Education Week - December 4, 2013 - 14

Wealthy Calif. Tribe
Invests in Its Schools
Morongo students learn their own culture
By Lesli A. Maxwell
Morongo Indian Reservation, Calif.
N
inety miles east of
downtown Los Angeles
in the San Bernardino
Mountains, a school
for Native American
children peers down onto its main
benefactor, a glittering, Las Vegasstyle
casino and hotel owned and
operated by the Morongo Band of
Mission Indians.
Millions of dollars spent in the casino
by gamblers playing the slots,
shooting craps, and wagering on
poker hands are flowing into the
Morongo School and fueling what
could be the tribe's most important
enterprise yet: taking control over
the education of its own children.
The Morongo School-which opened
in 2010 on this 35,000-acre reservation
tucked into a narrow pass between
the San Bernardino and San
Jacinto mountains-is the Morongo
tribe's biggest bet at the moment.
After nearly 20 years of stunning
economic development and the virtual
elimination of poverty for its
1,000 members, the tribe is investing
millions of dollars in education in
the hope of reversing decades of low
academic achievement, high dropout
rates, and low rates of college attendance
and graduation for its children.
Sharing the Wealth
As Indian gaming has expanded
rapidly across the U.S. over the past
25 years, some tribes like Morongo
have been sinking their newfound re-
sources into education programs and
taking advantage of their sovereign
status to build schools, hire teachers,
and create a curriculum that they believe
best serves their children.
For the Morongo tribe-with a
sophisticated business portfolio
that now includes a bottled-water
operation, skilled-nursing facilities,
and agriculture-raising a new gen-
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: Fourth graders dance to traditional
bird songs at the Morongo School.
Morongo's casino and hotel rises in the early-morning sky.
Eva Leivas, 8, works on a math problem at the school.
eration of entrepreneurs and welltrained
leaders is critical to sustaining
its enterprises.
"We'd known for years that the
public schools weren't equipped to
teach most of our children, because
our kids were failing," says Robert
Martin, the longtime chairman of
Morongo's tribal council.
"We wanted to take control of how
to educate our young people," he says.
The Morongo tribe is among the
wealthiest and most influential in
both California and the nation. It
was the tribe's 1987 U.S. Supreme
Court case, Cabazon v. California,
that produced a ruling that state
and local authorities could not shut
down bingo operations and other
Morongo Indian
Reservation
ESTABLISHED: 1865
AREA TOTAL: 35,000 acres
POPULATION: 500
SOURCE: Morongo Nation
Los
Angeles
gaming ventures on reservations.
That led to federal legislation that
threw open the doors to the gaming
industry for tribes across the country.
More than 230 tribes operate about
400 casinos now, says Steven Andrew
Light, a co-director of the Institute for
the Study of Tribal Gaming Law and
Policy at the University of North
Dakota in Grand Forks.
"If you look at gaming as an
economic-development tool, nothing
has impacted tribal communi-
ties more," Mr. Light says. "And tribes
across the United States have made
their own decisions on how to allocate
14 | EDUCATION WEEK | December 4, 2013 | www.edweek.org
their revenue, but the key pillars for
investment have been housing; public
services such as roads, police, and fire
protections; and education programs."
Having started with a modest
bingo parlor in 1983, the Morongo
tribe opened a $250 million casino
and hotel in 2004 and now employs
roughly 3,000 people in the region. Its
business enterprises-primarily the
Morongo Casino, Resort, and Spa-
are estimated to generate $3 billion in
economic activity annually, according
to an economic impact study commissioned
by the tribe.
Enrolled members of the tribe receive
regular "per capita" payments-
Morongo leaders will not disclose how
much-that provide most families
with a comfortable living. Since 1996,
the tribe has required members who
turn 18 to earn a high school diploma
or a GED credential before they can
receive the payments.
On the reservation, though, many
people are loath to forget the hardships
that dominated the tribe's
existence for generations. Families
have built new, multilevel homes
right next to the dilapidated houses
and rundown trailers that sheltered
them in more difficult times.
Yet economic success did little
to move the needle on academic
achievement for most of the tribe's
young people, even though they
were growing up in far more privileged
circumstances than their parents
and grandparents enjoyed.
Tribal leaders know only anecdotally
that graduation rates were low
and that too few young people were
enrolling in college and earning de-
grees, even though the tribe covers
all college and living costs for its
students who enroll. (The tribe also
fully pays for other postsecondary
options, such as trade schools.)
State-of-the-Art School
On a drizzly October morning on
the reservation, school bus No. 5 rolls
up in front of the beige portable buildings
that house the Morongo School's
lower grades. Principal Mason Patterson
and faculty members greet
the stream of children and lead them
through an open courtyard with expansive
views of the mountains, covered
with red oak, creosote bushes,
and pinyon pine. The entire student
body is 140 children, ranging from
preschool through 9th grade. Older
students now either attend public
high schools nearby or use an independent-study
program to earn their
diplomas. The Morongo School will
graduate its first class in 2017.
No class has more than 15 students,
and every teacher in the lower grades
has an aide. The school has adopted
the Common Core State Standards,
and its classrooms are outfitted
with up-to-date educational technology,
including iPads and Apple TVs.
Completely funded by the tribe and
available at no cost to children with
a parent who is an enrolled member,
the school operates mostly free of state
and federal requirements around academic
standards and accountability.
"We didn't want any government
money," Mr. Martin says. "We didn't
want the curriculum controlled by
anyone else, and we know we are for-
tunate to be in that position."
"I think our small class sizes
are so important," says 4th grade
teacher Christina Alaniz,who grew
up on the reservation and went to
public schools. "We really know our
students, and they really know each
other well, too."
Twice a week, tribal elders spend
the day with Morongo students,
teaching them the nearly extinct
Cahuilla (ka-wee-yah) and Serrano
languages and cultural traditions
unique to the Cahuilla people, a
broader group of Native Americans
that includes the Morongo tribe.
Most of the language instruction
comes through the teaching of traditional
"bird songs," which tell stories,
often from the perspectives of birds,
of journeys that the Cahuilla people
would take from their desert and
mountain homes and about the creation
of the natural world.
Bridging cultural distances be-
tween the students and their
heritage-which grew as tribal
members' married outside the community
and moved from the reservation-was
another driving force
behind the tribe's push to create
its own school, says Mr. Martin, the
tribal-council chairman.
California is home to more Native
Americans than any other state, and
most tribal children are enrolled in
public schools scattered across cities,
suburbs, and rural areas-often with
few other Native peers. In Riverside
County, where the Morongo reservation
is located, American Indian students
make up less than 1 percent
of public school enrollment, even
Photos by Swikar Patel/Education Week
California
http://www.edweek.org
Education Week - December 4, 2013

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