The State schools are all the schools in rural Alaska that are not an organized borough Mr. BLOUIN [continuing]. You're referring to the — Ms. PERATROVICH. Unorganized borough which is practically the whole State of Alaska. Mr. BLOUIN. I'm sorry that I'm not familiar with Alaska State law on this or maybe it's just semantics but MS. PERATROVICH [continuing]. A borough is like a county. Mr. BLOUIN. Your unorganized designation, is that a temporary designation until such time as the local communities draw their bound aries? MS. PERATROVICH. You'd have to ask our illustrious legislators on that. Mr. RISENHOOVER. What we have in Oklahoma is independent schoo districts the borough being the organizer would— Ms. PERATROVICH [continuing]. And would depend on State furding so Mr. BLOUIN [continuing]. That have to have State funding. Mr. BLOUIN. Your borough schools don't use State funding! Mr. BLOUIN. OK, OK, I think I'm following you. Mr. MEEDS. What really happened was that you had a borough s tem and those districts which had school districts within those boroughs and were operating schools from the borough level; and then the rest of Alaska, which was the State-operated school system. When yo changed the State-operated schools so as to take control back to the borough level from the State, the system named them the unorganized boroughs, is that right? MS. PERATROVICH. Right. Mr. MEEDS. The gentleman from Illinois. Mr. HALL. Could you spell out to any degree how much more Alaska gets under part A and the distribution between the organized and the unorganized? taxable MS. PERATROVICH. Of course the organized boroughs in the State get a larger share per student because of their cost per share on a basis. Mr. HALL. Of the $1 million listed here? MS. PERATROVICH. $1,121,000 was for the 5,500 students. That was last year this year we only got $836,000. The total State of Alaska gets a little over $3 million in Indian education funds. Mr. HALL. Alright, thank you. Mr. BLOUIN. What's the State's school budget? Ms. PERATROVICH. Around $50 million. Mr. BLOUIN. What's the total State budget for everything? What percentage $50 million is that of the whole budget of the State! MS. PERATROVICH. The State budget is quite phenomenal now-I remember when it was $200 million plus but Mr. BLOUIN [continuing]. Education is about 10 percent of the State budget roughly. MS. PERATROVICH. Ten percent, yes, but $44 million of that comes from Federal impact Mr. BLOUIN. You must give some type of a formula then which provides for local tax revenues to run the schools that vary depending upon the geographic makeup-the distance, is that right? Your unorganized districts have less of a requirement for local moneys than the boroughs? Ms. PERATROVICH. All of the schools in the unorganized borough are not taxed. Mr. BLOUIN. There's no local tax base at all? Ms. PERATROVICH. No local taxes. Mr. BLOUIN. OK, so they are totally State or Federal funds? Mr. BLOUIN. And your borough schools have local tax basis? Mr. BLOUIN. So there's a hefty local fund. Ms. PERATROVICH. Right. Mr. BLOUIN. But that's used exclusively for the borough schools? MS. PERATROVICH. Yes; right. Mr. BLOUIN. Thank you. Mr. MEEDS. That's our basic lesson in Alaska education-we feel more at ease now. Thank you very much. Also many thanks for helping us set up the witnesses and the entire itinerary for education-we appreciate it. Ms. PERATROVICH. Well, we all thank you for coming. I do want to point out that I put up a language map because I have a very difficult time explaining the many different languages in Alaska. There are Athabaskan in the center of Alaska; Inupiat in the northern part, Upik is the dark blue; green is the western and eastern Aleut; the brown area is Tlinglit; and that little piece of purple down there is the Great Haidas. Mr. MEEDS. It's my understanding that in the early days the Tlinglits and the Haidas used to fight and the Tlinglits discovered that the Haidas had very beautiful maidens and they decided they'd stop fighting and start loving. Is there any truth to that? MS. PERATROVICH. Every Haida needs her Tlinglit slave. I would also like to point out that we have here some of the bilingual material that we have developed in the past year for these different areas and I did give you one of the books that we recently developed for more relevant reading. Mr. MEEDS. Thank you very much. And thank you Mr. Ipalook. Our next witness is Mr. Robert Rude, president of the Cook Inlet Native Association. I see his trusty lieutenant here-Frank Smith, who will testify for Mr. Rude. STATEMENT OF FRANK SMITH, DEPUTY DIRECTOR, COOK INLET NATIVE ASSOCIATION, ANCHORAGE, ALASKA Mr. SMITH. I apologize for Mr. Rude not being here; he's attending some regional conference business. What I want to do is briefly touch on some of the things they talk about in the funding area under title IV-it touches mostly on part A. I think part B and part C have never been looked at as far as it concerns the State of Alaska. I do think parts B and C would affect nonprofit associations within the State of Alaska and have a broader impact as far as funding goes. Referring back to our own association here we did have a part C program which is adult education, and we did recruit young Native people into the drivers' education program. This is funded under part B of title IV. We coordinated that with our CETA program which taught st dents how to drive and therefore recruited them along to the Alask pipeline. This year we didn't receive any money for title IV, part C. And as for part B we had moneys for that last year also and we were cut back in both of those areas. What I'm really trying to point out is that I think there should be more money in parts B and C for the State of Alaska towards benef ing nonprofit associations in the State of Alaska. Mr. MEEDS. What kind of innovative programs did you have—were the driver training programs part of an innovative program? Mr. SMITH. As I stated before it was a driver training program where we trained students who were seniors in high school-and there also was an adult training program, strictly for adults-that was par C. We took Alaska Natives that were coming into the area, that were coming from the rural areas and trained them in drivers education and coordinated it with our CETA program, which would put on the drivers training program to get truck drivers jobs on the pipe line. We had a backlog of about 250 people on our drivers education program list when it was cut off from part C. them Also on part D there was another program we were cut off from— that I think would benefit nonprofit associations. Mr. MEEDS. The gentleman from Oklahoma. this morning. When I suggested that the people in Alaska should Mr. RISENHOOVER. I would like to clarify a statement that I made back home, I wasn't referring to the people who come here and mat their homes. They can make a significant contribution. I was referring to the outside advice you seem to be getting so much of. When were you cut off from CETA funds? Mr. SMITH. We weren't cut off from CETA funds we were cut of from title IV part C-dealing directly with adults. Mr. RISENHOOVER. Why were you cut off? or Mr. SMITH. I don't know. Mr. RISENHOOVER. Were you given any reasons? Mr. RISENHOOVER. That is, did you reapply and then get cut again Mr. SMITH. That's what it was. Mr. RISEN HOOVER. Did they cut back on everyone or just a part! Mr. SMITH. They cut the whole program. Mr. RISENHOOVER. The whole program-what amount of funds ar you receiving now? Mr. SMITH. We're not getting any now. Mr. RISENHOOVER. Not any now, not any at all? in the State of Alaska now, I think in southeast there may be one but I'm not too sure of that either. There is very little part Band Mr. SMITH. I think there's only a few that have part C morers part C moneys in the State of Alaska. Mr. RISENHOOVER. Have these funds simply dried up all over the country or what does it seem to be? Mr. SMITH. Maybe the reason is there just wasn't that much money appropriated in parts B and C Mr. MEEDS. I believe in both part C and B there were more funds available this year than there were in the preceding year-across the Nation. Mr. RISENHOOVER. What is your unemployment rate among the Natives? Mr. SMITH. It's quite high-I don't know what the average is but I should know. Mr. RISENHOOVER. Is it 40 or 50 percent? Mr. SMITH. I would say so. Mr. RISENHOOVER. The Department of Labor should have those statistics. I cannot understand why you would not be eligible. Mr. MEEDS. We'll have to look into that. Maybe if you were to give us more information about the proposal that was submitted and the reply you got, the person whom you dealt with-we might be able to check into it. Mr. SMITH. I sure think all the nonprofit corporations within the State of Alaska can benefit from part B because if they deal direct with the Native corporations. Mr. BLOUIN. The programs just weren't shifted to another agency; they were cut off. Mr. SMITH. They were cut off. Mr. BLOUIN. You mentioned you were involved in a program of training drivers for pipeline work. Mr. SMITH. We had the drivers education program with a large percentage of the Native people that come in from the rural areas. To begin with they don't have driver's licenses much less even seen a stopsign or stoplight. So, through our drivers education program we train these people in the basic driver's education so that they can at least halfway compete in obtaining jobs within the urban areas. Once the pipeline started in they were requesting a large number of drivers, especially in the diesel area, and we were training them in that area through contract with the CETA program which we had. Mr. BLOUIN. Did you find that the drivers you were training were being hired straight through? Mr. SMITH. Yes, they were. Mr. BLOUIN. They were being hired, the companies were more than willing to hire them in that particular area? Mr. SMITH. That's right. Mr. BLOUIN. You might not be familiar with another area-but I've heard that there were some instances where the Natives had waited a lot longer for jobs than those that come into the area with regard to the North Slope development; have you found that to be the case? Mr. SMITH. You've heard the same thing I've heard. I would feel more comfortable if I had one of my manpower training people here to go over that with you. He knows more about that than I do. Mr. BLOUIN. If he could document some of those facts I'd appreciate having it sent to us for the records. Mr. SMITH. He has made some statements to the Teamsters in that area. Mr. BLOUIN. I'd still like to have it sent in. Thank you. Mr. HALL. I have no questions, Mr. Chairman. Mr. MEEDS. Thank you very much, Frank. Our next witness is Ms Kathleen Perrin, Alaska Native Education Board, Anchorage. [Not present.] LADY. I am Susan Murphy from Bethel. STATEMENT OF SUSAN MURPHY, PRESIDENT, ALASKA NATIVI EDUCATION BOARD, BETHEL, ALASKA Mr. MEEDS. Thank you, please proceed. Ms. MURPHY. My name is Susan Murphy and I'm from Bethel I am president of the Alaska Native Education Board and a member of the Alaska unorganized borough school district board of directors. I addition, I have served 2 years in the statewide Johnson-O'Malley par ent committee, worked from July 1, 1974, until July 1, 1975, as deputy Calista, and before that I worked as a field coordinator for the then Alaska State-operated school system in the Bethel-lower Yukon reg under title IV of the Indian Education Act. Because of this bac ground, I am fairly familiar with the education scene in rural Alasia and more spceifically with the programs and problems in the ATCP Calista region. Let me give you a little background on that region. The area encom passes 57 villages with approximately 16,000 people, primarily Yupik Eskimo. Most of the villages are small with only from 25 to 450 people residing in them, with three major population bases, Aniak, St. Mary's and Bethel-the largest being Bethel with approximately 3,000 people. The average age is 17, the average education level is 4.6 years. The region is not connected by highway to any point in the State. The on way in and out is by air, which is the only method of transportati within the region except by river skiff in the summer and snow machine or dogteam in the winter. dren lie our futures. However, basic education in itself is not enough The region has placed education as its top priority for in our chi The funding available does not meet the unique needs of the students of the area. Title IV, Johnson-O'Malley title VII funds are drasticall needed to enable a child to cope with so-called basic education. P ture if you will a first grade student who speaks and understands on Yukik (which by the way is a much more complex language than English)-place him in a classroom where the teacher speaks and understands only English. It is difficult enough for any child to cope with the school environment but add a language barrier and the pro lems multiply. Small wonder we have 23-year-old high school seniors They have to learn English as well as concepts in the first few grads Title VII funds are one solution to their problem, not only to develop materials but to train teachers and pay these teachers. When a language dies the culture dies and western civilization especially the United States with its "melting pot" policy, technically |