Riverside, Calif., School Closes Doors to American Indian Students Story-Date: 07:32 a.m. PST Sunday , September 7, 1997 Riverside, Calif., School Closes Doors to American Indian StudentsIndian Country Today, Rapid City, S.D. Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News FT. WASHAKIE, Wyo.--Sep. 8--Thirty-three students from the Shoshone and Arapaho tribes who had been accepted for Sherman Indian High School in Riverside, California, suddenly found themselves without a school when the area BIA education line officer declared them ineligible. ``I applied to Sherman in April and was accepted,'' said Loretta ``Lori'' Mcleod a 17-year-old Shoshone from Ft. Washakie on the Wind River Reservation in central Wyoming. She had attended Sherman two years ago, returning to Wind River to attend the Lander Valley School. ``It's a white school and it's prejudiced,'' she said. ``I felt a lot more comfortable at Sherman and I got a better education there,'' she said. Choosing Sherman became a popular option when last year's students returned to Wind River ``They went home and told their neighbors and relatives so this year we had 26 new applications,'' said Ken Taylor, Sherman's chief school administrator. When she arrived at the Riverton airport on August 18, Ms. Mcleod was told she couldn't get on the plane; her tickets had been canceled. ``That was the first I knew about anything,'' she said. Upon calling the California boarding school, she learned she hadn't been certified by the line officer in Billings. Then her mother received a letter from Billings Area line officer, Larry Parker stating her daughter's application was being returned because ``it does not contain sufficient documentation'' to support an out of area placement. Although American Indian students living in the Billings BIA area can automatically attend Flandreau Indian School in eastern South Dakota or Chemawa Indian School in Oregon, the BIA considers other placements on a case by case basis. ``The bureau has a policy of not taking kids out of their own home except for documented social or educational conditions that prevent them from receiving the educational services they need in their own area,'' Mr. Parker said. ``I couldn't sign the papers. Unfortunately I did not have the discretion to do that,'' he said. ``If I had my way line officers would have to certify students, but I don't have that say.'' While John Washakie, president of the Shoshone Business Council, tried negotiating with the BIA, thirty-two disappointed students attempted to enroll in other schools before they missed too many days because of the decision . According to Cleve Her Many Horses, BIA administrative officer for Wind River Reservation, his office could do nothing to help the students. ``I'm just a middle man catching heck from both sides, faxing letters back and forth,'' he said. Although a central office supervisor eventually decided that seven of the students who had attended Sherman last year could return, Mr. Parker remained firm on the new students. He said that the eight students who attended Sherman had slipped through the cracks. ``They weren't certified,'' he said. ``Their applications weren't processed by the BIA Line officer. We never saw them.'' One of them was disqualified because of a blood quantum discrepancy. New students and parents alike remained upset by the last minute nature of the change in plans. ``Why did they wait until I was supposed to leave to decide this?'' Ms. Mcleod said. ``This is stupid. Why can't they just let us go to school and let the adults take care of this business. They should just leave us out of it.'' According to Mr. Parker, Sherman Indian School officials were to blame. ``At the last minute they must have seen that they had 32 new kids and they sent us the paperwork,'' he said. Mr. Taylor said the glitch occurred because a tribal official signed on the wrong dotted line. ``On the applications there is a space where the Billings line officer needs to sign,'' he said. ``There was a signature on the line, so we didn't pay attention to it because often an area office will have an acting line officer. We assumed everything was approved and the applications were fine. ``We made the travel arrangements, and got a call back from Billings that the students were illegal because they'd been accepted without the signatures,'' he said. The chief school administrator also tried talking with Mr. Parker. ``I told him we should resolve it, but not at the expense of the kids,'' he said. ``I told him just to go ahead and sign the applications, and we'd take it all the way to Washington.'' ``Mr. Parker said in his letters to the parents that these students did not have the proper documentation, but they did,'' he said. According to Mr. Taylor individual BIA education line officers do have the discretion to interpret the rules liberally. ``They'll sign off if the student's guardian wants them to go,'' he said. ``What this is about is choices for Indian kids.,'' he said. ``I believe if a student lives in Southern California it should be okay for them to attend school in Oklahoma if they want.'' He said that research shows educational choice is correlated to positive educational outcomes. ``Others area line officers feel the same way,'' he said. ``We believe in the BIA mission statement.'' That statement mandates the bureau to consider the whole student, ``talking into account the spiritual, mental, physical and cultural aspects of the person within family and Tribal or Alaska Native village contexts.'' By last week about half of the disputed Wind River students had applied to Flandreau or Chemawa according to Mr. Parker. ``They have been approved by the BIA, but they still need to be accepted,'' he said. Others, like Duwayne Oldman, had enrolled in local schools. Lori Mcleod, who wants to attend United Tribes Technical College and eventually be a tribal police officer, continued to wait and hope that she could start classes in California. ``I think this is unfair,'' her mother, Florence Mcleod, said. ``The students shouldn't be stopped. Lori was really looking forward to going to school at Sherman. Now she's not going at all.'' ----- Visit Indian Country Today on the World Wide Web at http://www.indiancountry.com/ ----- (c) 1997, Indian Country Today, Rapid City, S.D. 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