Minnesota tribe

fulfills age old dream

by Rick St. Germaine

Onamia, Minnesota (Special to Akiing)

Two district communities of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe were notified by the Minnesota Department of Education that their applications to open K-12 charter schools were approved following a lengthy application review process.

“Unprecedented!” is how Dawn Aubid described the announcement from the state.

Aubid, chair of the school board of the Minisinaakwaang Leadership Academy, recounted how her remote community – located in a wild rice wetland near McGregor, Minnesota – beat the long odds in getting their application processed through the difficult state approval system.

“This has been a dream around here for many years,” stated Aubid as she beamed a wide smile, “and we finally did it.”

Aubid and other Ojibwe parents devoted a year of planning, weekly meetings, and late night strategizing to compile a comprehensive application that was submitted in March.

The state approved only six of nearly thirty applications from Minnesota communities and required the two Ojibwe applicants to meet with a state council during June to answer questions about their readiness to actually operate a K-12 school.

“They put us through a lot of questions and we showed up in force,” Aubid recalled as she described the council meeting in which the Minisinaakwaang group and the board members from their sister district community of Aazhoomog journeyed to the state headquarters to complete the application process.

“That was a breakthrough for us,” recalled Christina Woods, board member from the Pine Grove Leadership Academy, the sister Mille Lacs Band district community that simultaneously applied for a charter school through the state.

Charter schools technically are public schools and must open their doors to students of all races and beliefs. They are conceived as alternatives to public schools and must provide innovative curricular and instructional approaches to achieve academic performance in students – especially students who have been underserved.

Charter schools that were created in urban environs for American Indians, with Indian names, have sometimes lost their “Indian” characteristics as students from other ethnic groups subsequently enroll and begin to outnumber the Indians.

But in deeply rural areas like Aazhoomog and Minisinaakwaang, which are outlying district communities of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe in northern Minnesota, it remains to be seen if non-Indian students will eventually enroll. First of all, there are few other ethnic minorities in northern Minnesota and white students seem to distance themselves from other groups.

“This is only the beginning,” cautioned Skip Churchill, chair of the Pine Grove Leadership Academy in the village of Aazhoomog.

“Now the real work begins,” he added, pointing out that curriculum and instructional programs need to be developed, fund raising campaigns launched, and staffing functions need to be prepared.

The two charter schools will open in August 2007. They are designed as year-round academies that will use the Ojibwe seasonal cycle to drive a curriculum rich in the tribal language and culture. But the academies’ main objective is academic excellence.

“The Pine Grove Academy will expect its students to achieve above the state standards,” noted Woods, whose own experience in the classroom is an added bonus. She and two other board members are Ojibwe Indians who have provided over forty years of public school teaching.

Their experience in model curriculum programs like Responsive Classroom will serve to guide the charter school in instructional programs that innovate approaches to teaching students.

Additionally, the two boards participated the past year in intensive leadership training with the LifeSkills Leadership Center of Minneapolis. Sponsored by “Famous” Dave Anderson, the LifeSkills Leadership training offers behavior-changing experiences that motivate American Indian adults and youth to achieve their dreams and propel them to success.

“LifeSkills has changed my life... and I know it will make a difference with our students,” stated Aubid, as she credited leadership training as a motivational tool that empowers students and keeps them in school.

Aubid is a participant in several university courses that are being offered on the reservation this year by Bemidji State University for Mille Lacs Band parents and community leaders to prepare them for school governance roles and more active involvement in their children’s academic studies. BSU and the College of St. Scholastica will also offer A.P. courses for students enrolled in the charter high schools.

The College of St. Scholastica, which recently graduated eight Mille Lacs Band members with degrees, will serve as the institutional sponsor of the two charter schools.

Dr. Betty Preus, chair of the CSS School of Education, recently spoke with hope for the relationship between the college and the two charter schools. She helped set up meetings with the Boards to assist with application planning and she designed a schedule of visits by education professors during the academic year to help with the monitoring that will continue the charter long into the future.

“We’re planning a big celebration,” stated Joycelyn Shingobe, Band Commissioner of Education, “because this is truly a remarkable accomplishment… history has been made.”

Shingobe was a moving force in the charter school planning effort with support and encouragement every step of the way. The band is a national leader in Indian education. Their K-12 tribal grant school, Nay Ah Shing, was one of the earliest tribal-controlled schools in the nation and is now ready to start its thirty-fifth year.

Regional universities offer a variety of courses on the reservation to certify band members in a number of career fields, including teacher training. The band’s Ojibwe language and culture youth development programs are model projects.

Melanie Benjamin, Chief Executive of the Mille Lacs Band, stated, “The entire band is excited about this positive development and we are pleased to see that dreams, initiative, and hard work can lead to the building of institutions that help our nation fulfill its destiny as a sovereign.”

“I am calling on all band members to give their support to these charter schools,” she continued, and then concluded, “As with any school in America, they can only succeed if you enroll your children and… offer encouragement and support for your children.”