New video shows crumbling Owyhee Combined School in Nevada; supporters push for new school funding

CARSON CITY, Nev. —The Shoshone-Paiute Tribal members on the Duck Valley Indian Reservation have released a video in hopes of garnering support for a new school.

Tribal member Burgess Dennis created the video that documents the crumbling building and includes interviews from staff and students at the Owyhee Combined School.

The public Owyhee Combined School on the Duck Valley Indian Reservation hosts 330 students from pre-K through 12th grade. It is in a remote area along the Nevada-Idaho border, 100 miles from the 20,000-person city of Elko, Nevada, and 100 miles from 16,000-person city of Mountain Home, Idaho. The Shoshone-Paiute Tribes on the reservation have about 2,000 members, nearly all of whom have attended the school built in 1953.

As tribal leaders have pleaded with county and state lawmakers for new school funding, conditions have grown worse. The bat colony living in the ceiling leaves drippings that ebb into the home economics room. Stray bullet holes in the front glass windows have remained for years. It's a stone's throw from a highway, where passersby sometimes use the school bathroom as if it's a rest stop. And it's adjacent to toxic hydrocarbon plumes that lie under the town, which tribal doctors are preparing to study in relation to a noticeable string of cancer deaths.

Many tribal schools across the nation are in a state of disrepair. To'Hajiilee Community School on the Navajo Nation in New Mexico, whose classrooms and playgrounds were consistently plagued with flooding after rainstorms, won funding in February only after relentless community outcry. To'Hajiilee is one of about 80 schools funded by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Education that are in desperate need of repair or replacement.

While the public Owyhee Combined School does not receive money from the Indian Education Bureau, Nevada legislators are working to provide funding, but there is debate on where that would come from and how long that would last.

Among several potential funding mechanisms is a bill that would allocate money to the Elko County School District that has not yet been heard in a state Senate committee and seems to have stalled. Lawmakers are also looking at emergency funding from the state budget, where leaders hope part of those discussions include more systemic funding for tribal schools in the future.

State funding would likely have to be nailed down before the early June deadline given Nevada Legislature's biennial session.

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro said in a statement that she met with tribal leaders Thursday, the conditions of the school is "unacceptable" and she is disappointed in Elko County for "their failure to maintain a safe learning environment for students, educators, and support staff."

Gabe Stern of the Associated Press contributed to this story.