INCHELIUM - Federal funds may ease the burden on the financially troubled Inchelium School District while maintaining local control of school affairs during the coming year, it was disclosed at a meeting of the school board here last night.
W. Sherwin Broadhead, superintendent of the Colville Indian Agency at Nespelem, learned yesterday by telegram that the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C. had authorized additional payments of $33,000 in Johnson-O'Malley funds through the BIA's regional office in Portland to help resolve an overexpenditure through June of $30,647.04 by the Inchelium board.
That situation had prompted a civil suit by State Superintendent of Public Instruction Louis Bruno against the school board. Bruno's office also had sent a letter to the district advising the board to negotiate with the Colville School District to take supervision from that district during the 1972-73 school year.
Johnson-O'Malley funds are administered under a federal program designed to enhance educational opportunities for Indian children. The student body at the Inchelium School is about 85 percent Indian, officials said.
WELL-ATTENDED
About 100 persons attended the meeting that was delayed for an hour and 40 minutes while representatives of Bruno's office and attorney from the Native American Rights Fund from Boulder, Colo. hammered out the wording of a resolution to be put before the board.
That resolution, which the board eventually passed with one amendment, won't be needed if the JOM funds come through as promised. The measure read:
"Resolved, in the event that the Inchelium School District No. 70, Ferry County, Washington, cannot present and adequate documentation of funds available for the operation of a minimum educational program in the district for the fiscal year 1972-73 within the time limits set for the preparation of the final budget, the district will enter into negotiations with any school district in the state of Washington so that such other district will provide the educational program for the Inchelium District in the Inchelium facilities to the Inchelium School Board to continue in operation for the fiscal year 1972-73."
The draft originally presented by Lawrence Bundy, representing Bruno's office, had specified the Colville District.
Under state law, Bundy explained, Bruno's office can not extend emergency funds to a school district in an overexpenditure status but can funnel such funding through another school district.
POINTED QUESTIONS
The meeting was orderly but some bitterness surfaced during repeated questioning of Bundy by Broadhead and Mel Tonasket, chairman of the Colville Business Council.
Both charged that about 55 school districts in Washington ended last year in the red without subsequently facing a civil suit.
Bundy said state law distinguishes between districts which spend beyond their income and those, like Inchelium, which "over expend the upper limit of the budget set by their board of directors."
"In actual fact," Broadhead said, "there is no difference."
"The difference is one of law," Bundy retorted. "It's a difference I have to operate within and they (the school board) have to operate within in."
Broadhead also criticized removal of local control from the schools. "It seems a little ridiculous to me that the people who need (emergency) funds most can't get them. But the state can find a way to disburse the money at the cost of local control."
He said parents of students in Nespelem and Keller where youngsters go to have school outside their districts have no voice in school matters. "I'd like to know how high a priority Mr. Bruno attaches to local control," he asked.
PRIMARY CONCERN
"You're asking me to assign priority to local control as opposed to something else you haven't mentioned," Bundy said. He said the superintendent's office is concerned primarily with the quality of education.
"I refuse to pursue this conversation any further. We're talking about a subjective judgment of what constitutes the best education available," Bundy said.
He commented several times that the state's "first hope" is that the district can resolve its financial difficulties without having to contract with another district.
In a passing reference to Carl Putnam, chairman of the board of directors of Intermediate School District 101 which reviews the Inchelium district's budgets, Tonasket said "What makes it look bad is that the chairman of the Intermediate district campaigned against the Inchelium levy." The district's first levy ever, a five-mill measure that would have raised $15,000, was defeated twice this year.
School is scheduled to begin here Sept. 6 and the board has until Oct. 1 to resolve its defecit or enter into negotiations pursuant to last night's resolution.
However, Bundy explained, the board would not be bound to anything beyond negotiating and conceivably could make arrangements with some other agency to underwrite the educational program next year. Only a school district would be eligible for state emergency funds, however.
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