Future Ready: Achieving Excellence with Native Education

 This episode of the SPS Future Ready Podcast explores Spokane Public Schools' Native Education department and its remarkable achievements. Hosts Superintendent Dr. Swinyard and Stephanie Splater interview Board Director Jenny Slagle and Director of Native Education Tamika LaMere about the district's equity-centered approach to supporting Native students.

The discussion covers the district's significant progress since 2020, including dramatic improvements in graduation rates (77% to 89%), attendance, and academic growth (over 200% increase). Key elements include elevating the Native Ed coordinator role to a director position, adding five staff members to work directly with students, and building strong partnerships with local tribes and urban Native organizations like the Native Project and American Indian Center.

The episode highlights the district's commitment to teaching hard history through place-based learning, including the Community School's Native Voices project where students explore local Indigenous history through guest speakers and field experiences. The conversation emphasizes the importance of creating culturally affirming spaces where Native students can bring their whole selves to school, while ensuring all students learn authentic regional Native history rather than generic curriculum developed elsewhere in the state.

Transcript

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All right, well, welcome to SPS Future Ready Podcast. I'm Stephanie Splater and I'm here today with Dr. Swinyard, our superintendent. Dr. Swinyard, We're going to talk about our Native Ed department today and all the great things that they're doing for Yeah, well, it's a really exciting area focus for the school district. We've made some really incredible progress. We have amazing staff members, amazing kids, and some incredible community partners and individuals in leadership positions that have really allowed us to understand how best to provide support to our native students, and we've really seen some incredible success. So today we're going to share with you an interview with our board director Jenny Slagle. Also an And also recently we had our students at the community school who completed a Native Voices project that was so awesome. I've watched that video a few times now, really emphasizing the importance of uncovering hard history and why it's important for students to study that have the place-based experience and really understand what is going on currently and what has happened, how that connects to the past. Yeah, the Spokane has such deep cultural significance to our native community and our community at large, and we're really proud and eager for the opportunity as a school district to create spaces where our native students can connect and feel like their school system really connects with them. So stick around. This is the SPS Future Ready Podcast. Something about our school community is we have local tribes that have a significant presence in the Spokane area. We're also a gathering place where we have students from tribes really across the country that make Spokane their home. And that's all the more reason for us to have programming and a native education department that's making those connections, setting up spaces for those kids to connect. And to your point also that broader larger school community-wide conversation around hard history and cultural significance of our native past. I've been thinking about that a lot in preparing for this episode. The concept of hard history is so relevant because I know 20 plus 30 plus years ago when I was studying, you just took whatever the history book said as that's what happened. That's exactly what happened, and I don't remember hearing a lot of hard things, a lot of sad things like they mentioned in the video. It was all just facts. This is how we moved through the timeline of history and what students are getting to explore now with this curriculum and this programming and our great leaders ensuring that kids have relevant information is that some of it is hard and some of it is sad and some of it is not completely positive in every way, and that is okay to explore and to learn about. The Washington State School Directors Association recently named Spokane Public Schools, the 2025 large District Board of the year, recognizing the board's commitment to equity centered leadership that delivers real results for students. One of those areas of focus native education, the district prioritized closing opportunity gaps for native students, building partnerships with tribal leaders, and the outcomes have been remarkable. Native student graduation rates rose from 77% to 89% attendance nearly doubled and academic growth surged more than 200%. Board member Jenny Slagle recently sat down for a video interview about the award. I'm a member of the Yakima Nation and Northern Arapahoe Descendant. I am a Spokane Public Schools board of director. And says, the work started with listening. Everything that we do, we focus on making sure that we're having conversations. Sometimes they're difficult conversations, especially as when we looked back in 2020 and saw some of the opportunity gaps within our native student population. We had to have tough conversations about that. There needed to be some changes in policy and processes and the way that we work with native families and tribes. Before they could address those gaps, the board had to invest in leadership. In 2020, we shifted what was a native ed coordinator role into a director of native education here within the district. We knew that any work that needed to be done also required funding. The district added five additional staff members to work directly in schools with native students and families. Slagle says the district couldn't implement its strategy without partnerships both with urban native organizations and with students themselves. A few years ago we had a student advisor to the board that was such a great leader that she led some of the initial discussions around our changing of the mascots at North Central High School, and she worked with various legislators here in our area and across the state to implement a law that is banning the use of native mascots within public schools. That really created a really good opportunity for school districts such as ours to have difficult or just conversations with tribes and get their feedback and work with them to figure out if there any given mascot was appropriate for use. And that really depended on the relationships to move that forward. So in 2022, that went into effect. And prior to that, we actually as a school board, we heard North Central's student body or specifically our native student body who was actually backed up by the majority of the school at the time to change our mascot. And so 2021, we did that prior to the mascot ban going into effect. Because of that particular student advocate, we were able to affect change across the district, but also across the state. For Slagle, the board of the year recognition is deeply personal. I guess what comes to mind for me is this work as a native woman, as a native elected official, this work is very personal to me. And to see it recognized I think is just really important because it amplifies and it shows that there are other school districts that this can be done. And when you do it in a way that is honoring and respectful in partnership with all the different partners that we have, that really great things can happen. But Slagle says this recognition isn't an ending. It's motivation to continue the work. The district is now developing formal policies around native education and procedures for government to government consultation with tribal partners. Director Slagle during her time on the school board has been an incredible champion to say, we're going to bring a variety of perspectives and lived experiences to the table. We're going to build those connections with our local tribes and really position them at the We've really developed some really cool partnerships over the years where even SPS teachers on professional development days are touring various native sites in our community that have historical significance with members of our local tribe leading those conversations and leading that professional development so that we can bring that back to our school community at large. I know our state has done a lot of work to ensure that the tribes are as much as they can be working In addition to our 1900 students and families who identify as Native American in Spokane Public Schools, And just like you described, we're bringing together the community to provide these experiences so that students really do understand what history was about and what they can do moving forward to be successful. And the state made it a requirement for all school districts to provide, since time memorial, curriculum. Initially, the curriculum that was provided to school districts was primarily developed on the west side of the state, and so it was really grounded in a coastal experience. And we know that's not the case for our local tribes. And I think that's something that has been a really special part of our partnership is again, coming alongside our local tribes and making sure that our Spokane Public Schools curriculum is grounded in the local native experience and the types of things that were associated with the lifestyle in the Spokane area. That's so key. And I think it's cool that you mentioned in addition, when we have students who have come from different backgrounds of different regional tribes around the US and we have the Spokane connections and the local Eastern Washington tribes. That's really key and we're touching on it all. In addition to our local tribes, we have some amazing local urban native organizations. So the native project led by Tony Lodge, really an incredible asset to the community, the American Indian Center in Spokane, providing so many different supports and opportunities for the native community and Spokane at large. I love the Native Youth Summer program. I got to see that in action this year, and that's so cool to keep that connection going throughout the summer and supported by those local organizations that you said. Yeah, and I think our native education department is a great example of when we create spaces for kids to develop a sense of belonging to their community and to other communities. We see student performance improve, we see attendance get better. We see graduations go up. We know how important it's for kids to make and build those connections. And our Native education department is really a lighthouse example of how that can really change kids' trajectory. So I sat down with Tamika LaMere, director of Native Education for SPS for a quick and informative chat. Then after we'll hear from some students at the community school that completed the Native Voices project, encouraging students to uncover and understand hard history. All right. Welcome, Tamika. Thanks for being on the podcast with us. We're so happy to hear from you and especially around a topic that you are our absolute resident expert on. It’s so great to talk with you today. Couple of things, tell me a little bit about your background leading up to the current role that you're in, which is Director of Native Education for Spokane Public Schools. Yes. Well, thank you. Did I get that right? You did. And thank you so much. I appreciate the invitation and I'm happy to be here with you today. And so a little bit about myself. So born and raised in Great Falls, Montana. I ended up coming to Spokane when I was a teenager at the end of the day. My background is in sociology, so I got a bachelor's in sociology with a minor in criminal justice and got my master's in social work. And so that is kind of my educational background and experience. And during my internship for social work, I actually ended up at Glover Middle School and I was under the supervision of Dr. Oscar Harris and Fred Schrumpf at the time. And this was during the time when restorative justice and trauma-informed practices were all the big buzz and was definitely connected to my social work background. So I really had a passion and an interest in that work. When I came here as an intern, ended up getting hired at Glover Middle School, was there for about four years, and then I ended up here. And so I always knew that I wanted to support the native community. I'm Native American, so I am a citizen of little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians of Montana. I'm also a descendant of the Chippewa Cree people of Rocky Boy Montana. And so I just have a natural affinity to serve my community. And I ended up in the education system, which wasn't anything I planned on doing. And so I would find opportunities to focus on native students and culture within my role at Glover. And then this position opened up in 2020 and I got many people nudging me to apply for the job. And then here we are. Fast forward five years later, so much has happened in that five years. Oh my. Goodness. A ton has happened. Throughout this episode, we talk about the evolution in the five years of what Washington State has gone through from a policy and procedure standpoint all the way up until, what are we doing right now today to serve all kids? And especially in this topic in our Native education program. What I would say is this is not a program that, how do I say this? The reason why we have native education is because the trust and treaty responsibility of our federal government, which was an exchange for land. And so one of the responsibilities is providing education and healthcare. And so education is built into that. And what does that look like when this is between the federal government and tribes across the United States? And how does that look when you have people of tribal nations in one city like Spokane and they're not on their homelands or the reservation to receive the benefits that they might get in terms of education and healthcare? And so what then is our responsibility to serve those students in a way which we have Title VI and Title III, they provide funding to do that, but that funding isn't enough to meet the need. I feel like what people need to know as this is not an entitlement program, and this is a program that is based off of a agreement that was made between the federal government and many tribes. And so what do we as a state, as a legislator, as a Spokane Public Schools, as an individual school, what is our responsibility in ensuring that the trust and treaty obligations are met when they're not connected to their land base? So when we talk about native education, two different layers. One, the curriculum route that all kids experience as part of that policy and procedure in Washington, but also about providing the best possible experience for all of our students, 1900 or so Spokane school students identify as native. And tell me a little bit about your daily work with kids. So I actually personally don't have a lot of daily work with the students, but I do support a staff of five that are in building, working with students every day. And that really looks like having a caseload of students identifying what their needs are, whether that be grades, So they have a native mentor that is supporting them. Again, whether it be if they're struggling with attendance, that's something that we work on, they're struggling with their grades or if we know they just need a safe space to be who they are and to bring their whole entire self into our school district and into their classrooms, into their buildings. That's something we provide through. We have clubs at the schools that our staff serve, and we also have afterschool programming. And so we create affinity spaces specifically for students so they can bring their whole selves into the space, as well as working with counselors, working with teachers. And we're definitely coordinating services when students are in need and connecting them to resources outside of maybe what we can provide, whether that be in or outside the building. And so planning events, we host cultural events throughout the year, and so that's something that we also do as well. Elementary level, just staying connected in our local community. And I'm just thinking about the middle school level. What does that look like? And it could be what push it into the classroom, pulling out of the classroom. Again, it's really going to be determined on what that student needs. Sometimes it happens individually, sometimes it happens in a group. So I guess there's so many layers to this. Family support, connected with families, connected with the community. Definitely a lot of layers for what that looks like in building during the day. One of the segments that we're going to explore in this episode is surrounding The Community School and the Native Voices project. Can you speak a little bit to that? Yeah, so shout out to the community school. I love the project-based learning approach. I feel like it is just so needed and our kids need to be able to learn in various ways. So here's a good model of how we're doing that. In the way that Dave has approached it has been very inclusive. He does not present himself like he's the expert, and he definitely does his own work in terms of reaching out and trying to supplement and bringing people from the community to support. And so he does a very good job at not just bringing in guest speakers, but providing those experiential learning for students. They went out to open it, and they were, I think it was the Language house that came, the Spokane Language house that did a session with the students. And so for them to get that real life experience, and I know years before they went to Fort Spokane, which was an Indian boarding school, and to learn about those histories that had went on. And so I just feel like the way that he's doing it, it's not just we're learning a book, we're reading a paper, we're reading this, we are learning, we are talking to people, and then we are going and doing. And so combining all those different ways of learning I think is a very effective way of students to value the learning, retain it, and want to know more because it doesn't stop there and place meaning on it. How do we continue to keep them engaged and want to know more? Absolutely. What a great model and cool opportunity. Dave Egly is a history teacher at the Community School. The Native Voices project is all about learning about native tribes in our region. TJ Davis, senior at the community school. We started out the project by looking at local indigenous tribes. Primarily we focused on the Spokanes and kind of the more difficult history with how Spokane came to be. We even start off with looking a little more generally at why hard history should be taught. And by hard history we mean history that is difficult because it's at times sad. It might involve loss, it might involve genocide. We try to do that through the lens of a lot of guest speakers. Any chance I get to come into classrooms and engage with students, I'm going to hop on that opportunity. Tamika LaMere. We don't often get these opportunities in the way that really dispels myths, stereotypes, misinformation, miseducation around native education. Dylan Mitten Junior, also at the community school. I don't have that perspective. And so just being able to have a class like this where we could learn history from these marginalized groups of people has given me a chance to kind of feel like, okay, yeah, listen and respect what they think. Getting out of the building, being able to see some of the places where history happened and feel that gravity, that power of place, it's impactful. It's a lot deeper than just reading about it. After hear those stories, we take time to process and reflect and figure out what that means for us in society today. I really enjoy history, and I just really like learning more details and more sides to our history. We have to learn the truth in history, and that's going to help us understand society today. I always look forward to connecting with Tamika and to see what we can explore and work on together, but also to learn from her because there is such an in-depth knowledge of what our kids need and what we can do together to create that sense of belonging. She talked with me recently about the college visits that they do, that some kids, no matter who they are, sometimes don't envision themselves as college students. And so helping them go to the campus and experience it and live it and see themselves as having a goal for the future of graduating, being successful, and then taking the next steps. And she put me right into that mode of understanding the why that it might be not familiar, but also how that we can do it and get the kids there. And it really sits at the center of the type of culture we want to create in our school district—seeking to understand differences across groups, respecting those differences, and creating a school community where everybody feels welcome and accepted in safe spaces where they're excited to be. We want students to build relationships with individuals who are similar to them and maybe have the same group affiliation, but then open up those doorways and those opportunities through curiosity and through seeking to understand differences. When kids build relationships across a variety of different groups, it only strengthens our community. I like also when we talked about the community coming together. So we've got our internal SPS systems and departments and leaders. We have our kids that we know are always our through threat of a connection. And then we have our community members and the tribes. And I appreciate that, that group, all of those people that we just named come together when there's a problem as well. When something isn't being addressed, when something isn't authentic to the experience of our students and our families. And that's really when we can get to the heart of how can we improve and even get better. So having all of these layers is super key and important for us to help our kids be future ready in all different ways. Yeah, totally. And it takes policies and procedures, it takes programmings, it takes relationships. You really need all those ingredients to create success. And I think it's true. You need those to create positive experiences, but you also need those in place when things don't go right. We've had some issues the last few years around graduation regalia. Our native students have specific rights relative to the way that they can present their specific cultural and tribal affiliation in graduation regalia. And we've had some miscommunications, we've had some misunderstandings. But the policy and procedure, the programming, the relationships has allowed us to come into that space, clarify, seek to understand, build better systems so that we don't have those misunderstandings in the future. And it's just an example of what we're learning. We're growing, we're trying to do better, we're trying to be better. And I think, again, native education has been a great example of that in Spokane Public Schools. Thank you for listening to SPS Future Ready. Hit subscribe to catch our next podcast as soon as we release it and follow Spokane Public Schools on social media for even more great content. See you next time.