Mr. MEEDS. You have the responsibility for evaluating programs and projects carried out under programs of the Office of Education and disseminate the results of those evaluations. That is one of your charges.

Are you doing this, actually doing this?

Ms. TORKLEP. We are, in a limited way because of the limitation of funds that the Office of Education gives us.

Mr. MEEDS. How much funds were spent on the Advisory Council in fiscal year 1975?

MS. TORKLEP. I would ask Mr. Steele, our expert, to answer that. Mr. STEELE. The total budget this past year was $228,000. About $80,000 of that stays in the office for administration. The remainder goes in for council activities. One would be for onsite visitations to review projects, and the other to hold our meetings, to listen to the Indian communities express their concern.

Mr. MEEDS. How many meetings of the Council did you have last year?

MS. TORKLEP. Six.

Mr. MEEDS. Where, here in Washington, D.C.?

MS. TORKLEP. No; the only meeting that we had in Washington, D.C., was when we were in the process of reviewing title IV proposals. We had meetings in Oklahoma City, Denver, Bismark, and Orlando, and also in Anchorage.

Mr. MEEDS. What has been the average attendance at those meetings, Has it been pretty good?

Mr. STEELE. It has been very good.

Mr. MEEDS. Out of 15, what will you average at a meeting?

Mr. STEELE. Of the Council members, about 80 percent attendance. Mr. MEEDS. Now at these meetings, do you also evaluate those programs and discuss the development of criteria for regulations and other administrative matters? What I am trying to find out, is the Office of Education really trying to involve you, and are you really involving yourselves in Indian education?

MS. TORKLEP. The Office of Education is not involving us. We are trying to involve ourselves. Individual members of the council try to get out and make site visits to various programs that are funded, but due to the budget, it has been restricted to title IV, and no other types of programs.

When we have our meetings, we discuss this, and perhaps the greatest input is from the people who attend the meetings in the areas where we do have them, because we do leave time on our agenda, usually a day, where we listen to the people talk about their needs, the programs what is going on with their programs, that type of thing.

We do have committees where we do break down our work, and there is one committee that does work that deals specifically with rules and regulations.

Mr. MEEDS. In what specific instance have you provided technical assistance to a local education agency in helping them to develop Indian education programs?

MS. TORKLEP. That would depend on the council member. I, myself. have gone into schools in North Carolina and West Virginia where I have gone and met with the parents, sat down with them, and tried to go through what is the process of applying for proposals, what you need and try to help set up the program.

:

I have also, in New Mexico, gone for the part B, which is tribal organizations, and I have worked with the tribal groups. It depends on the different members and their time, and expertise.

I know that Mr. Risling has spent a great deal of time in California going out and giving technical assistance.

Mr. MEEDS. What would you estimate to be a reasonable sum for financing the council?

Mr. STEELE. We have submitted 2 years in a row $692,548 which would enable us to conduct our activities. Of this, $300,000 would go to providing technical assistance to those Indian tribes and Indian organizations, and those schools that are not now benefitting by title IV funds.

Last year, there were 584 school districts funded under part A, and there were approximately 2,900 eligible.

Mr. MEEDS. We heard testimony yesterday that one school district in California made an application for funds with one Indian student. The grant was for approximately $141.

Mr. STEELE. In California, Alaska, and Oklahoma, the schools are eligible if they have one Indian student. The other States are different. Mr. MEEDS. Is that fair and reasonable? It would cost you more money than $141 to make an application, and for OE to process it.

Mr. RISLING. Let me speak to that. California, Alaska, and Oklahoma happen to have a different situation from the land base. As a matter of fact, the original Johnson-O'Malley was written for California to take care of these kinds of things because Indians were dispersed into schools in all the areas.

The Education Act was set up for "all Indians"; since a lot of Indians are scattered in small areas, we feel they have the right to some help also. If the school district wanted to spend money to get the $141 or something, at least that school district would, then, get interested in that one Indian student, but that is very unusual.

It is not the general case. Most of the school districts that have applied have 50 or more students. This happens to be an exception to the rule, which makes good conversation in hearings like this. It is not the case, generally speaking.

Mr. MEEDS. Let us follow this "good conversation in hearings like this" a little further. You think there should be any limitation? I know you said that it helps to get the school interested in one Indian, and I think that it is very ture.

Do you think, however, that an application for $141 is a very viable kind of thing?

Mr. RISLING. I would not argue that case. All I am saying is that we make laws for all people, why deny some of the people? If you say that the limit is 50, why deny 49 people?

Mr. MEEDS. If you set the limit at 100, why deny 99? You have to set some limit somewhere.

Mr. RISLING. But the act is set up to benefit all Indians, and the economics set up who is going to apply in that particular area. If it is going to cost $160 to apply for $141, it is just commonsense that they would not apply for it. It would be very interesting to get the name of that school, visit that school, and find out what is happening. I am going to look it up. If you want a report of what I can find

out.

Mr. MEEDS. You ask the Office of Education, they are the ones whe testified yesterday about it. I would appreciate hearing from yo

about it.

Mr. RISLING. I will get you that information.

I want to go one step further. We have a certain amount of unrest in the Indian communities when we go out and have hearings at the various places with the people. They are very incensed about not being funded.

It is very hard to talk to people who can show you more need than 90 percent of the district that is being funded because they don't have any technical assistance.

Mr. MEEDS. To seek the funding?

Mr. RISLING. Yes; to seek the funding, so they are continually com ing to us and saying: "How come we don't get funded. You tak about needs, we have more needs than anybody else. So we are appealing."

I am appealing for this $300,000 for technical assistance, which would allow some of those people to have Federal proposals prepared. which they are not able to do. À second thing is, even when we do this then somebody else is going to get dropped off, when you go to the other people with the other people with the other needs, and we have to increase our budget continually.

I think that it was a sad state of affairs that we had the same amount of money this year that we had last year with inflation and everything else, plus the fact that the Indians are just becoming aware that here are some programs for them. They are applying for them only to find out that it is the same old story. They get all enthused. and then they cannot get any of it.

Mr. MEEDS. I wish I could spend more time with you, folks. It is very interesting testimony. Thank you very much.

At this point, the questions and responses thereto will be made part of the record.

[Information requested by subcommittee but never supplied.] Mr. MEEDS. Next we have a panel composed of Ms. Jana McKeag National Congress of American Indians; Mr. Ken Ross, National Indian Education Association; and Mr. Lawrence Snake, National Tribal Chairman's Association. Would you please come forward?

I see that there are two prepared statements here. Do all of you have prepared statements? Without objection, all of your statements will be made part of the record, and vou may summarize them, please.

For those witnesses who will be testifying in the future and who are here in the audience, because of the limitation on time, it will be neces sary that all of you summarize your statements rather than reading them for the record.

[Prepared statement of Kenneth Ross follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF KENNETH ROSS, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL INDIAN EDUCATION

ASSOCIATION

The Window Rock School District received a Title VII grant of $250,000 for the school year 1974-75. Under the new guidelines for 1975-76, Window Rock had to compete as a new project again. We were informed that we scored 116 points below the funding cutoff level.

The four reasons for which our project scored so low, as stated in a letter fr the Title VII office, indicate the readers had no real understanding of the simmation affecting Native American students in general and those attending the Window Rock School District in particular.

For example, our staff was considered not adequate, yet this same staff, consisting of ten people, six of them Indian, three with Master's degrees, had carried out a very successful program in 1974-75.

Another obvious example of lack of proper understanding was the statement that our program was not sufficiently restricted in size and scope to avoid jeopardizing effectiveness. We had discussed this question at length with the Title VII office in regard to the 1974-75 project. The desire of our Parent Committee was to provide the opportunity for as many students as possible to become involved. With a student enrollment that is 90% Navajo, we wanted to provide bilingual/bicultural educational opportunities to as many students as possible. The major means of doing this was through the use of closed circuit television. Millions of dollars have been spent in recent years to create bilingual television programming with very fine results. But none of this has benefitted Native American Students, unless they happen to speak Spanish.

In one year, we were able to move rapidly into actual television production, utilizing the expertise of our staff, community people, and quickness to learn of our students. We produced two weekly programs and a wide variety of specials. Our efforts were being looked to by other schools and by the Navajo Tribe as the potential source of television production that could be used throughout Navajoland.

Another area of criticism concerns the method of notification of projects that lost funding. We were not notified until the second week of July that we were to receive nothing. Our School Board, under state law must offer contracts to teachers on staff in April. Those teacher contracts under Title VII were marked "pending federal funding," however, being notified in July that they no longer had positions caused extreme personal hardship.

In June, 1975, we received permission to revise our Title VII budget in order to hold a summer workshop to develop materials and better prepare our staff. A great deal of effort was put into this workshop involving professional and paraprofessional staff members and students. A wide variety of bilingual/biliterate/ bicultural materials were produced, including booklets, tapes, videotapes and displays. More importantly, all of the people involved became more enthusiastic about adopting these materials into the classroom and demonstrated a growing sense of confidence and competence in the ability to create an effective bilingual/ bicultural education program. All of this has been virtually aborted by the cutoff in funds.

These factors and other problems relating to Title V have affected schools throughout Navajoland. Many projects have been eliminated before the opportunity to complete the five year cycle of funding. Other projects have received funding cuts. Yet new projects have been approved.

A major problem has been caused by the constant change in Title VII guidelines. They were changed for 1974-75; they were changed for 1975-76, now we hear that new guidelines are being developed for 1976-77.

Schools educating Native Americans have only recently become involved in Title VII programs. Fewer than 10 projects for Native Americans have been in existence as long as five years. In 1974-75, there were over 300 Title VII projects, fewer than 10 percent of them affected Native American students.

There has been a rapidly growing interest, created by the increasing involvement of Indian people in the operation of schools and by the success demonstrated by programs such as those at Rock Point, Arizona and other schools. However, creating successful Native American projects has several difficulties that apparently are not being fully understood or appreciated by the Title VII office. The major problem encountered is the oral tradition of Indian languages. Although they have been given written form, this is still basically a new effort. Bilingual Indian students, it has been proven, can learn English much faster if they first learn to read their own language. But almost no materials exist. The comparatively small market for such materials has deterred commercial companies from being involved in producing bilingual/biliterate Indian materials. Yet a great deal of Title VII money has gone into simply revising and changing biliterate materials that already exist in languages for which there is a large market and for which a wide array of materials are being produced commercially. There has been an increased emphasis under Title VII to develop Regional General Assistance Centers, Materials Development Centers, and teacher training projects. To a large degree these seem to be a result of the desires of universities to belatedly jump on the funding band wagon. Especially in regard to Native Americans, few universities can be credited with providing past leadership or

making any great effort in bilingual education. The major accomplishments have been made in the past at the local school and tribal level. Now, with more funds being made available, the universities are saying, "Let us help you." We docht if they can offer much of value in comparison to the money that will go to them. Mr. MEEDS. Please proceed. Who is going to be the initial spokesman?

STATEMENT OF KENNETH ROSS, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL INDIAN EDUCATION ASSOCIATION

Mr. Ross. My name is Kenneth Ross. I am currently serving as the president of the National Indian Education Association, where I do wear another hat, and that is school superintendent of Window Rock in Arizona.

I have a prepared statement, but what I would like to do is address a couple of issues that are relevant in terms of the firing line of education.

The education bill has received a veto. In a matter of about 3 weeks. I will be faced with a situation whereby 147 teachers, 2,714 students. and yet not really knowing whether or not we have adequate funds to run the school system.

Mr. MEEDS. That is because of the President's veto of the education appropriation?

Mr. Ross. In part, but in part due to the fact that in terms of going through their new regulations for the Johnson-O'Malley Act, at least in the State of Arizona, we do not have any contracts in the area of Johnson-O'Malley.

We do not know exactly how much money we are going to receive. or when we are going to receive it. So, it gets to a point where as a school administrator you end up going to the bank and borrowing money. Then when you get the Federal assistance, paying the interest and everything else on top of it.

We have a situation where we talk about basic educational programs, and yet you find that for the most part, most of the funding that is coming in is in the area of supplemental services, and when, in fact, we cannot provide the resources locally and maintain a basic education program, but yet look out for three areas, at least, in terms of trying to meet the unique and special educational needs of Indian children.

You take a look at Johnson-O'Malley, which has gone supplemental or categorical, in that nature, and we say "for the unique and special needs of Indian children" in title IV, and go down into the area of title I, economic disadvantaged, yet I guess the prime concern that we have as school administrators is: do we have the resources to provide the basic programs?

It has come to the point where, at least in the State of Arizona, there is something like 19 percent of the total land base which is taxable. We have a school district that has 40 taxpayers. Of those 40 taxpayers. three of the taxpayers carry 97 percent of the taxload.

It becomes a very serious concern in terms of just the day-to-day operations of the school system. When, in fact, you make an application and come after bilingual education, for example, like last year we had $250,000 to operate a bilingual program.