Federal official visits Canyon to check on Havasupai school
The director of the federal Native education system made an unannounced visit to the bottom of the Grand Canyon Wednesday after worsening conditions at Havasupai Elementary School exploded into a legal setback, a mass teacher exodus and the first hints of pressure from elected officials.
In a cross-country trip to the remote tribal community, Tony Dearman and top Bureau of Indian Education officials met with the tiny Havasupai Tribe’s council and school board.
They also met with a committee of parents, tribal members and former Havasupai Elementary School teachers, who presented the bureau with a detailed list of demands for school improvement.
It was both a rare public acknowledgement of the school’s widely known problems and an apparent attempt to stem a period of unprecedented chaos.
The BIE confirmed Dearman’s visit, which did not appear on the Bureau’s social-media feeds. Bureau of Indian Affairs spokeswoman Nedra Darling said the director had planned to discuss staffing, summer programs, special education and student safety, but did not know if Dearman had offered any specific solutions.
Darling said the visit was sparked by a letter from Havasupai Tribe Chairwoman Muriel Uqualla-Coochytewa, who warned Dearman that long-simmering tensions at the school appeared to have finally boiled over.
Weeks of turmoil had left the school with almost no permanent teachers and a newly appointed acting principal.
“Right now we have only three teachers at our school, which serves K through eighth grade,” Uqualla-Coochytewa said in a conference call with reporters earlier this month. “That is not acceptable.”
In response, the BIE posted three teaching positions on the federal government’s job board and sent a group of temporary teachers into the Canyon to finish the school year. Those teachers started work on Monday, according to multiple people with knowledge of the school.
Dearman’s visit also came three weeks after a federal judge denied the government’s request to dismiss most of a landmark lawsuit filed by nine Havasupai students and parents.
The January 2017 lawsuit, which originally listed Dearman as a defendant, accused the BIE of ignoring “longstanding educational deprivations” that had led to Havasupai Elementary’s status as the worst school in the BIE system.
“Right now we have only three teachers at our school, which serves K through eighth grade. That is not acceptable.”
Muriel Uqualla-Coochytewa Havasupai Tribe Chairwoman
Fewer than 20 percent of Havasupai Elementary students go on to graduate high school. The school teaches only English and math, but ranks last among all BIE schools in both subjects. Special-education programs are virtually nonexistent, and students with disabilities are often just sent home.
Teacher shortages have forced the school to close for weeks at a time, and the few teachers it does attract rarely last long. Many resign or are fired under chaotic circumstances.
Five former school employees have told The Republic that they were either fired or forced to resign after harassment by school administrators.
They include Mary Beth Burke, who filed a lawsuit of her own in May 2017. In it, Burke alleges widespread violations of special-education law and retalia-