TPS Holds Community Meeting Over Potential Indian Education Program Changes

Tulsa Public Schools held a community meeting January 30, which created a large turnout for people interested in proposed changes to the Indian Education Program. 

"We try to provide as much cultural enrichment for the kids. This is education for the students, for 3,000 kids. Where are they gonna go now? It’s kind of disheartening,” said Dr. Tryg Jorgensen, one of the Indian education resource advisers. 

The Indian Education Program is federally funded and TPS said due to a declining population of Native American students, they have been forced to restructure the program.

The meeting lasted over four hours and emotions ran high as concerns grew for what's next for the program. 

TPS is proposing to reduce their current number of seven resource advisers, which work for 10 months, to three supervisors working full time while adding one cultural enrichment specialist. 

They also propose increasing the number of teaching assistants from four to six.

There were concerns from numerous tribes, tribal leaders, community members and students wondering why they were only told about the issues now. They also asked how three full time supervisors will be able to serve the nearly 3,000 Native American students at TPS.

TPS said all suggestions in the meeting were simply proposals.