‘We would like a real plan’: Utah will be required to help struggling Native American students after years of inaction

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For decades the data has clearly shown: Native American students are the demographic most likely to be left behind in Utah’s classrooms.

They are the students most likely to fail year-end tests and the least likely to read on grade level. They are also the least likely to graduate and the most likely to drop out of high school.

But despite knowing there’s a problem — and seeing the statistics worsen in recent years — the state has never had a plan to intervene and help.

“We have the data,” acknowledged state Rep. Christine Watkins, R-Price. “And we would like a real plan.”

This legislative session, Watkins has pushed to require that the Utah State Board of Education create a strategy that for the first time would provide targeted support for the Indigenous K-12 population here.

Her measure, HB75, sailed through the Legislature, already passing through both the House and Senate and is now headed to the governor’s office for a signature.

It’s a significant win in a Republican-majority lawmaking body that previously prohibited diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, programs in public schools. And there was some early pushback from lawmakers along those lines.

During the first committee hearing, conservative Rep. Nicholeen Peck, of Tooele, said: “Why are we singling out a special population when they’re already in schools where hopefully every student matters, not just their race?”

But the bill isn’t about race — being Native is a political identity, as Indigenous students are citizens of sovereign nations, several tribal leaders told The Salt Lake Tribune in response to Peck’s criticism.

And if every student matters, Watkins said, the state has a responsibility to intervene if one group isn’t getting what they need to succeed — which comes after a legacy of trauma from forcing Native students into boarding schools in Utah and beyond in the late 1800s and into the 1900s.

“Because of it, they might not relate to the teachers. They fall behind in learning,” said George Gover, who is Pawnee and recently stepped down as the executive director of the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation in northern Utah, a tribe he is related to by marriage.

Watkins also responded to Peck, speaking about schools with a larger makeup of Native students, which her bill focuses on.

“It’s hard for me to explain to you because you’ve never been there,” Watkins said. “I’ve been in these schools. They are great schools. But there are significant cultural differences.”

Before joining the Legislature, Watkins was a teacher in rural Utah’s Castle Dale. Watkins then worked as a staff member for the state’s overarching teachers union when Navajo parents sued the nearby San Juan School District in 1994.

The parents won and set national precedent for Native education when the district was required to start offering classes in the Navajo, or Diné, language and to build schools on the Navajo Nation’s reservation.

Watkins’ bill has the backing of many tribal leaders in the state — even those who still have some questions about how it will work. That includes Mike Natchees, a member of the Ute Tribe’s governing Business Committee.

“I think it is a good first step. There just needs to be action along with it,” he said.

Natchees feels the state has long wanted to study the problem of Native kids falling behind instead of actually addressing it.

“The Utah public schools, they’ve failed our kids,” he added. “We’re tired of being projects.”

How are Native students doing now?

The San Juan School District in southern Utah serves the highest percentage of Native students in the state, with roughly 1,600 out of 2,800 total enrolled.

Progress there has been slow since the decades-old lawsuit, but there have been marked improvements for Native students, who are predominantly Navajo. Ground was broken to build the last of those schools on the reservation in 2010.

Still, those students remain behind in standardized test scores.

Only 10% in third through eighth grade were proficient in reading and math for the last academic school year, ending in spring 2025. Meanwhile, their other San Juan County classmates hit about 40% for both of those subjects; that matches statewide levels for all students.

Uintah and Duchesne County School Districts in the eastern corner of Utah both follow next for their Native student populations. That’s where the Ute Indian Tribe’s Uintah and Ouray Reservation sits, and the nearly 700 Ute students there in K-12 are split across the two public districts.

Test scores for those Native students tend to be the worst in the state.

In the Uintah County School District, 10% of students in third through eighth grades last school year could proficiently read. Fewer than that — 8% — hit grade level for math.

In Duchesne County School District, Native students scored worse in both subjects than the year before: 11% for reading and 7% for math.

Meanwhile, in both districts, an average of 40% of all other students were hitting the mark overall.

The Tribune has reported on the disparities — particularly for Ute students, who had two boarding schools on their reservation, where the aim was to strip students of their tribal culture.

State leaders had promised to take action in response to The Tribune’s reporting. That included Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson promising to “see how the state can do things differently to ensure ALL students have a good education — especially Native students in the Uinta Basin.”

But nothing followed. And previous efforts were limited. In 2016, lawmakers provided funding to the Uintah School District to try and curb teacher turnover at Eagle View Elementary, which enrolls a high number of the district’s Ute students.

The district spent the money on a van to drive teachers who live in Vernal to and from the school. That helped reduce turnover to an average of 13% of educators leaving annually. And lower teacher turnover typically leads to better student results.

But it’s not clear that intervention has helped, at least based on standardized test scores. For the Native students at Eagle View Elementary in spring 2025, 8% were proficient in reading and 9% in math — worse than the overall districtwide scores for all Indigenous kids.

In 2020, though, the Legislature put $362,000 toward expanding the effort to better retain teachers at schools with higher Indigenous populations.

What schools would be included in the bill?

Watkins says it’s time to take more decisive statewide action.

Her measure notably does not call for any new funding. Instead, it directs the Utah State Board of Education to use already allocated money from years past and better direct how it’s spent.

HB75 is focused only on schools with the highest concentrations of Indigenous students to start. Those currently lie in the more remote and rural areas of the state.

To be part of the state plan, at least 29% of a school’s enrolled students must be Native. That’s a fairly high benchmark: Only 14 of the 1,063 schools in the state meet that, based on The Tribune’s calculations using this fall’s enrollment numbers.

Nine of those schools are in San Juan County, including Navajo Mountain High School, which only has 13 students — and all 13 are Native.

Because of how students are split up across schools, though, Native enrollment can be easily spread out, making it hard to qualify. So despite having 374 Native students, Uintah County School District only has one school that hits above the mark: Eagle View Elementary.

And Duchesne County School District ends up with zero schools, even with 298 Native students. Both Uintah and Duchesne have several schools each that fall just outside the parameters.

Only one other school in the area qualifies. That’s Uintah River High School, a special charter run by the Ute Indian Tribe to specifically cater to Ute students by incorporating their heritage and history into the curriculum.

Forrest Cuch, a former education leader for the Ute Indian Tribe, said that model has worked to support Native students and improve their test scores; the limited data available shows that.

“This has been needed [across the state] for years,” he said. “But anything will help — anything to call attention to the deficiencies.”

Three other districts each have one school on the list. Those are: Ibapah Elementary in Tooele County School District, near where the Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Reservation have land in the western desert of Utah; Lake Powell School, an elementary in Kane County near where the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah is situated; and Nebo School District’s Advanced Learning Center in Utah County, which serves a small general population of students that includes many from various tribes in the state.

Both Paiute and Goshute leaders contacted by The Tribune said they had not yet had a chance to review HB75 and could not offer comment.

Altogether, the 14 schools end up accounting for only 1,648 of the roughly 5,600 Native students in the state.

What do tribal leaders want to see?

Several tribal leaders said they are still glad to see any step forward.

“The playing field will become a little bit more level,” said Chuck Foster, who is Navajo and the American Indian specialist with the Utah State Board of Education.

Part of the bill allows included schools to use money to send teachers to national conferences focused on Indigenous education methods. Foster believes that will be a major help to educators who might not know best how to support tribal students.

HB75 would also open up schools to use their allocated funding to buy books in Native languages. “These kids are living in two worlds,” Foster said. “We need materials, books and supplies that are appropriate for them.”

Brenda Beyal, who is Navajo, manages the Native American Curriculum Initiative at Brigham Young University that pushes to integrate Indigenous art into K-12 curriculum. She called the bill “definitely a small step.”

“It’s not going to remedy,” she said. “But it’s a move in the right direction.”

Beyal said she’d like to see more teachers incorporating Indigenous ways of teaching into their lesson plans to cater to Native students and their unique way of learning.

Studies, for instance, show that Native students tend to learn better when lessons are presented visually. That doesn’t have to change what is taught, Beyal said, but rather how things are taught.

The Ute Indian Tribe has also long fought for culture to be incorporated into the classroom, which is supported by research. But members of the Ute Business Committee say that has largely been ignored by the state.

Natchees, a member of the committee, said the current education model “wasn’t really built” for Indigenous students. But with the right consultation with tribal leaders, he thinks that could finally start to shift.

“We feel like those cultural lessons shouldn’t just be an elective,” he said. “It needs to be an integral piece of the curriculum.”

He’d also like to see the state address who is qualified to teach in the classroom, particularly around Native languages. There are Ute elders, he said, who would be the most valuable educators for that. But it’s difficult for them to become licensed teachers.

“That’s a piece that’s missing and [a pathway that] needs to be in there,” Natchees said.

The new statewide education plan for Native students must be adopted by the Utah State Board of Education by January 2027, according to the bill. Watkins notes in the language that it needs to “focus on specific actions” to intervene, which Natchees appreciates and said gives him some hope that things might actually change for the first time.