said. “If they could just be here and see what it’s done.”

Gambling money did not pay for the $5 million school, which is the most visible sign of educational progress on the reservation.

It was paid for by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. For 24 years, while they waited for federal money, students and teachers endured temporary portable classrooms.

Even after the school made the top of the list, it was five years getting built. Tribal planner John Abraham blames communications problems, federal bureaucracy and poor soil conditions.

“There were a few times when I didn’t think we’d end up with a school at all,” Abraham said.

The tribal school ended this year with 78 students. School officials expect that the beautiful facility and small, team-taught classes will attract more families whose children now go to public schools. The building’s capacity is 125 students.

Tribal school attendance once bottomed out at 40, Allen said. A lot of parents were upset with the fact that not all of the teachers had state credentials.

That’s because the faculty included elders who were experts in tribal culture but weren’t trained as teachers.

These days, all the teachers are certified, and the school is fully accredited by the state. But Allen thinks the cultural element is lacking.

Even though the tribal school is not her direct responsibility, cultural education is. She’s pushing for ways to get Indian ways into the classroom.

“A good education is an identity-building process. How can we build an Indian identity if students don’t even know our culture?”

Allen’s office is in the three-story, 1892 brick building that towers above the new school. It once was a boarding school run by Catholic nuns.

The first tribal school was a log cabin built in 1842, said Dixie Saxon, the tribe’s cultural resource coordinator.

Soon after white men arrived, she said, Coeur d’Alene leaders declared that education was the tribe’s key to survival.

“That’s why they invited the Jesuits and the nuns,” said Saxon.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo (Idaho edition only)

MEMO: All graduates, not just tribal members, will be honored with dances at today’s powwow. It begins at 4 p.m. at the high school gymnasium in Plummer.