School board members take to streets to remove superintendent
Navajo Times | Adron Gardner David Nez, center, carries an American flag while marching with along Navajo Route 12 to the Council Chambers in Window Rock on Aug. 4.
WINDOW ROCK
A group of protesters marched last Thursday to demand the Navajo Nation Council address and their concerns with the superintendent of the Department of Diné Education.
A bulk of the protesters came from school boards at various BIE grant schools throughout the Navajo Nation. Complaints listed on a handout from the protest centered on Superintendent Tommy Lewis.
Diné Bi’ Olta School Board Association, Inc., whose staff identified the group as an advocacy group for school boards, organized the protest and listed their phone number on the handout.
The handout addressed concerns over the implementation of the “Diné Education Accountability Plan” created by DODE, referred to as the “accountability workbook” at the protest. Protesters said that the public had been left out of discussions about the workbook. Schools received notification of the implementation of the workbook, which the letter said had support from both the U.S. Department of the Interior and the Department of Education, in a letter dated July 13. Still, the handout from the protest said the call for implementation came without enough notice.
“They have not really heard the people at the grassroots level. We don’t really have anything that we have input and that’s been validated by the Department of Diné Education so far, and that’s our gripe,” said Marie Acothley, Tuba City Boarding School President.
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I-40, WB @ Winslow