Alamo Navajo School Board, Inc. (ANSB) refers to the entity controlling a K-12 tribal school in
Alamo, New Mexico. It is affiliated with the
Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). It also maintains a clinic and other public infrastructure in Alamo.
History
Due to the passage of the
Indian Self Determination and Education Assistance Act, a local school board was established in 1979.
Alamo Community Navajo school opened with grades K-8 on October 1, 1979. Its initial campus was four portable buildings. The high school was established on December 15, 1980.
By 2012 it was the only employer in Alamo. The school board, federally funded, was used as a vehicle to have public works projects without needing to involve the
Navajo Nation
The Navajo Nation ( nv, Naabeehó Bináhásdzo), also known as Navajoland, is a Native American reservation in the United States. It occupies portions of northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, and southeastern Utah; at roughly , the ...
bureaucracy. Cindy Yurth of the ''
Navajo Times
The ''Navajo Times'' – known during the early 1980s as ''Navajo Times Today'' – is a newspaper created by the Navajo Tribal Council in 1959; in 1982 it was the first daily newspaper owned and published by a Native American Indian Nation. Now ...
'' wrote that it is "the
de facto
''De facto'' ( ; , "in fact") describes practices that exist in reality, whether or not they are officially recognized by laws or other formal norms. It is commonly used to refer to what happens in practice, in contrast with ''de jure'' ("by la ...
government of Alamo".
In 2018 a group of parents criticized the school board for spending $497,000 on expenses not directly related to education.
In 2018 a group of parents collected 299 signatures on a petition to recall board members under the terms set by the
Navajo Election Administration.
In 2019 the federal courts indicted three former board members, accusing them of lying about taking business trips so they could take federal funds.
Student body
In 2018 the number of students was under 300.
[
]
Student achievement
In the 2014–2015 school year, as per BIE statistics, 1% of the students were categorized as having proficiency in mathematics. This increased to 3% in the 2015–2016 school year. The percentage of students proficient in English in the 2015–2016 school year was 4%.[
]
See also
* Alamo Navajo Indian Reservation
The Alamo Navajo Indian Reservation ( nv, ) is a non-contiguous section of the Navajo Nation lying in northwestern Socorro County, New Mexico, United States, adjacent to the southeastern part of the Acoma Indian Reservation. It has a land area of ...
References
External links
Alamo Navajo School Board
Public K-12 schools in the United States
Public elementary schools in New Mexico
Public middle schools in New Mexico
Public high schools in New Mexico
1979 establishments in New Mexico
Educational institutions established in 1979
Education in Socorro County, New Mexico
Education on the Navajo Nation
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