This story is reported by South Dakota News Watch, a non-profit news organization. Find more in-depth reporting at www.sdnewswatch.org.
TODD COUNTY (SDNW) — When Randy Pirner took the job as principal of Todd County High School on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in 2018, he was a veteran educator who thought he had seen it all.
But overseeing a public school with 95% Native American enrollment opened his eyes to cultural and socioeconomic factors that make chronic absenteeism an educational barrier in South Dakota reservation communities such as Rosebud and Pine Ridge.
“I’m originally from Wagner, which is technically on the (Yankton Sioux) reservation, but the problems out here are tenfold compared to the issues in that area,” said Pirner.
Years after the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted American schools, nearly every state is still struggling with attendance. But the challenge is greater for Native American students – a disparity that existed before the pandemic and has since grown, according to a joint reporting effort between The Associated Press and South Dakota News Watch.
Out of 34 states with data available for the 2022-23 school year, half had absenteeism rates for Native American and Alaska Native students that were at least 9 percentage points higher than the state average.
In South Dakota, the chronic absenteeism rate for Indigenous students was 54% in 2022-23, significantly higher than the state average of 21%. That differential was the largest of the 34 states included in the AP data.
Building trust in communities
Chronic absenteeism is defined as missing at least 10% of days in a school year for any reason, including excused and unexcused absences.
The South Dakota Department of Education has posted data from 2023-24, which shows Native American chronic absenteeism at 51% at public schools, compared to the state average of 21%.
That shows slight improvement, as Indigenous communities continue to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.
But serious hurdles remain.
State data shows that 68% of Native American public school students complete high school, compared to the state average of 91%. In addition, only 18% are considered college and career ready, significantly lower than the statewide average of 54%.
“There’s no silver bullet,” said Josie Green, executive director of Teach for America in South Dakota, which helps reservation schools find, train and retain new teachers. “A big part of it involves building trust between schools and their communities.”
Poverty plays role in attendance
Part of that means assessing the root of the problem, said former Rosebud Sioux Tribe president Rodney Bordeaux, whose educational journey took him through Todd County High School in Mission, Augustana University in Sioux Falls and Oglala Lakota College in Pine Ridge.
Bordeaux now heads the St. Francis Mission, a Catholic ministry on the Rosebud reservation in south-central South Dakota, one of America’s poorest and youngest regions.
Todd County has a median household income of $33,800, less than half the state average of $69,500, according to U.S. Census data. Residents under the age of 18 account for 41% of the population, compared to the state average of 24%.
Even with federal and tribal assistance, those factors put stress on rural and often isolated households, making it challenging for caregivers and children to be actively engaged in school.
The latest data shows Todd County’s chronic absenteeism rate at 71%.
“There are a lot of issues underlying (attendance data), but no one really cares,” Bordeaux told News Watch. “They just see high rates of absenteeism and they blame the parents or the school. It’s a lot more complicated than that.”
Truancy starts in younger grades
Pirner came to Todd County High School after 14 years as a principal in Homer, Nebraska, just south of Sioux City, Iowa. Before that, the former South Dakota State University football standout worked at Elk Point-Jefferson.
He acknowledges he had a lot to learn about the cultural complexities of a school district where many students come from single-parent homes or are being raised by relatives. In addition, just 15% of Todd County residents 25 and older have a college bachelor’s degree or higher, half the statewide average.
“I truly believe that the only chance that you have to fix the truancy issue is to get to kids when they’re young and stress the importance of attending school,” Pirner told News Watch.
“By the time we get them up here in ninth grade, they’ve developed the habits of missing school. A lot of it’s based on moms and dads not being in the picture and grandmas and grandpas or aunts or cousins raising them, and a lot of these older people don’t have high school degrees. They don’t appreciate the importance of it.”
Cindy Young, education director of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, agreed that lacking educational standard-setters at home makes it tougher to get young people to school regularly or inspire them in the classroom when they do attend.
“We provide services to help the parents however we can,” said Young, who has also worked in education on the Pine Ridge Reservation and at St. Francis Indian School. “A lot of the time those parents aren’t educated themselves and they live way out in rural areas, so it’s harder to get those kids to school.”
COVID school plan ‘went haywire’
Less than two years after Pirner arrived at Todd County, the COVID-19 pandemic shut down in-person schooling throughout the state in March 2020.
Todd County was one of the few South Dakota schools that opted to continue remote learning for the 2020-21 school year after consultation with Rosebud tribal officials.
With crowded living conditions making distancing difficult, researchers found that risk factors for COVID-19 were disproportionately high among Native Americans living on reservations. Todd County, with a population of 9,200, reported nearly 4,000 COVID infections and 53 deaths during the pandemic.
Pirner said that was when things “really went haywire” because about 80% of the district’s students live on tribal lands and many lack internet access, making the concept of online classes logistically impractical.
“It was sort of like, ‘Come on. We’re not in Canton. We’re not in Beresford,’” said Pirner. “Out here, there’s no connection. I would say that COVID set us back 10 years because kids who aren’t going to school in kindergarten aren’t going to be going to school when we get them in high school. It’s almost like we’re starting from scratch.”
State testing data shows the extent of the challenge that lies ahead.
Todd County School District had proficiency scores of 11% in English and 8% in science on the latest South Dakota Department of Education report card, with an attendance rate of 35%. The state averages were 51% in English, 43% in science and 87% for attendance.
Seeking cultural relevance in classroom
Green, who oversees Teach for America’s efforts with Todd County and other predominantly Native school districts, saw the COVID-related shutdown as a chance to reassess strategy.
Green is Oglala Lakota from the Pine Ridge Reservation but grew up in Wilmot, just outside the Sisseton Wahpeton Reservation. Her studies at Tiospa Zina Tribal School paved the way for her to earn her degree from Minnesota State University-Moorhead, which led to educational opportunities in Todd County.
During the pandemic, she and her team reached out to students, parents and other community members with questions that got to the heart of chronic absenteeism. What is the point of school? What sort of education should it provide? Are teachers relating to students in a way that inspires them?
“We heard things like ‘the best education is a place that I can learn things that are relevant to my life and feel like a whole person, and people honor that,’” said Green. “They wanted the skills and emotional ability to prepare for the future that they saw for themselves, and school wasn’t doing that for them.”
Part of the solution was finding qualified teachers with an Indigenous background to bring role models and cultural understanding into public school classrooms. It remains a work in progress.
This year’s Teach for America cohort of 22 teachers for South Dakota includes just three Native Americans, Green said. The goal is to boost Indigenous involvement to 50% by next year and bring more Lakota-based curricula into the fold.
“If we’re talking about a whole child, it means honoring every aspect of that child,” said Green. “Language, culture, understanding the homes that their students come from. Those things are all essential to be able to truly understand what students need and for the curriculum to be more culturally relevant.”
Academy stresses parent involvement
Getting families involved is crucial, said Bordeaux, the former tribal president who now oversees programs such as Sapa Un Jesuit Academy, a K-8 school with about 45 students located in St. Francis on the Rosebud reservation.
Bordeaux said it was important to give reservation families a choice beyond St. Francis Indian School – which is funded by the Bureau of Indian Affairs – and nearby public school districts such as Todd County, Winner and White River.
Sapa Un opened in 2013 and is funded almost entirely by private donations. It employs the Jesuit nativity model, which includes free or low-cost tuition, longer school days, an extended school year and opportunities for summer camp.
“There was a need for a school setting focused on academic achievement, leadership development and culture,” said Bordeaux. “Parents are a big part of that.”
With no buses, parents are expected to take their children to school each day, with flexible times to accommodate for work schedules or other commitments. Parents are also encouraged to help students with school-based community outreach, such as shoveling sidewalks for elders or reading to nursing home residents.
Lakota school seeks connections
The parent participation model is also embraced by Wakanyeja Tokeyahci Elementary School, a privately funded Lakota Immersion program on the Rosebud reservation.
The school opened in fall 2020 under the direction of the Sicangu Education Initiative, with founder Sage Fast Dog stressing the need to teach Lakota language and culture in a way that inspires and challenges Indigenous youth.
“It’s about being relevant and giving kids an opportunity to make a connection to the content,” said Fast Dog, who grew up on the Rosebud reservation and previously served on the Todd County School Board. “If you’re serving Lakota children, then your content should reach their background knowledge and recognize who they are.”
Parents are encouraged to participate in class and share stories of Lakota heritage and culture with faculty and students. Several of the families involved with the Rosebud elementary school had older children who went through the public system and are now trying a different approach. TK
“Historically, family involvement is transactional,” said Fast Dog. “A parent might sign in that they went to a meeting, but there’s no follow-up or strategic planning to get insight on how they could get integrated into curriculum to improve academic output. We want to transform the experience so that school culture and classroom culture reflect the students we serve.”
‘It comes down to engagement’
Outreach to households extends to the public schools, where Todd County hosts a series of family nights in coordination with the South Dakota Statewide Family Engagement Center in Rapid City.
“It’s a good way to get everyone involved,” Pirner said of the events, where booths are set up for activities such as food chain stacking, Morse code messaging, pingpong vowels and vocabulary bowling.
Pirner and his staff also have reached out to past Todd County graduates to ask about their high school experience, seeking positive messages to share about connections that develop in an educational setting.
For Green, the Teach for America director, it’s all about finding ways to make going to school a rewarding and memorable endeavor and listening to students to understand their concerns is paramount.
“We measure how much time a teacher is talking versus how much time students are relating to each other, just to get data around actual relationships happening in the classroom,” Green said. “It really comes down to engagement. If the kids aren’t engaged at school, they probably won’t want to come back.”
The Associated Press contributed to this story, which was produced by South Dakota News Watch, an independent, nonprofit news organization. Read more in-depth stories at sdnewswatch.org and sign up for an email every few days to get stories as soon as they’re published. Contact investigative reporter Stu Whitney at [email protected].
