Las Vegas Native Youth Dancers are shown in front of the new Indian Education Opportunities Program portable.
Sunday, Nov. 24, 2019 | 2 a.m.
Clark High School junior Marlia Navajo gets tearful when talking about the pride she has in her Navajo and Okanagan heritage. She said the Clark County School District’s Indian Education Opportunities Program has helped her not only learn more about herself, but also other tribes.
“Indian Education has helped me make connections with students from other tribes,” she said. “It makes me happy that we’re still here.”
Students like Navajo understand how invaluable the program is in helping them appreciate their cultural heritage and achieve in the classroom. Native American education advocates hope a new portable building for use by Native American and Alaskan Native students in Clark County will represent not only new education opportunities for these students, but a renewed partnership with the school district. It’s located in the central valley near Flamingo Road and Eastern Avenue.
Clark County Indian Education Parent Committee Chairwoman Petra Wilson
The unveiling of the center has been a long time coming, said Petra Wilson, CCSD’s Indian Education Parent Committee chairwoman. The center will be used for tutoring to help address the achievement gap of native students, as graduation rates hover around 68%.
The center will also be a space for cultural and educational events, providing a significant resource to the roughly 500 Native American families the program serves because the group previously had no headquarters.
“We hope that this space gives them a common place to meet and a place to gather and learn about their culture, language and academics,” Wilson said. “In the future I want this building to become an integral part of the school system and a real part of this community.”
During an unveiling event, CCSD Chief of Staff Christopher Bernier called the center a “milestone” for the district.
“It’s one more step in the Indian Education Program having footprint in CCSD,” he said.
The relationship between CCSD and the program hasn’t always been so amicable. In 2017, the Indian Education Parent Committee chose not to apply for the $150,000 Title VI grant — one of two federal grants regularly used to help fund Native American education. Wilson said the decision to forgo the funding was to demonstrate their dissatisfaction with how CCSD relied on federal grants to fund educational opportunities for native students, as well as how the funds were being allocated.
Wilson said most of the funding wasn’t going toward student services and instead went toward other expenditures like student laptops.
“Before, there was no transparency,” she said. “It took a lot of work to educate our educators to have some openness and trust there.”
Now, Wilson is optimistic about the group’s future relationship with CCSD, whose open ear toward the needs of its native population is a game-changer for students. The committee is also applying for grant money, knowing it will be better used.
“I hear a lot of people are angry with Superintendent Jesus Jara, but I will tell you that he made an effort to reach out to us and speak to us when he first came to the district,” she said. “That’s more than we ever got in the past.”
