July 30, 2009



Takini School administrators and staff are requesting your assistance with a serious issue regarding our high school. For the last sixteen years, the high school has been housed in temporary modular units that were intended to be used until a new high school could be built. The time frame, at that time, was five years. As you can see, that time period was not met.
Last spring, these buildings were severely damaged due to heavy snows. The Bureau of Indian Affairs office of construction management told us that they would bring new temporary buildings and place them on temporary foundations, and that we would be placed on the high priority list for a new high school. They also said they would place these new temporary buildings on the east side of our current gymnasium.
Which leads us to our current dilemma; the BIA office of construction management has now decided to place the temporary classrooms on permanent structures and to place them in the same area where the damaged classrooms are located. These decisions were made without consulting Takini School administration. We had been planning our upcoming school year around the plans that had been made in the spring. This change greatly affects the beginning of our school year. The issues are: 1. the current location is not large enough to accommodate the new classrooms. 2. It is already the end of July and there is not enough time left to make all the adjustments that will be necessary. Even if the new classrooms are placed in the original area that had been agreed, the time period is still not enough to prepare them to be ready for the beginning of school. 3. BIA office of construction will not give us a date on when they will begin to do any of the work. 4. Since these new classrooms are being placed on permanent foundations, it leads us to believe that we are no longer on the high priority list for a new high school.
These are some of the reasons we are asking for your assistance. Our administration has tried to communicate with the BIA office of construction, but does not get any response to phone calls or emails. Our superintendent has already made two trips to Albuquerque without receiving any satisfaction to our concerns.
We are requesting the support of the congressional offices to ask the BIA Office of Construction Management, Mr. Dennis Rodriguez, to reconsider the location of the new portable classrooms. The reasons being that once and for all the high school would be located in its own area on the east side of the campus. The area where the classrooms are now located require the high school students to walk through the elementary hall wall to get to the nurses office, the library, the gymnasium, and the cafeteria. The movement of high school students through this hallway disrupts elementary classrooms continually. It is imperative that this decision be reversed. Teacher time spent monitoring the hallway takes away from time that would be better utilized in the classroom.
Our first priority now, is to accommodate our students that will be coming in on September 08, 2009. They deserve to have things in order and ready for their arrival. If the year begins disorganized, it will affect the learning of our students, and the productivity of our staff. At this point, we are at a loss as to what our accommodations will be for the start of school. After requests of assistance through the Bureau of Indian Education, they recommended that we contact our congressional delegation.