The Friends Committee on National Legislation’s Native American advocacy work is grounded in our commitment to seeking right relationships with Indigenous communities. This has involved advocating for the Truth and Healing Commission Act (S.761), a bill that would establish a commission to investigate federal Indian boarding school policies. U.S. government Indian boarding schools were a failing to meet treaty obligations to tribal nations.
Issues Facing Education for Native Children
Today, the federal government is falling short on other treaty obligations related to education. The federal government plays a major role in Native education. The Bureau of Indian Education (BIE), which focuses on uplifting Native children and their cultures, funds or operates hundreds of elementary and secondary schools on 63 reservations, off-reservation boarding schools, and tribal colleges and universities.
Primarily overseen and controlled by tribal nations, BIE schools are essential for Native students to access education that isn‘t offered in public schools, such as Native language immersion. The schools, while critical for Native students in rural and under-resourced areas, are chronically underfunded. Representative Bruce Westerman (AR-4), the chair of the House Natural Resources Committee which oversees the BIE, shared that as of 2022, BIE schools have a billion-dollar backlog of repairs.
Over the past 12 years, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has catalogued the issues plaguing these schools. For example, in 2016, GAO investigated widespread safety and health issues, including one school that continued to use dormitories despite failed carbon monoxide inspections. Subsequent issues have plagued BIE such as the lack of sufficient staff and oversight of financial spending.
In February 2025, the GAO reported that the BIE had made significant progress in addressing these identified issues after historic investments from Congress. However, the BIE hasn’t been spending the money they have which risks undermining progress and threatens Native children’s ability to be educated in a safe and healthy environment.
Congress appropriates the Education Construction Fund each year to maintain and repair BIE-funded and operated schools. As of fiscal year 2025, the fund has a historically outsized pool of available funding. With this comes a historic opportunity to make a substantial dent in the backlog of repair requests. This funding includes $543 million in rolled over funding from previous years, $235 million in FY25 continued funding, and $153 million FY25 emergency disaster funding for schools impacted by natural disasters.
Failing to Spend Appropriated Funds
Despite this historic opportunity, the BIE has only obligated 5.2% of its appropriated funds. The Bureau’s failure to spend or even release its plans to spend these funds risks Native children’s health, well-being, and education. The federal government is squandering an opportunity to make the largest modern investment in education for Native children.
The failure to spend this money is not the only challenge that Native education faces. As Congress begins the FY26 appropriations process, the President has requested a dramatic decrease in funding for the Education Construction Fund. The request, if enacted, would cut funding 79.7% from fiscal year 2025. The level of proposed funding by the administration would not even cover emergency and environmental costs for BIE K-12 schools, such as gas leaks, mold, or asbestos abatement. Given the chronic maintenance issues that BIE schools face, this proposal and the current failure to spend appropriated funding abandons Native children, staff, and faculty to live and work in unsafe and unlivable facilities.
Upholding Treaty and Trust Responsibilities
Native children deserve to learn in safe, healthy, and nurturing environments. To fulfill the mission of providing culturally appropriate and relevant education to Native children, the BIE must be fully funded and spend these funds to support the education of Native children.
Supporting Native education is essential to the federal government’s treaty and trust responsibilities to tribal nations. We urge the Bureau to act on this historic opportunity to support Native children and education.
