Education

Teachers and parents of children who died in the care of Chemawa Indian School, or shortly after being removed from the facility, are demanding that Congress hold the Salem boarding school accountable.

WASHINGTON (NEXSTAR) — Former teachers at Chemawa Indian School in Salem, Oregon accuse the school of failing to keep students safe.

Educators and parents testified before Congress this week on allegations against the Native American boarding school.

Oregon Rep. Suzanne Bonamici expressed alarm over how the Bureau of Indian Affairs is handling the allegations.

WASHINGTON (NEXSTAR) — Traesa Keith is the mother of a student who died at the Chemawa Indian School, a federally operated Native American boarding school.

She said her daughter had one of the biggest hearts. She also said valuable time was lost because the school assumed her daughter's medical emergency was a student fight.

Oregon representatives Kurt Schrader and Suzanne Bonamici even went to the school.

"Total crisis" was the phrase Sonya Moody-Jurado used in her Capitol Hill testimony to describe Chemawa Indian School, an off-reservation boarding school managed by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Education (BIE).

Moody-Jurado should know the school's problems; she chaired the school board from 2015 to 2018.

A classroom of preschoolers at the Head Start facility near McBride Elementary School in St. Helens got a special visit Monday afternoon, May 6.

U.S. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, a Democrat and longtime supporter of the federally funded Head Start program, and who also helped secure additional funding for the program in the 2018 omnibus spending bill, stopped by the school Monday to observe the educational program firsthand.