TULALIP — The Marysville School District will ask the Tulalip Tribes to pay for three more teachers for the Tulalip Heritage School.
One would teach physical education to students from sixth through 12th grade; the second would be the core sixth- and seventh-grade teacher; and the third could be less than a full-time position and would be an additional reading teacher, interim principal Yvonne Ryans said Friday.
Tulalip Heritage School, located on the reservation, is open to district students but is attended primarily by the children of tribal members and offers programs related to Indian culture.
Currently, the school’s eight sixth-graders, four seventh-graders and nine eighth-graders have substitute teachers.
District officials sent letters on Oct. 17 to the tribe and the parents of students in those grades to inform them that their children would be attending Marysville Middle School, Cedarcrest School or Marysville Junior High School instead of the Heritage School. The sudden change angered parents and the tribe, who wanted their children to continue at the Heritage School.
"We’ve made a request that the tribe make a contribution similar to what they offered last year, which was three (teachers)," Ryans said.
"Things were done kind of out of sync because of the delay in the start of school," she said. "I think it was a combination of mistiming and missteps, and probably miscommunication."
Stan Jones Sr., tribal board vice chairman, said this week that the Tulalips would find a way to come up with the money to pay for those teachers, but are awaiting a formal request from the district.
Although the enrollment fluctuates, particularly at the beginning of the year, the Heritage School had 88 students as of Monday, including 25 in ninth grade, 18 in 10th grade, 13 in 11th grade, and 11 seniors.
The planned shift of the younger students to other Marysville schools was "a really, really strong attempt to provide a better program for sixth through eighth and put a stronger focus on the ninth to 12th," she said.
Last year, the school won a Bill &Melinda Gates Foundation grant to help the high school students gain an associate of arts degree at the same time they earned a high school diploma, Ryans said. Shifting the younger students would help focus on the older students, as well as provide the younger ones with more extracurricular activities and opportunities, she said.
"We don’t have band, music, art," Ryans said. "We’re not able to deliver the extracurricular activities for kids. We don’t have anything but basketball for the older kids. The younger kids have no sports program. It really was a sincere attempt to give them more."
Parents favored Heritage School because it offered some teachings about tribal culture. Those things were funded through a grant, which the school no longer has.
Some parents said they were glad the younger students have returned to the Heritage School, although other concerns remain.
"My main concern is why did they wait as long as they did?" asked Micaela Gonzalez, a mother of three Heritage students. "How long are we going to have to wait for them to get their butts in gear? The letter made it sound like it would be a smooth transition."
She sent her daughter to the middle school last week, but school staff there hadn’t been told in advance to expect the Heritage students, she said. The same day, she was told her children would return to Heritage.
"Because of their strike, we lost two or three grants for our (Heritage) school," Gonzalez said, including one to provide mentors for students and one that provided cultural exchanges with other schools.
"Our program shouldn’t be any different from any other program in this district or this state," she said. "Our children shouldn’t go without just because they’re native kids."
Another big problem is school lunches. The Heritage School has no kitchen, and all the students are receiving sack lunches, she said. Those lunches are made for younger children with smaller appetites, Gonzalez said.
"If you go to the (Marysville-Pilchuck) high school, they have all these different bars and options of things to eat," she said. "They’d have all these different types of foods and have these lunches that filled them up. I expect them to have a healthy, nutritious, properly proportioned lunch."
She’s giving the school a month to work out the problems, Gonzalez said. If they haven’t, she’ll take her children somewhere else.
"Our children have already missed 48 days of school. These things should have all been taken care of by the end of last year," she said.
Reporter Cathy Logg: 425-339-3437 or logg@heraldnet.com.
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