SOUTH DAKOTA — When Randy Pirner took the job as principal of Todd County High School on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in 2018, he was a veteran educator who thought he had seen it all.
But overseeing a public school with 95% Native American enrollment opened his eyes to cultural and socioeconomic factors that make chronic absenteeism an educational barrier in South Dakota reservation communities such as Rosebud and Pine Ridge.
“I'm originally from Wagner, which is technically on the (Yankton Sioux) reservation, but the problems out here are tenfold compared to the issues in that area,” said Pirner.
Years after the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted American schools, nearly every state is still struggling with attendance. But the challenge is greater for Native American students – a disparity that existed before the pandemic and has since grown, according to a joint reporting effort between The Associated Press and South Dakota News Watch.
Out of 34 states with data available for the 2022-23 school year, half had absenteeism rates for Native American and Alaska Native students that were at least 9 percentage points higher than the state average.
In South Dakota, the chronic absenteeism rate for Indigenous students was 54% in 2022-23, significantly higher than the state average of 21%. That differential was the largest of the 34 states included in the AP data.
Building trust in communities
Chronic absenteeism is defined as missing at least 10% of days in a school year for any reason, including excused and unexcused absences.
The South Dakota Department of Education has posted data from 2023-24, which shows Native American chronic absenteeism at 51% at public schools, compared to the state average of 21%.
That shows slight improvement, as Indigenous communities continue to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.
But serious hurdles remain.
State data shows that 68% of Native American public school students complete high school, compared to the state average of 91%. In addition, only 18% are considered college and career ready, significantly lower than the statewide average of 54%.
“There’s no silver bullet,” said Josie Green, executive director of Teach for America in South Dakota, which helps reservation schools find, train and retain new teachers. “A big part of it involves building trust between schools and their communities.”
Poverty plays role in attendance
Part of that means assessing the root of the problem, said former Rosebud Sioux Tribe president Rodney Bordeaux, whose educational journey took him through Todd County High School in Mission, Augustana University in Sioux Falls and Oglala Lakota College in Pine Ridge.
Bordeaux now heads the St. Francis Mission, a Catholic ministry on the Rosebud reservation in south-central South Dakota, one of America’s poorest and youngest regions.
Todd County has a median household income of $33,800, less than half the state average of $69,500, according to U.S. Census data. Residents under the age of 18 account for 41% of the population, compared to the state average of 24%.
Even with federal and tribal assistance, those factors put stress on rural and often isolated households, making it challenging for caregivers and children to be actively engaged in school.
The latest data shows Todd County’s chronic absenteeism rate at 71%.
“There are a lot of issues underlying (attendance data), but no one really cares,” Bordeaux told News Watch. “They just see high rates of absenteeism and they blame the parents or the school. It’s a lot more complicated than that.”
COVID school plan 'went haywire'
Less than two years after Pirner arrived at Todd County, the COVID-19 pandemic shut down in-person schooling throughout the state in March 2020.
Todd County was one of the few South Dakota schools that opted to continue remote learning for the 2020-21 school year after consultation with Rosebud tribal officials.
With crowded living conditions making distancing difficult, researchers found that risk factors for COVID-19 were disproportionately high among Native Americans living on reservations. Todd County, with a population of 9,200, reported nearly 4,000 COVID infections and 53 deaths during the pandemic.
Pirner said that was when things “really went haywire” because about 80% of the district’s students live on tribal lands and many lack internet access, making the concept of online classes logistically impractical.
“It was sort of like, ‘Come on. We're not in Canton. We're not in Beresford,’” said Pirner. “Out here, there's no connection. I would say that COVID set us back 10 years because kids who aren’t going to school in kindergarten aren’t going to be going to school when we get them in high school. It’s almost like we’re starting from scratch.”
Seeking cultural relevance in classroom
Green, who oversees Teach for America’s efforts with Todd County and other predominantly Native school districts, saw the COVID-related shutdown as a chance to reassess strategy.
Green is Oglala Lakota from the Pine Ridge Reservation but grew up in Wilmot, just outside the Sisseton Wahpeton Reservation. Her studies at Tiospa Zina Tribal School paved the way for her to earn her degree from Minnesota State University-Moorhead, which led to educational opportunities in Todd County.
During the pandemic, she and her team reached out to students, parents and other community members with questions that got to the heart of chronic absenteeism. What is the point of school? What sort of education should it provide? Are teachers relating to students in a way that inspires them?
“We heard things like ‘the best education is a place that I can learn things that are relevant to my life and feel like a whole person, and people honor that,’” said Green. “They wanted the skills and emotional ability to prepare for the future that they saw for themselves, and school wasn't doing that for them.”
Part of the solution was finding qualified teachers with an Indigenous background to bring role models and cultural understanding into public school classrooms. It remains a work in progress.
This year’s Teach for America cohort of 22 teachers for South Dakota includes just three Native Americans, Green said. The goal is to boost Indigenous involvement to 50% by next year and bring more Lakota-based curricula into the fold.
The Trust Project
