Should Warm Springs have its own high school?

Jefferson County School Board members met with the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs’ Tribal Council on Tuesday to discuss the future of education in the region and whether the reservation might get a high school of its own.

Currently, Warm Springs high schoolers go to school in Madras, and they’re not faring too well.

“Our native students do have challenges, and they need to be faced,” said Jefferson County School Superintendent Rick Molitor.

According to a report from Education Northwest, native students have higher dropout and absentee rates and are lagging in math and reading.

Although those numbers have improved over the years, native kids are still lagging behind the average Jefferson County student.

“We’ve made tiny strides in making a dent in how we can improve that. We call it closing the gap,” said Laurie Danzuka, a parent and adviser to the Jefferson County School District.

Danzuka said there are many reasons for that gap. One is that students have to travel 15 miles to their schools in Madras every day.

“There is a level of frustration that has been going on for years and years,” Danzuka said. “I’ve heard these same things when I was growing up. We’ve had the same busing issues, a lot of the same equality issues, equality of education, how we are getting served.”

Many tribal members said they’re not being included in the conversation of what’s going into the curriculum of their children, including their language and history.

“I think putting that in there would make the tribal members feel a little more inclusive, and they would just feel like they are a part of the district,” Orvie Danzuka, a member of the Warm Springs Tribal Council, said.

The question now is what the best way forward is. Members discussed many options on Tuesday, including the possibility of a charter school, revamping the existing structure or some talk splitting into a separate school district.

“I don’t think that’s not addressing the problem,” Orvie Danzuka said. “I think that’s just moving it, it’s just displacing it. I think we have to be able to figure out how to work (with) this district, and how to make it successful for both.”

Tuesday’s meeting was the start to a conversation about the future of education in Warm Springs. Officials said many more meetings will follow; the next one will be at the end of February.

They also formalized the agreement on the new Warm Springs K-8 Academy, the $21.4 million project funded by the school district and tribes.

A new plan must be in place before the end of the 2015-16 school year, when the current five-year memorandum of understanding between the school district ant the tribes expires.