Tribal Education Departments National Assembly, Co.

Serving education departments in Indian Country

TEDNA operated its inaugural Exhibit Booth and the National Indian Education Association's (NIEA) 2003 Annual Convention in Greensboro, North Carolina. The booth was run by staff from the Native American Rights Fund (NARF), and the three original volunteer directors of TEDNA: Jerome Jainga, Education Director, Suquamish Indian Tribe in Washington; Quinton Roman Nose, Education Director, Cheyenne-Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma; and, Joyce Silverthorne, Education Director, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Reservation in Montana.

The Exhibit Booth offered many of TEDNA's informational materials, the draft TEDNA Mission Statement, and an opportunity to view and comment on this web site. Many NIEA members and convention attendees stopped by to wish TEDNA well as the newest national Indian organization. Special thanks to two individuals who generously made the first private donations to TEDNA.

One individual who stopped by on Tuesday, November 4, 2003 was Edward Parisian, the newly appointed (for the second time) Director of the Office of Indian Education Programs (OIEP), Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), within the U.S. Department of the Interior. Mr. Parisian commended the founding of TEDNA. The TEDNA directors explained that it was founded largely by a one-time contract of $20,000 from the US Department of Education's Office of Indian (OIE) Education to NARF.

TEDNA and OIEP agreed that OIEP serves directly about ten percent of tribal students nationwide, compared to the ninety percent that are served by OIE. TEDNA then asked Mr. Parisian about the possibility of OIEP "matching" the OIE grant in the amount of $2,000 to account for the differences in percentage of tribal students served. Mr. Parisian replied that he would look into matching OIE's contract amount directly, and that if he could do that, he would challenge the OIE to increase its contract to $200,000. He agreed to get back to TEDNA no later than December 31, 2003.

TEDNA also discussed the very important issue of direct federal funding for individual TEDs through the BIA under its 1988 authorization for such funding which is retained in the No Child Left Behind legislation. Mr. Parisian pledged to make TED appropriations a priority issue, although he cautioned that the processes for the development of the BIA budget proposals for FYs 2005 and 2006 have already begun.