Senate Indian Affairs panel warns against dismantling Education Department, highlights risks to Native students

Chairwoman Murkowski opened an oversight hearing of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs saying the committee was “here to learn more about the US Department of Education programs that work to meet the trust responsibility that the federal government has to our native students in elementary, secondary, and post secondary education.”

Witnesses from tribal education organizations told senators that a range of Department of Education programs — Title VI Indian Education Formula Grants, Impact Aid, the Alaska Native Education Program (ANEP), Title I and IDEA set-asides, and Title III postsecondary grants for tribal colleges — are central to fulfilling the federal government’s trust and treaty obligations to American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian students.

Jason Droppick, executive director of the National Indian Education Association, told the committee the federal role is unique and nondelegable: “the federal government's sacred trust and treaty obligations to native students.” He urged Congress to protect funding, staffing and program integrity and to require meaningful government-to-government consultation should any restructuring be considered.

The hearing focused on several immediate concerns: recent executive actions and agency reorganization plans that witnesses say have already reduced or…