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POLICIES AND PROGRAMS OF THE OFFICE OF

INDIAN EDUCATION

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1989

U.S. SENATE,

SELECT COMMITTEE ON INDIAN AFFAIRS,

Washington, DC.

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:02 a.m., in room 485, Russell Senate Office Building, Hon. Daniel K. Inouye (chairman of the committee) presiding.

Present: Senators Inouye, McCain, and Daschle.

STATEMENT OF HON. DANIEL K. INOUYE, U.S. SENATOR FROM HAWAII, CHAIRMAN, SELECT COMMITTEE ON INDIAN AFFAIRS The CHAIRMAN. Good morning and welcome to this hearing of the Select Committee on Indian Affairs.

Although the attendance here seems rather sparse in participants and in members, I hope that you will not translate this to mean that this committee is not concerned. I can assure you, as chairman of this committee, that education is of the highest priority. That is one of the reasons we are having this hearing this morning.

Last month we addressed S. 496, a bill on Indian vocational education, and we were able to incorporate several of its recommendations into the Carl Perkins Reauthorization Bill currently being considered by the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee. However, we have not had an opportunity to comprehensively review the status of Indian education during the 101st Congress. This morning we will begin the process. This will not be the first and last hearing; it will be the first of very many.

This morning, we gather to review the policies and programs of the Office of Indian Education. We are here also to review other programs administered by the Department of Education for which the Office of Indian Education has coordination and policy responsibilities.

This hearing's primary purpose is to review the programs of the principal recipient of Federal funds for Indian Education, The Department of Education. We hope to gain a better understanding from this hearing of how Indian education is faring, to learn about Impact Aid, adult and vocational education, vocational rehabilitation, science improvement in minority institutions, bilingual programs and research, and library services. We want to learn how fully these programs are being utilized by the Indian community and how access to them might be improved.

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The immediate stimulus for this hearing was the concern for the continuing delay in the appointment of a permanent director for the Office of Indian Education and the fact that the office is not fully staffed. The concern over the absence of these appointments was reflected in serious program delays. Actions on formula grants to public schools and in funding Indian fellowships were not received until school and college terms were well underway this Fall. If the Department of Education is to forge the Office of Indian Education into an effective and well-functioning office, we believe that it is critical that a director be appointed and that the office be fully staffed on an interim and then permanent basis and that the Department's Indian preference policy be implemented.

We have a number of witnesses this morning. Unfortunately, our time is limited because of activities on the Floor. So most respectfully, I urge each of you who will be testifying to summarize your statement if possible to allow time for questions. However, may I assure you, as Chairman of this Committee, that your full statement will be made part of the record.

Our first panel consists of Ms. Jo Jo Hunt, Executive Director of the National Advisory Council on Indian Education; Mr. Roger Bordeaux, Executive Director of the Association of Community Tribal Schools; Ms. Lorena Bahe, Executive Director of the Association of Navaho Community-Controlled School Boards, accompanied by her counsel, Carol Barbero; and the final witness of this first panel, Ms. Karen Funk, a Legislative Analyst for the National Indian Education Association.

Our second panel consists of representatives of the Office of Indian Education. This hearing has been arranged in this fashion to provide the Department with an opportunity to hear the concerns of those Indian people involved in Indian education, and to respond to those concerns.

With that, may I call upon Ms. Hunt, Mr. Bordeaux, Ms. Bahe, and Ms. Funk.

Ms. Hunt.

Senator MCCAIN. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for holding this hearing on this very important issue. It is one that I know that the committee will be pursuing, as you mentioned, for quite a long period of time.

For the sake of time, I would like to ask that my full statement may be submitted for the record.

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection, so ordered.

[Prepared statement of Senator McCain appears in appendix.]

STATEMENT OF JO JO HUNT, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, NATIONAL ADVISORY COUNCIL ON INDIAN EDUCATION, WASHINGTON, DC Ms. HUNT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am very delighted to be here this morning. I have a rather extensive written statement which goes into detail about a number of the things I will talk about, but I will try to keep my comments relatively short so that the other folks, who have traveled much further than I, will be able to make their comments before you.

The National Advisory Council on Indian Education has been in existence since 1973. We currently have 14 members because of a

vacancy, but it is a 15-member panel consisting of Indians and Alaskan Natives appointed by the President to make various recommendations. There is a long list of duties in our enabling legislation, but the two key duties here today are to make recommendations to the Congress on improvement in Indian education programs and other programs that benefit Indians and also to provide advice to the Secretary of Education on the operation of programs affecting Indians.

The Council has a very broad view of what this enabling legislation means. We certainly feel that the duties encompass looking at all Federal education programs, not only those that Indians participate in but also those from which Indians may benefit but in which they are not currently participating. We have, therefore, started looking a lot closer at Department of Education programs in general.

We do have a number of concerns about the operation of the Office of Indian Education. These are broken down into several subject areas, with the first being personnel issues.

Upon arrival at the Council in December 1988, we began looking at the Indian preference issue since Public Law 100-297 provided that as of April 28, 1988, the Secretary should use Indian preference in all personnel actions in the Office of Indian Education. There were a number of things going on at the Department on the Indian preference issue, but the Council was not involved with those because we were not made aware of the policy of the Department, even though we requested that policy.

We do have the policy now, and we are not going to make any comments on it at this point because we have not seen it in operation. Should we need to make comments later, we will certainly do so if the Indian preference policy is not working.

Our concern is that there are a number of vacancies at the Office of Indian Education. In January, some seven mid-level management positions were announced. In February, the director's position was announced. We have since had education program specialist jobs announced, some clerical positions, and some senior program specialists. None of these have been filled.

We are also concerned that perhaps because of the personnel problems, the office is not getting grant awards out in time. We are also very concerned about the monitoring efforts. We have a number of non-Indian staff people leaving under the non-Indian preference provisions of Public Law 100-297, so we do have a real personnel problem there.

It is the Council's position that the Department should move immediately to fill the position of the Director of the Office of Indian Education so that person might then select top management staff and get the office on the road to being fully staffed and fully operational.

The CHAIRMAN. May I interrupt as we go along?

Ms. HUNT. Certainly, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. How many employees are in the Office of Indian Education?

Ms. HUNT. Mr. Chairman, I am not sure of the exact total right now. I believe their position ceiling is somewhere between 45 and 50. The departmental people here will be able to answer that fully.

The CHAIRMAN. That includes clerical employees?

Ms. HUNT. Yes; I do not know how many are on board at the moment since some people have left.

The CHAIRMAN. I will be asking the Department, but I wanted your thoughts. Of that number, how many are of Indian ancestry? Ms. HUNT. Of the permanent employees there, I know of four. The CHAIRMAN. What types of positions do they hold?

Ms. HUNT. I believe there is one individual who is the Assistant to the Director of the Office of Indian Education, a special assistant. There are two education program specialists and I believe there is one clerical worker.

The CHAIRMAN. And these seven mid-level management positions-how long have these vacancies been in existence?

Ms. HUNT. It is difficult to say exactly about vacancies because they have had people holding these jobs, some of whom have gone on to other jobs under the non-Indian preference provisions, but the vacancy announcements were first posted in January this year to close on February 14. Those same positions were subsequently announced again more recently, so we do not have anyone selected yet.

The CHAIRMAN. I notice that we have an acting director of this division.

Ms. HUNT. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. When was the last time we did have a director? Ms. HUNT. We had a Director, Mr. John Sam, until he became ill in 1988 and died in November 1988, I believe. Since then we have had acting people. Out of the last 7 years, about five of those have been acting directors in that capacity. That sometimes leads us to think that the importance of the office is not at the level it should be at the Department, if we always have acting directors in that job.

The CHAIRMAN. What do you mean by mid-management positions? You said there are seven mid-management positions that are vacant.

Ms. HUNT. These are GM-13, 14, and 15 jobs that would be the deputy director and the top-level supervisors in the office. The CHAIRMAN. These are above the program specialists? Ms. HUNT. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. Do we have any Indians in the mid-management or above?

Ms. HUNT. At the present time, no, not that I know of. Of the Indians over there, I believe a GM-13 is the highest. She is the Assistant to the Director.

The CHAIRMAN. Please continue.

Ms. HUNT. We have had some concerns about regulation promulgation by the Department for the programs of the Office of Indian Education. The thing that concerned me most was the fact that the regulations were written in such a way that it was difficult for me, as an attorney with experience in legislation and regulations, to figure out what was going on. Rather than doing an amendment in the nature of a substitute, there were individual amendments striking out certain portions of the current regulations and putting in other things. One had to use four or five reference materials just to figure out what was going on.

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