A new organization in Clark County is pressing area school districts to improve identification and counting of Native American students and to reinstate funding for their educational programs.
The Pacific Northwest Center for Cultural Education is a group of tribal members and educators pushing to improve educational opportunities for American Indians and Alaskan Native children. The recently founded organization is still in the process of securing 501(c)(3) nonprofit status, but hopes to make inroads with area school districts this summer.
“We need to have a better partnership in our community,” said Roben White, a local artist and board member of the organization.
High on the organization’s list of goals is to improve the identification and counting of American Indian students and see the relaunching of area school districts’ Title VI programs, Native education opportunities funded by the federal government.
“It flies under the radar year after year,” Kacie Dominici, the organization’s president, said.
Title VI
According to Education Northwest, an education research group based in Portland, the under-counting of Native students can have significant impacts on schools and students. Public schools are eligible to receive Title VI funding under the Every Student Succeeds Act to provide programs for Native American students. Students must fill out an ED 506 form, a federal form specifying their tribal affiliation and enrollment, to qualify.
The organization’s leadership is urging districts to put those ED 506 forms in new student registration packets so families don’t have to seek them out, Dominici said. In letters the organization sent to area school districts, they called that a “simple, but effective means of better serving our students and improving student success.”
Without an accurate count, “students who are eligible for educational services and opportunities may not be receiving them, according to Education Northwest.
What’s more, Education Northwest continues, students are qualified under treaties between tribes and the United States government to access these programs, whether it’s after-school activities, dropout prevention or Native language classes.
“When students do not have access to Indian Education programs and services, their treaty rights are violated,” Education Northwest reported in a May 2017 article.
Evergreen Public Schools is the last Clark County district to oversee the Title VI program in partnership with Vancouver Public Schools and Battle Ground Public Schools. But Kris Fay, a spokesman for the school district, said it’s been two years since the district participated in the grants.
“The grant is voluntary and the district has decided to focus supports for students through Title I and Title III grants,” Fay said by email this week. Title I funds support programs for low-income students while Title III supports English-language learners and immigrant students.
Added Fay, “we are supportive of partner districts or organizations who apply for the Title VI grant.”
Title VI allows Indian tribes, organizations or other eligible organizations to apply for those funds if no area school district does.
Federal law
Most Clark County districts list a few dozen Native American students at their campuses. At Clark County’s largest district, Evergreen, there were 135 Native American students as of October 2016, according to the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction. Evergreen’s total enrollment was 26,142 that year.
The advocates leading the organization suggest the numbers are actually much higher, but a federal law is obfuscating the true number of Native American students.
When a student registers for school, they note their race and ethnicity. Students who list multiple races are typically categorized as “two or more races.” Students who list themselves as Native American and Hispanic or Latino, meanwhile, are listed only as the latter, according to Education Northwest.
Data from OSPI — albeit old data — suggests there may be as many as thousands more students with Native American heritage than the most immediately available counts suggest. A report on OSPI’s Native American Education page offers disaggregated data on the number of students counting as Native American under several different categories, including Native-Hispanic. According to that report, Evergreen in 2011 had 1,590 students registered as Native-Hispanic. Vancouver Public Schools had 690 students in that category.
Steven Fountain, a Washington State University Vancouver professor and coordinator of Native American programs for the campus, is among those working with the organization.
“There’s a whole lot of kids who aren’t being served,” Fountain said. “That’s where this larger issue of the under-counting for our Native American community comes in.”
Schools aren’t the only organizations accused of under-counting native Americans. Al Jazeera America reported in 2015 on efforts to ensure American Indians and Alaska Natives are adequately counted in the 2020 decennial census, and The Seattle Times reported this summer on Native-led organizations challenging King County’s point-in-time count of homeless people, which suggested the number of homeless Native Americans and Alaskan Natives had declined by half.
