One of the questions I we ask everyone when we are dealing with educators is do you know what sovereignty is? Do you know what a treaty is? Do you know what a reservation is? Do you know what a tribe is? And I am surprised when some of our educators don't know what those terms mean.

The aid is rooted in the treaties that have existed since the beginning of this country.

The intent of the American Indian Education Aid is to enable districts and schools to scale up and enhance American Indian education programs and initiatives or in the case of those newly eligible to receive aid to build sustainable programs that are culturally and academically tailored to American Indian students.

The district or school must have a minimum of 20 American Indian students on the October Mars reporting deadline. The district or school must have an American Indian parent advisory committee, an APAC, or be working collaboratively with the Office of American Indian Education to form an APAC.

In 2023, we had 44 self-identified students. In 2024, we had 45 self-identified students. In 2025, we had 146 self-identified students. And that was not because hundreds kids moved in. That was because our MARS coordinator went through and hand selected all of the enrollment forms and found that Skyward likes to put if you put American Indian and another bubble that you mark, it will put you in a category all of its own, which is called two or more races. And no one had gone through to look for our students.

Our students are unlike other students. We have a unique history. We have a unique relationship with education and we have tribal sovereignty, provision of career counseling to American Indian pupils, modification of curriculum, instruction methods and administration procedures to meet the needs of American Indian pupils and instruction in American language, literature, history and culture.

As an American Indian, that is really hard to watch curriculum modification. And when we brought it to the school and said this is not um this is a is a traumatic experience for our students. They modified the curriculum.

We are issuing a vote of non-concurrence based on the district's failure to meet statutory obligations and provide equitable support for American Indian students.

The district had failed to appoint a coordinator to start the school year. As I said, the statute is when you hit a 100 students that you need to have a dedicated coordinator. We hit that in August of 2024, which meant we went for 2024 into 2025 with no coordinator. The district was aware.

There's a lack of dedicated language and culture classes for our students which fall in the statute and APEC has been denied a seat on the curriculum advisory board.

The district has not consulted APE on American Indian related curriculum as required. We are teaching arts and letters. The first book in fifth grade is about the Nez Perce. Our AP pack did not see it.

Mandate that all teachers complete professional development on American Indian history and culture that has been reviewed and approved by APAC.

If the vote is one of non-concurrence, the committee members must provide written recommendations for improvement to the school board.

I'll provide a written summary to the board of how districts are expected to respond to non-compliance and whether it involves another board meeting or not. I'll give it to you in writing.

Most of the changes you'll see throughout the policy is really language cleanup. We went through it and we were very intentional about how we describe students, how we describe behaviors, and just making sure that it was respectful language and that the language was clear.

So, both of those strikeouts, it's current practice, right?

Video recording. Okay, we can do that.

The phrase the noun video tape since that's not everything's typically stored digitally at this point. I just want

Um, so as a board, we have 60 days to respond. Um, what does that look like? Do we come back together and discuss it? Do like I I just I don't have a good idea of what the next steps are or what that looks like.

Usually if there is an incident, does it usually fall within a couple of days or what would be practing to pull that?