PIERRE — For the past five years, conversations about prisons and how to manage them have played out as one tumultuous bout of realignment and soul-searching after another for South Dakota’s leaders.

Wardens . were exposed. and came and went. Lawmakers over how to spend money they set aside for prisons.

and spiked. When the dust settled, the state had endorsed a new in Rapid City, a new in Sioux Falls, and a .

But something else happened along the way: Prison officials quietly stood up a program they now view as a solid win for some inmates and their families.

Since 2022, qualifying inmate mothers have lived full-time with their children in a house on the campus of the South Dakota Women’s Prison in Pierre that looks nothing like a prison.

In the three years since its launch, none of the women who’ve left prison after participating in South Dakota’s Mother-Infant Program have returned to state custody.

It’s too early to calculate any long-term impact, but Corrections Secretary Nick Lamb told the Legislature’s budget-setting committee recently that he likes the odds for success.

More than 40% of South Dakota parolees return to prison within three years of their release. In states with similar programs, Lamb said, the repeat offense rate for participating moms “is something like 2%.”

Through fiscal year 2025, which ended on June 30, 17 women had participated, according to the Department of Corrections Annual Statistical Report. Ten had been released at the time the report was issued, and corrections spokesman Michael Winder said none have returned to prison.

Another mother-infant house is nearing completion at the in Rapid City, which is set to open this year. The program in Pierre will continue.

“There’s a beautiful new building out there built just for this,” Lamb told lawmakers.

A new program for an old building

The program began under former Department of Corrections Secretary Kellie Wasko.

To be eligible, the mothers must be on minimum custody status, have 30 months or less remaining on their sentence and be serving time for a nonviolent offense.

The women and their children live in two fused-together Governor’s Houses just outside the main prison complex in Pierre. The homes are prefabricated dwellings, built at Mike Durfee State Prison in Springfield and typically sold to low-income families.

The structure had been there for years.

Until around five years ago, it was known as the “PACT” house, a nod to its use for a less-expansive familial bonding program called Parents and Children Together that was launched by former Gov. Bill Janklow to allow female prisoners weekend-long visits with their kids.

Interest in PACT had waned by the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Warden Aaron Miller told South Dakota Searchlight during a recent tour. The pandemic shuttered it altogether.

Wasko moved to reopen its doors as a full-time home for inmate moms and their kids shortly after her arrival in March of 2022. Colorado, the state where Wasko had worked in corrections previously, has a mother-baby unit for inmate moms.

‘Just learning’

On a recent Friday, the moms were gathered in the shared living area at lunchtime, sitting in a semicircle of couches as an episode of the children’s program “Bluey” played on a flat-screen television.

There were seven women living in the house with their kids that day — four boys and three girls, ranging in age from two months to 18 — but the building can hold up to 10. Women typically stay in the program for 30 months.

One of the moms, Sara Bernie, said it can feel “pretty cramped” with 10 families, but “we make it work.”

Bernie’s daughter, Spiryt, turns 1 this month. They’ve been there since Spiryt’s birth.

“We’re just learning to walk,” Bernie said of her daughter, wearing a fresh-looking pair of Minnie Mouse sneakers and a long-sleeved Minnie Mouse shirt.

Bernie moved from Michigan to Yankton to work at a restaurant. She’d been in South Dakota less than a month when she was charged with drug distribution. She’d been pregnant about a month, too, and spent the start of her sentence in the main women’s prison, transitioning to the mother-infant program when Spiryt was born.

“Coming over here, it is a totally different world,” said Bernie.

Having Spiryt right there, she said, has served to motivate her. Bernie has completed a kitchen management program. The program, run by food service provider Aramark, earned her early discharge credits and put her in a position to make federal minimum wage working in the prison kitchen and save money for her future. Most inmate jobs pay around 50 cents an hour.

With Spiryt at her side as a motivator, Bernie said, “I am 100% focused on going back out.”

Her other two children, ages 6 and 14, are in Michigan. She wants to go back there when her sentence is up in early 2028.

Sometimes, prison staff will clear the adults from the prison’s recreation gym so the littles can take over. Aside from those moments, the children don’t see the inside of the prison. When it’s warm, they play outside.

Sitters fill role for moms, prison system

A babysitter or correctional officer watches Spiryt when Sarah goes to work, leaves for recreation time or goes to church. The babysitters are the only other women in the house most evenings. Overnight, it’s often just the moms and babies.

Bernie is CPR certified, as are all the mothers in the house. That’s also a qualification for the babysitters, who are minimum security inmates interviewed first by the staff, then by the moms.

“We vote on the babysitters,” Bernie said. ” They usually work out pretty well.”

The daytime correctional officer, Karen Boyer, often relies on the babysitters to help manage the chaos of a seven-family house. On some days, Boyer spends a lot of time away from the building, taking babies to doctor visits outside the prison in a Chevrolet Suburban packed with car seats.

“It’s kind of like school,” she said. “When one gets sick, they all get sick.”

The children start to feel like grandkids after a while, she said.

It’s a feeling the babysitters get, too.

“When the kids leave, it’s like they’re losing someone in their family,” Boyer said.

Kay Cain has been a sitter since November. On the outside, Cain was a pediatric nurse, so working with kids came naturally. She typically takes care of Dennis, an 18-month-old with a mop of curly hair who gives fist bumps when asked for “knuckles.”

“You’ve kind of grown on me, haven’t you?” she said to Dennis when asked about her favorite part of the job.

Like Bernie, Dennis’ mother came from out of state, and was living in Yankton when she was arrested. Destiny Hogan said she was pregnant and using fentanyl and methamphetamine at the time.

“If I wouldn’t have gotten arrested, I don’t know if either of us would be here,” Hogan said.

Now, having lived side-by-side with Dennis his whole life, she’s closer to him than she’s been with any of her five other children.

“He’s the only one I’ve been there with from day one,” Hogan said.

Birthdays, holidays

Cameras in the corners, khaki prison-issued pants and the supervising correctional officer’s uniform are the only outward signs that the house doubles as a prison facility.

There are two bathrooms, one with a Peter Pan theme and another with a unicorn theme, on either side of the building. Each bedroom has a theme, as well, and there are hand-painted cartoon images on every wall outside the bedrooms. Every painting was done by an inmate.

Meals are delivered each day for the women and children. Every month or so, everyone will have what Bernie called a “big meal” together.

The children get birthday parties, and Bernie wrote out a wishlist for Spiryt. A little boy got an electric drum kit at the last birthday party.

Christmas gifts come by way of an angel tree, where community members buy the toys listed on tags hanging from a tree.

A lot of the gifts come in a similar fashion, originating with community members or community partners. Others come from prison staff members.

Wasko, the former corrections secretary, took particular pleasure in playing Santa Claus, Corrections spokesman Michael Winder said.

By policy, kids are allowed one bag of gifts at gift-giving time, Winder said.

“You’d never seen a bag so big,” as the ones Wasko would deliver, he said.

Community support

That the PACT house was available at the time of the program’s launch was a big help, allowing the state to avoid building space from scratch or retrofitting areas inside the women’s prison to make them function more like living spaces appropriate for infants.

As with gifts for the kids, a lot of supplies come through community support, said Miller, the warden at the women’s prison.

Churches pitch in for car seats, collapsible cribs, toys or furniture, he said, as do local supporters like the Pierre office of a Canadian nonprofit called Birthright, founded in 1968 to support women with unplanned pregnancies.

Birthright has kept the building stocked with diapers and wipes since the program’s launch.

An organization called Right Turn offers educational programming to the mothers, Head Start offers early childhood educational materials and teaches moms how to bake and cook, CPR training comes from the Sanford Frontier and Rural Medicine (FARM) Project, and the group Disability Rights of South Dakota helps mothers connect with the resources they’ll need on the outside as they prepare for release.

The program costs the Department of Corrections $15,000 a year, a figure folded into the $8.8 million budget for the women’s prison in Pierre.

Building bonds

Spiryt got restless as she sat on her mom’s lap during her conversation with a reporter and prison administrators. The tot’s eye was drawn to the neon cord of the earbuds plugged into Bernie’s inmate-issued tablet. Spiryt flopped to her left and grabbed the cord.

Reflexively, Bernie stretched a hand to her window sill, grabbed an identical but non-functioning pair of earbuds and swapped them into Spiryt’s tiny hands.

“I hide these up here and give them to her when she does this,” Bernie said, smiling down at Spiryt. “That way she still thinks she’s getting away with something.”

That’s precisely the kind of attentive understanding the program wants mothers to develop with their children.

“The premise of the program is that they will be able to bond with their child,” Miller said. “It’s teaching moms how to be moms.”

Miller was around in 1997, when the Pierre women’s prison first opened. At that point, former Gov. Janklow’s move to create a weekend visitation house for inmate mothers was viewed with scrutiny.

The prison houses women at all security levels and has a minimum security unit, but the main building was designed to house maximum-custody inmates.

“At the time, no one could imagine having kids in a maximum security facility,” Miller said, even if the overnight visits took place in a conventional house designed for families outside prison walls.

The women who stayed there through the years tended to do better on the outside, Miller noted, but “when they were only there for the weekend, it was totally different.”

South Dakota is one of at least nine states with prison nursery programs, last month, the oldest of which is in New York. The programs have expanded as the number of women entering prisons has grown, from around 13,000 in 1980 to nearly 86,000 in 2023.

‘Not here to punish inmates’

The program came up as the Legislature’s budget committee got an update last month on construction at the new women’s prison in Rapid City. The mother-infant program building was nearing completion, Lamb told the committee.

One senator, Piedmont Republican John Carley, asked Lamb how the prison keeps the program from feeling like a prize for the participating moms.

“What’s the difference between them truly feeling they’re incarcerated and dealing with the crime maybe they committed versus, ‘hey, this is a lot of wonderful free stuff,’” Carley said.

Lamb told Carley that his job is not to punish inmates. The incarceration is the punishment, he said.

“The ladies that are back there no longer have their freedom,” Lamb said. “So they’re serving their punishment by being with us.”

The low rate of repeat offenses from women who’ve gone through similar programs across the U.S. shows its value as a rehabilitation tool, Lamb told Carley as he invited the senator and anyone else on the committee to visit the shared family space on the Pierre prison campus.

Lamb, a father of seven, also said there’s a moral component at play. Babies, he said, should not be separated from their mothers for a mother’s misdeeds.

“Harming the mother is one thing,” Lamb said. “But separating the child from the mother is something totally different.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seth Tupper for questions: info@southdakotasearchlight.com.

South Dakota is the to commit to President Donald Trump’s federal education tax credit program, Republican Gov. Larry Rhoden announced Friday in Sioux Falls.

Under the program, South Dakotans who owe federal income taxes can either send up to $1,700 to the federal government, or they can donate that $1,700 to a government-recognized scholarship granting organization to public, private or homeschool entities in the state. The program starts in 2027.

Nebraska’s Republican Gov. Jim Pillen in September. Republican governors for North Carolina and Tennessee announced their commitment this summer. Oregon, New Mexico and Wisconsin officials said to opt into the program. Some critics nationally have questioned whether there will be proper in place.

Rhoden called the imminent program a “winning situation” for South Dakota taxpayers.

“I’d just as soon give those dollars to a private school than Uncle Sam,” Rhoden said at the announcement, standing in front of a row of students attending the St. Joseph Academy. “I think they know how to spend it a little wiser than the federal government.”

Rhoden added that the federal tax credit will “pair well” with South Dakota’s existing tax credit program, which allows insurance companies to donate up to a total of $5 million to a private school scholarship program for students whose families have low incomes.

The program will further support the state’s , Rhoden said, including homeschooling and microschools popping up throughout the state. Alternative instruction enrollment has , making up about 7% of school-age children in the state.

Sara Hofflander, founder of St. Joseph Academy, said the school is “grateful” for the potential extra funding, though she plans to “approach everything cautiously.”

“Running an independent school obviously requires a heavy commitment from families,” Hoffman said, adding that the extra funding would “lift some of that burden, so we can focus more on the needs of our students.”

Historically, “school choice” efforts in the state have met resistance from the public school industry.

Advocates vehemently fought former Gov. Kristi Noem’s effort to , which would have provided public funding for private education and homeschool options during the last legislative session, calling the failed effort an . Those same advocates referred to the state’s education tax credit program as “.”

But Rob Monson, executive director for the School Administrators of South Dakota, said the program will benefit public and private education. South Dakotans can direct their tax credit dollars to organizations representing public schools in the state. The on not only tuition and fees for private schools, but tutoring, special needs services for students with disabilities, transportation (such as busing), afterschool care and computers.

“That’s a huge win for taxpayers of South Dakota, but also every form of education across the state,” Monson said.

South Dakota Education Secretary Joe Graves said the program will support education innovations and a “robust competitive system.”

Graves told lawmakers on Thursday, while , that “innovation” would be key to improving student outcomes, especially for Native American students and children living in “education deserts.”

“We’re not doing well enough, and we need to do better,” Graves said at Friday’s announcement.

If more students attend private or alternative schooling options, that would mean less state funding for public schools because of decreased student enrollment. Monson told South Dakota Searchlight that state revenues could be impacted by participation in the tax credit program, since it would remove federal tax dollars used to support other programs or go toward states. The federal government would still be obligated to fund some federal education programs, Monson added.

The scholarship funds would be available to families whose household incomes do not exceed 300% of their area’s median gross income. The U.S. Department of Treasury is expected to issue proposed rules detailing the program’s operation.

Graves said he assumes there will be reporting “at some level” of how the funds are spent.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seth Tupper for questions: info@southdakotasearchlight.com.

In the thick of the summer, 10 high school and college students sat in the empty library of Maȟpíya Lúta — Red Cloud — High School in Pine Ridge, South Dakota. There, they recited everyday phrases in Lakota, the language spoken by the Oglala Sioux Tribe on the Pine Ridge Reservation, one of the nation’s largest.

Taŋyáŋ ništíŋma he? Did you sleep well? 

Okóihaŋke k’uŋ heháŋ tȟabwaškate. Last weekend I played basketball.

Táku wičhókaŋ wótapi he? What’s for lunch?

The students were paid participants in the school’s annual summer language internship program, learning the language and culture to teach others — and posting videos of themselves speaking, translating and describing everyday activities in Lakota.

It’s part of Maȟpíya Lúta’s mission to preserve the 1,000-year-old language, which is in danger of being erased because it is to younger generations.

Opened in 1888, Maȟpíya Lúta (mah-PEE-yah loo-tah) was one of many boarding schools the U.S. government created to culturally assimilate and “” Native Americans. Roughly 19,000 children were taken from their families and forced to attend. The schools made the children use English names, cut their hair and prohibited them from speaking their language, according to a 2022 federal .

“Boarding school rules were often enforced through punishment, including corporal punishment such as solitary confinement; flogging; withholding food; whipping; slapping; and cuffing,” the report said. as a result of abuse and inhumane conditions.

While the Lakota population is more than 170,000 strong, there are fewer than , according to the Lakota Language Consortium. Most are in their 70s.

Ashlan Carlow-Blount, 17, didn’t grow up speaking Lakota, but discovered a passion for it in high school. She joined the internship to improve her speaking skills and share the language with other young people.

“Our ancestors couldn’t speak it — if they spoke it, it was like a punishment for them,” Ashlan said. “That’s why we lost our language, because they were so afraid to speak it and they didn’t pass it down. That’s why it’s important to us to [do this], because we have the opportunity to speak it freely now and then keep it going.”

The summer internship is the next step toward fluency for students who have completed other Lakota classes. For two months, they learn through singing, activities, group conversations and lectures. This year’s group began to — sometimes receiving thousands of views.

Learn some Lakota sentences with us!!

“Our summer interns kind of put [the program] on the map, and it was a good outlet for them to showcase what they’re learning and also showcase how language could be used in the day-to-day,” said Jennifer Irving, Maȟpíya Lúta’s communications director. 

Mya Mills, 17, said a lot of teens know basic Lakota words and speak some at home but aren’t fluent. The internship has helped her speak the language outside of school, and older adults have told her how much they appreciate students trying to bring Lakota back.

“That’s the point — for us still to try to keep it going,” she said. “Even when we’re around people who don’t speak it.”

Maȟpíya Lúta’s internship is only one piece of its mission to increase Lakota fluency, Irving said. The school of 500 students created a dual language immersion program in 2019 that has since expanded from kindergarten through eighth grade. About 90% of classes are taught in Lakota, so students can become fluent early on instead of catching up in later years.

The movement to revitalize and preserve native languages in schools has boomed in recent decades, Irving said. Immersion schools and language preservation programs have increased in and other states like , and . In December, the Biden administration published a 10-year , which called for action to address the U.S. government’s role in the loss of Native American languages. The program’s future is unclear under the Trump administration.

“I think 40 years ago, our education system in this country was very different — very much reading, writing, arithmetic,” Irving said. “We all see now, not just with tribal languages or Lakota language, but we see the benefits for students that are in immersion classrooms and in immersion schools.”

Researchers that Native American students in bilingual programs scored higher on English language standardized tests than those who received education in an English-only program. Including indigenous languages and culture in school curriculum have also been identified as ways to improve chronic absenteeism for Native American students, according to a from the national nonprofit Attendance Works.

The Minneapolis American Indian Center, which serves more than 35,000 Native Americans in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area, created a in 2019 that teaches youth the Dakota and Ojibwe languages. Coordinator Memegwesi Sutherland said he’s seen students have “life-changing experiences” after being exposed to their language and culture for the first time.

“Most schools don’t offer much for a Native education,” he said. “Students who do take my class end up learning a lot — they want to reconnect with their people, relearn their language and culture, and sometimes their [college] majors change and they ask me how they can keep learning it.”  

Kiana Richards, a 2017 Maȟpíya Lúta graduate, became so passionate about Lakota while in high school that she earned an associate degree in the language. She joined AmeriCorps and worked as a Maȟpíya Lúta employee from 2018 to 2020. But she stopped speaking Lakota when the pandemic struck, and after several years realized her fluency had “completely faded away.”

Last year, she rejoined AmeriCorps to refresh her Lakota skills and teach students about the language and culture.

“I wanted to continue to keep doing this for the sake of my own self, my identity, my Lakota identity, and for the sake of me wanting to be an immersion teacher,” she said. “I want to encourage the [students] so much, because it is a part of who we are.”

Tylia Mad Plume, a 2023 Maȟpíya Lúta graduate, said she initially cared only about getting a decent grade in high school Lakota classes. But after an educator encouraged her to work with children, she joined AmeriCorps to help teach while taking language classes herself.

Both Mad Plume and Richards were fired from AmeriCorps this spring, when the Trump administration from the national service organization. The school used its own budget to hire them as staff for the summer internship.

Many Maȟpíya Lúta staff come from AmeriCorps. Funding has since been reinstated to Democratic-led states that sued, but the school is still waiting for a solution as a named plaintiff in a lawsuit that seeks a in every state. 

“I think it’s important to keep going, to keep the Lakota Nation sovereign, because it’s really scary with everything going on right now,” Mad Plume said. “You have to keep that because in history, for the people who didn’t keep it or the tribes who weren’t as strong in their language and culture, it’s gone.”

Richards said she’s excited for the future because while Lakota wasn’t passed down through generations in the past, she believes the current generation will bring it back. 

This is foretold in the Lakotas’ seventh generation prophecy, she said — a made in the 1800s by Lakota holy man that after generations of great suffering, the Lakota of the seventh generation — the current generation — will take back what little culture and rights remain to spur positive change for the future.

“Here we are in that moment,” Richards said. “I feel like it’s coming full circle, because now we’re teaching the [children] how to speak Lakota and some of them are more fluent than I am. It’s amazing to see, and that’s what encourages me and inspires me. It’s so important because it connects us to who we are, in our spirits, our knowledge.”

Correction: The name of the Twin Cities cultural center is the Minneapolis American Indian Center.

South Dakota public schools would be required to teach a specific set of Native American historical and cultural lessons if a bill unanimously endorsed by a legislative committee Tuesday in Pierre becomes law.

The bill would mandate the teaching of the Oceti Sakowin Essential Understandings. The phrase “Oceti Sakowin” refers to the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota people. The understandings are a set of standards and lessons adopted seven years ago by the South Dakota Board of Education Standards with input from tribal leaders, educators and elders.

Use of the understandings by public schools is optional. A survey conducted by the state Department of Education indicated use by 62% of teachers, but the survey was voluntary and hundreds of teachers did not respond.

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Republican state Sen. Tamara Grove, who lives on the Lower Brule Reservation, proposed the bill and asked legislators to follow the lead of Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate Chairman J. Garret Renville. He has publicly called for a “reset” of state-tribal relations since the departure of former Gov. Kristi Noem, who was barred by tribal leaders from entering tribal land in the state.

“What I’m asking you to do today,” Grove said, “is to lean into the reset.”

Joe Graves, the state secretary of education and a Noem appointee, testified against the bill. He said portions of the understandings are already incorporated into the state’s social studies standards. He added that the state only mandates four curricular areas: math, science, social studies and English-language arts/reading. He said further mandates would “tighten up the school days, leaving schools with much less instructional flexibility.”

Members of the Senate Education Committee sided with Grove and other supporters, voting 7-0 to send the bill to the full Senate.

The proposal is one of several education mandates that lawmakers have considered this legislative session. The state House rejected a bill this week that would have required posting and teaching the Ten Commandments in schools, and also rejected a bill that would have required schools to post the state motto, “Under God the People Rule.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seth Tupper for questions: info@southdakotasearchlight.com.

that would have required South Dakota public schools to display and teach the Ten Commandments failed to clear its final legislative hurdle Monday at the Capitol in Pierre as the state House to reject it.

State representatives engaged in a lengthy, impassioned debate. Opponents said the bill represented an unconstitutional government endorsement of religion, and warned of legal challenges.

Rep. David Kull, R-Brandon, referenced out-of-state support for the bill, including from Texas-based , which says it works to protect the nation’s “Biblical foundation.”

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“Make no mistake, this bill is an experiment, and we’re the lab rats, and the leading scientists from out of state are driving us,” Kull said. “The beauty for them is they aren’t at risk. Their money isn’t at risk — ours is.”

A similar bill adopted by Louisiana is being in court.

The South Dakota bill originally mandated that all public school classrooms feature 8-by-14-inch posters of the Ten Commandments with a three-part, 225-word statement explaining their historical significance. The bill was amended during the Monday debate to require only one display for each school, but the House rejected the bill even with the amendment.

Additionally, schools would have been required to incorporate lessons on the commandments at least once during elementary, middle and high school as part of civics and history classes.

Supporters of the bill said the Ten Commandments played a fundamental role in shaping American law and culture.

Rep. John Hughes, R-Sioux Falls, was among the lawmakers who said the commandments are needed in schools. He said the Judeo-Christian worldview is under attack.

“Our system of public education instructs our children that no god is responsible for how we came to be, for what purpose we were created, and for what becomes of us when we breathe our last breath on this earth,” he said.

Rep. Tim Goodwin, R-Rapid City, said he supported the bill even though the religious leaders and public school superintendents he talked to were against it.

Goodwin said he prayed about the bill and experienced a calmness that influenced his vote.

“The calmness had a voice saying to me, if one person comes to Christ because the Ten Commandments are posted, vote yes,” he said.

Rep. Keri Weems, R-Sioux Falls, said a government mandate is not the right way to spread Christianity.

“This is brought about by relationships,” she said, “not words on a wall.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seth Tupper for questions: info@southdakotasearchlight.com.

Nearly 15% of school-age children in the Meade School District — 504 students — are enrolled in alternative instruction instead of attending a state-accredited private or public school.

Because state funding is partially based on enrollment, those children would bring roughly $3.5 million in funding to the district if they attended a public school.

That’s money that could cover staff salaries and resources, maintenance and repair of school buildings or extracurriculars, said Heath Larson, executive director of Associated School Boards of South Dakota.

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Students attending South Dakota public universities may soon face a civics proficiency requirement to graduate.

Students will take three credits worth of civics education — either new classes created to meet the requirement or a general education class already in place that meets the standard. Students will not have to take more credits to graduate, said Shuree Mortenson, spokeswoman for the system.

“The student will be able to select from a list of courses that have been deemed as fulfilling that civics proficiency,” Mortenson said.

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The South Dakota Board of Regents held its first reading of the general education during its Thursday meeting at Black Hills State University in Spearfish. The policy will have its second reading in April and could become effective for new and transfer students in fall 2025, if approved.

“This requirement reflects our commitment to fostering informed and responsible citizens ready to meet the challenges of today’s society,” Executive Director Nathan Lukkes said in a news release.

The change comes amid a renewed focus on in the state. The South Dakota Department of Education will implement in 2025. The Legislature approved nearly $1 million this year to create a at Black Hills State to help prepare civics programming and curriculum statewide.

House Majority Leader Scott Odenbach, R-Spearfish, an advocate for more civics education, said he’s hopeful and enthusiastic about the regents’ change.

“The next generation in our universities will be leading our country one day,” he said. “Whatever major they have, they need to be able to take the reins of government.”

Civics proficiency will be defined as a student’s understanding of civic knowledge, values and skills, “enabling them to actively participate in civic life as informed and responsible citizens.”

The Board of Regents said key learning outcomes for the new requirement include:

• Civic knowledge: understanding the American political system, including foundational concepts such as the Constitutional framework, participatory democracy and the evolution of institutions.
• Civic values: articulating “core principles” of democracy, justice and equality, and applying them to modern and historic situations.
• Civic skills: communicating viewpoints on political issues, engaging in civil discourse and analyzing the impact of participation on democratic processes.

“The pendulum is moving in the right direction,” Odenbach said. “We’ll keep an eye on it. We’ll see if it’s enough.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seth Tupper for questions: info@southdakotasearchlight.com.

PIERRE — A $4 million proposal by South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem to help students enroll in private school and other forms of alternative instruction would undermine public education by diverting state money to unaccountable entities, opponents say.

Supporters of the plan say it would allow the state to start educational reform that’s gained momentum nationwide while lowering education costs, forcing public education to innovate and offering South Dakota students tailored education to best meet their learning needs.

Noem pitched the creation of education savings accounts, or ESAs, to lawmakers at her annual Tuesday in Pierre as a way to continue to “prioritize education” without cutting public education funds.

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“Good education starts in the home,” Noem said. “And parents should have the tools to choose what educational path is best for their kids.”

The program would cover about $3,000 per student annually to pay for a portion of private school tuition or curriculum for alternative education, Noem said. She hopes to expand the program eventually, but she might not be around to act on that plan. President-elect Donald Trump has as his nominee to lead the federal Department of Homeland Security, which means she could resign as governor as soon as late January, elevating Lt. Gov. Larry Rhoden to serve the rest of her term.

The program would be for “families who meet eligibility requirements,” according to , and Noem’s spokesman said the requirements will include being low-income. Sixteen other states already allow families to use .

The proposal comes as South Dakota sees one of the highest rises in alternative instruction in the nation. Across the state, alternatively enrolled students account for about 6.5% of the school-age population, based on public, non-public and alternative enrollment data from the state Department of Education. Alternative instruction includes homeschooling and private schools that are unaccredited or accredited by an entity other than the state, such as online, hybrid and microschools.

Lawmakers and education lobbyists in Pierre are eager to learn the details about Noem’s proposed legislation – especially how the state will ensure oversight and accountability, how students are chosen for the program and how it’ll fit into the state’s ongoing expenses.

“We have homework to do,” said incoming Senate President Pro Tempore Chris Karr, R-Sioux Falls, a former member of the legislative budgeting committee who supports the school choice movement. “We have to go look at this and figure out how to implement this responsibly.”

Sandra Waltman, director of public affairs for the South Dakota Education Association, said any entity that accepts public funding should be held to the same standards as public education, such as testing requirements and anti-discrimination policies. Alternative instruction students are currently not required to take standardized tests or present a portfolio to demonstrate educational progress. Private schools aren’t obligated to serve all students, so they can deny admission and educational services, Waltman added.

“When you’re taking those precious funds and diverting them from public schools, you’re undermining what public schools can do for students,” Waltman said. “There’s no assurance the money they’re investing in education is actually making a difference.”

Noem didn’t propose cutting public education to fund the program, but proposed a state funding increase to public education of 1.25%. The inflation rate this year is 3.2%, according to the .

Lower-than-expected sales tax collections primarily drive the leaner $7.29 billion budget Noem , which also includes cuts to some state departments and programs.

That signals to Rob Monson, executive director of School Administrators of South Dakota, that lawmakers will challenge the feasibility of ESAs.

“Some legislators will look at public education serving over 80% of students in the state and think, ‘If we have extra money, maybe we should obligate that to a program we’re already obligated to fund instead of funding a new program with ongoing dollars,’” Monson said.

Efforts to failed twice in the Legislature in recent years, largely due to questions about financial feasibility, said Brookings Republican Rep. Mellissa Heermann, a member of the House Education Committee.

South Dakota must be intentional with the “small pot” of tax revenue it has to work with, Heermann said. She added that there are already school programs in place to help address students’ mental health, behavioral and learning needs.

“I don’t know that vouchers would be as impactful as other programs,” Heermann said. “The timing doesn’t feel right to me to embark on something like this when we’re already trying to reduce costs as much as possible.”

Incoming House Majority Leader Scott Odenbach, R-Spearfish, said the proposal focuses on educating students, rather than supporting a public education system that’s weighed down by overhead costs and top-heavy administrative costs. An ESA program could force local districts to decentralize, adapt and focus more on students’ education, he said.

“No entity evolves until it’s forced,” Odenbach said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seth Tupper for questions: info@southdakotasearchlight.com. Follow South Dakota Searchlight on and .

SIOUX FALLS — A scholarship program that incentivizes graduates to stay and work in South Dakota has awarded 2,785 scholarships to 1,995 students in its first two years.

“Most all of them are going straight into the South Dakota workforce,” said Freedom Scholarship Coordinator Elli Haerter.

The board that oversees the program revealed data from its first two years during a Monday meeting at First Premier Bank in Sioux Falls.

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The scholarship was established by the South Dakota Legislature and supported by donations from entities like First Premier Bank, Avera, and Sanford Health. It offers scholarships based on financial need to students who attend South Dakota colleges and commit to remaining in the state for at least three years post-graduation.

Students must maintain a 2.0 grade point average to keep the $1,000 to 5,000 scholarships, which students can earn across multiple school years.

With exceptions, the program converts the scholarships into loans with a fixed interest rate of 4% for students who do not meet the program’s grade, graduation or post-graduation residency requirements.

In the program’s first two years, 182 scholarship recipients have graduated and found work in the state, Haerter told the Freedom Scholarship Board on Monday. Fifty-five of them found work in healthcare;40 are in the education sector.

The data shared Monday also included information on students who’ve failed to adhere to the scholarship requirements.

As of July, there were 143 scholarship recipients in that category. Specifically, 101 have been referred to a debt servicer for repayment, 15 have paid off the loans, five have had their debts forgiven and 22 have had their loans deferred. That’s typically because the student is pursuing tech school or an apprenticeship instead of college, Haerter noted.

Board Chair Dana Dykhouse said the state should not convert scholarships to loans for awardees who leave college to pursue a technical degree.

“I don’t think it should matter because, at the end of the day, we’re still getting a South Dakota worker,” he said. “And the state has a big need for workers.”

About $260,000 in scholarship dollars is now loans. Comparatively, around $10 million in scholarships has been awarded, according to Haerter. She and Dykhouse said those numbers are good, and will only improve as the program gets better at identifying students in need who are likely to succeed with the scholarship.

Survey results indicate nearly two-thirds of South Dakota public school educators are teaching the , but the number of respondents is lower than the last survey.

The essential understandings are a set of standards approved in 2018 for teaching students about Native American culture and history. “Oceti Sakowin” is the collective term for Lakota, Dakota and Nakota speaking Native Americans, many of whom live in South Dakota. There are nine tribal nations within the state.

About 62% of teachers are using the standards, based on a survey conducted by the state Department of Education in 2023 — a “remarkable increase” from 45% in 2021, said Fred Osborn, director of the Office of Indian Education, which is under the supervision of the state Department of Tribal Relations. He presented the survey results to the Indian Education Advisory Council earlier this month.

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Use of the standards is optional. The survey is used to understand how the standards are being implemented, and to help state officials encourage statewide adoption.

“The key is there’s improvement,” Osborn said. “It’s not perfect yet. There’s still work to be done, but we’ve come a long way from 45% of teachers. We hope that increases every year.”

Osborn added that the Office of Indian Education provided 10,000 copies of books on the Oceti Sakowin Essential Understandings through a Bush Foundation grant since the first survey, and sent out education packets for all grade levels last fall.

Fewer survey responses

Only about 385 educators took part in the 2023 survey, compared to 554 in 2021.

The 2023 survey also does not list how many public school districts were represented in the survey, whereas 2021’s survey had responses from 125 of the state’s 149 school districts. The school district identification question was changed between 2021 and 2023, said department spokesperson Nancy Van Der Weide. The department does not have any data to determine how many school districts were represented in the latest survey.

Removing the school district identification question allowed participants more anonymity, Van Der Weide told South Dakota Searchlight.

Neither Osborn nor any members of the council addressed the potential impact of fewer responses on the validity of the survey results. The survey was voluntary and available for one month, Van Der Weide said, with a notice placed in a newsletter sent to teachers throughout the state.

“Those educators who did respond provided informed recommendations,” Van Der Weide said in an emailed statement. “Some of those were educators who already incorporate a lot of OSEUs in their classrooms, while others were those who wanted to make them a part of their instruction and responded with ideas for tools that would help them to incorporate the standards into their classrooms.”

Advisory council member Sherry Johnson, tribal education director for the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate, helped shaped the standards and is participating in the standards update. She doubts the survey is an accurate representation of how the standards are being used in the state.

“We have pockets of the state that are doing well, but it’s not pervasive. It’s not required,” Johnson said. “If nothing else, there should be direct teacher training and a mandate to have this Indian education for all.”

Megan Deal, a second-grade teacher in Pierre and a member of the advisory council, said her school participated in a pilot program to help create lesson plans for standards at each grade level, but not all teachers incorporated the teachings into their classrooms.

“I don’t think they’re being taught at very many schools around the state at this time,” Deal said.

Council member Brian Wagner, tribal education director with the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, said he is concerned about the lack of “teeth” with the standards. Lawmakers have introduced bills to require use of the Oceti Sakowin Essential Understandings in classrooms, but those efforts have .

“Knowledge is power,” Wagner said. “If people don’t learn about history, then we risk repeating it, and unfortunately the history repeating would be the racism and the discrimination that many tribal members have experienced because people don’t understand tribal sovereignty or the treaties and the treaty rights.”

Impact expected from social studies standards

Though the standards are optional, said Secretary of South Dakota Department of Education Joseph Graves, the new social studies standards that will be implemented by 2025 will include references to the Oceti Sakowin Essential Understandings. Those will encourage more teachers to use the cultural standards, he said.

“We’re going to find more Native American history and culture being taught in the schools than ever before,” Graves said. “This is actually a move forward, not a move back. I think the social studies standards have gotten an unfair black eye, and I think once you see these in place you’ll find we’re teaching more of it rather than less and, I think, from an enlightened perspective.”

The started in 2021 because the department removed more than a dozen references to the Oceti Sakowin from a committee’s draft revision of social studies standards. After Gov. Kristi Noem formed a new work group and ordered the process to start over, the group produced standards that drew criticism for an emphasis on rote memorization over inquiry-based learning.

Graves added that the department plans to provide teachers with weekly materials to help them utilize the social studies standards and encourage them to use the Oceti Sakowin Essential Understandings.

According to the 2023 survey results, about 84% of educators said they were aware of the standards, and 77% said it is important to implement the standards in every classroom. Only 55% of teachers said they knew the concepts well enough to teach them, but that was an 18 point increase from 2021.

Nearly 40 administrators took part in their administrator survey in 2023, compared to 164 in 2021. The 2023 survey does not list how many public school districts were represented in the administrator survey.

Nearly 80% of administrators said it’s important to implement the standards in every classroom, but two-thirds of administrators indicated a lack of confidence to implement the standards in their schools, while 56% reported an uncertainty about how to integrate the standards and 44% cited a concern for the appropriateness of the content — an increase of 28 points from the 2021 survey.

The survey does not address how using the standards affects Native American student achievement, but Osborn said it would be “interesting to cross analyze” that.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seth Tupper for questions: info@southdakotasearchlight.com. Follow South Dakota Searchlight on and .

A bill requiring public schools to raise teacher pay with no promise of new state funding passed a legislative committee Wednesday in Pierre.

Nobody testified against , but several lobbyists representing the education community called it a work in progress.

“It is not a perfect bill, but a compromise that will hopefully help us attract new teachers and retain the current, experienced teachers, and bring quality education to the students in the state of South Dakota,” said Dianna Miller, a lobbyist for the Large School Group.

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The legislation would set a statewide minimum teacher salary of $45,000, beginning July 1, 2026. That minimum standard would increase each year by a percentage equal to the annual increase in state education funding approved by the Legislature and governor.

The bill would also require schools to raise their average teacher compensation — including pay and benefits — by percentages equal to annual increases in state funding. That requirement would begin with the 2025 fiscal year.

Gov. Kristi Noem, for not matching teacher pay increases with state aid increases, a 4% increase in education funding for the next state budget.

School districts that fail to meet the bill’s requirements could suffer a $500-per-teacher deduction in state education funding. But they could also request a waiver and work with the state School Finance Accountability Board to come into compliance.

Because the bill depends on future legislative decisions to increase state funding, a lobbyist for schools said it will spread the responsibility for teacher salaries beyond local school boards. Schools rely not only on state funding, but also on federal funding and local property tax revenue.

“Let’s make no mistake: This does create some shared responsibility now with the Legislature, because as we move forward, it’s going to be the responsibility of the Legislature to help fund education,” said Mitch Richter, lobbyist for the South Dakota United Schools Association.

Richter said some small, rural schools with stagnant or declining enrollment might be unable to meet the bill’s requirements. State funding for individual schools is tied to enrollment, so schools with declining enrollment may not receive the full benefit of annual increases in state aid. He said some of those rural schools might be forced to consolidate.

“We’ll have to come up with a plan for that, because those districts are going to need some help,” Richter said.

Miller said the bill could also cause difficulties for larger schools with declining enrollment, possibly causing them to use reserve funds to raise teacher pay.

According to the National Education Association, South Dakota ranks (out of 51, due to the inclusion of Washington, D.C.).

That’s despite the passage of a half-percentage-point increase in the state sales tax rate to raise teacher salaries. The legislation sent an infusion of money to schools that pushed South Dakota up a few places in national teacher pay rankings, but the state has slipped in the rankings since then. Last year, legislators and Gov. Noem from 4.5% to 4.2%.

Joe Graves, head of the state Department of Education, said this year’s bill is a continuation of the work that started in 2016. He called the bill a “rock solid step forward in ensuring enhanced compensation for our state’s teachers.”

Graves said the bill includes some provisions to help schools meet the requirements. For example, a provision that was amended into the bill Wednesday would allow school boards to roll some of their excess average compensation forward to future years.

“Districts, in other words, can exceed one year’s increase, in order to have already made progress on future increases,” Graves said.

The House Education Committee voted to send the bill to the House of Representatives. Rep. Phil Jensen, R-Rapid City, and Rep. Stephanie Sauder, R-Bryant, cast the two no votes.

Jensen referenced Rapid City school officials’ inability to win voter approval of bond financing for construction projects, which has made it difficult for the district to maintain its facilities.

“I’m afraid that this would just be disastrous for the Rapid City schools along with all the smaller schools,” Jensen said.

Sauder said the legislation would cause some schools to eliminate teaching positions and combine classrooms.

“It just doesn’t iron out the wrinkles that need to be taken care of before we move forward,” she said.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story has been altered since its original publication with language to clarify the effect of 2016 legislation on teacher pay.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seth Tupper for questions: info@southdakotasearchlight.com. Follow South Dakota Searchlight on and .

PIERRE — The state House Education Committee unanimously voted Wednesday at the Capitol to support Gov. Kristi Noem’s $6 million effort to train teachers in phonics literacy. now goes to the Joint Appropriations Committee.

The effort, spearheaded by the state Department of Education, provides extensive professional development to teachers in what the bill calls the “Science of Reading.” It extends to training for public school, private school and tribal teachers.

The legislative ask is a continuation of the department’s literacy program that started in 2023 and was paid for by federal COVID relief funds. Those funds expire by September. The $6 million would continue the program for the next four years and will offer training to all elementary schools and teachers in the state.

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“In four years, when the money runs out, we’re hoping and believe that the need for the money will as well,” Department of Education Secretary Joseph Graves told lawmakers.

Half of all South Dakota students aren’t proficient in English Language Arts exams, according to . According to the , 68% of South Dakota fourth graders aren’t proficient in reading – an increase of four percentage points since 2021.

Early literacy skills are closely linked to reading achievement throughout school and adulthood, and experts argue reading could be the most important skill needed for success as an adult, . People who can’t read are less likely than others to vote, read the news or be stably employed.

The bill was widely supported by education lobbyists and did not have any opponent testimony.

The bill follows a global debate – often called the “reading wars” – about how best to teach children to read. One side advocates for an emphasis on phonics, which is understanding the relationship between sounds and letters, while the other side prefers a “whole language” approach that puts a stronger emphasis on understanding meaning, with some phonics mixed in.

Graves called whole language teaching a “vague” and “loosey-goosey” method based on the idea that children will naturally learn to read. argue that phonics lessons are boring, prevent children from learning to love reading and distract from the ability to understand meaning in text.

“Proficiency rates in literacy fell (across the nation), and it quickly became clear that elementary schools filled with whole language teaching resulted in Johnny not being able to read,” Graves told lawmakers.

The Science of Reading program comes from “gold standard research” and “huge statistical meta-analyses” pointing to five foundational components of literacy education, Graves said: phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension.

Most of South Dakota’s teachers who were trained in phonics before “whole language” and “balanced literacy” was the standard have retired.

Jennifer Macziewski, a first grade teacher in Rapid City, received Science of Reading training three years ago through a state grant. The training was a two year course, so she just started implementing the instruction for her classroom this year.

Macziewski has been teaching for 13 years, she told South Dakota Searchlight after the committee meeting. About 75% of her students typically finished the school year having reached the literacy proficiency benchmark prior to the Science of Reading instruction. About 40% reached that benchmark by the end of the first semester.

She credits that anticipated success to the change in teaching.

“That’ll open a lot of doors for them,” Macziewki said. “Typically it would take them longer to learn to read, but I already have some kids who’ve hit the third grade benchmark. They’re going to start reading to learn instead of learning to read now, which will free up resources for teachers to help students who haven’t met those benchmarks yet.”

The new instruction is explicit and systematic and “opens up the code of reading” to children so they can decipher words “as long as they can memorize that secret code.”

“Instead of students having to learn thousands of words by memorizing them, they just have to memorize 100 or so unique words,” Macziewki said. “There’s an improvement in their writing too because they better understand the language, are able to break apart sounds and break down the words.”

English Language Arts standards will be up for review across the state beginning in 2024. Students are currently tested in English Language Arts standards in third through eighth grade, and in 11th grade.

The South Dakota Board of Regents plans to focus on the Science of Reading in teacher preparation programs across the state as well, Graves said, adding that if the state is going to improve its reading proficiency scores, then this type of support is needed.

“As we do this and as we continue to offer the training to teachers, we’re convinced the data will quickly demonstrate SOR’s efficacy,” Graves said. “Teachers in schools which adopt it will show increasing reading proficiency rates while those who do not will be left behind and thereby nudged into pursuing this effective program.”

Two other education bills died in the House committee on Wednesday.

One bill would have established a grant program for 30 new South Dakota teachers as a way to incentivize graduating students to stay in-state or encourage out-of-state educators to move to South Dakota.

The second bill would have established qualifications for future members of the Board of Education Standards, with a majority of the seven-member board having a professional background in education.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seth Tupper for questions: info@southdakotasearchlight.com. Follow South Dakota Searchlight on and .

A bill that would require high school juniors to take the ACT college entrance exam instead of a separate state assessment was tabled by the state House Education Committee on Friday at the Capitol in Pierre.

While a majority of testifiers supported , including the Department of Education, the bill’s prime sponsor Rep. Tony Venhuizen, R-Sioux Falls, recommended tabling it. That’s because Secretary of Education Joseph Graves said the department plans to switch to the ACT by the 2025-2026 school year anyway.

“I’m not a person who sees the need to put things into law unnecessarily” Venhuizen said. “… I just want to see this happen, and it sounds like it’s going to.”

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One person testified against the bill, saying it would degrade parents’ ability to make educational decisions for their children.

Education officials within state government have talked about making the switch to the ACT from the Smarter Balanced assessment for years, Venhuizen told legislators. That’s because the switch would reduce the number of tests most high school juniors take, would save families money if they want to send their children to college — since the state would be footing the bill — and would put more weight behind the students’ scores.

The ACT would be the best choice for a replacement test, Graves told lawmakers.

“Students don’t find any value in (the Smarter Balanced test),” Graves said. “Because they have no use for it – for the most part – they tend not to take the test seriously. This is a common complaint registered by high school principals and teachers. Because the test results don’t have any other use, then the value is low. We’re taking a test we use for accountability and that’s it.”

About 58% of South Dakota students take the ACT before graduating, since most colleges and universities require scores in the admission process and for scholarship applications.

South Dakota students’ average ACT score in 2023, but it remains higher than the national average. Testers earned an average composite score of 21.1 out of 36. Switching to the ACT for all 11th graders will likely lower the state’s score.

Some other states, like Nebraska and Montana, require 11th graders to take the ACT. States where 100% of 2023 high school graduates had taken the test had average scores .

ACT participation rates . During the 2022-2023 school year, 77% of white students took the ACT, 7% of Native American students took it and 5% of Hispanic students took it.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seth Tupper for questions: info@southdakotasearchlight.com. Follow South Dakota Searchlight on and .

Student absenteeism is one of the biggest problems facing South Dakota public education, said state Secretary of Education Joseph Graves.

Chronic absenteeism among South Dakota students jumped from 14% during the 2018-2019 school year to 21% during the 2022-2023 school year. That increase is more pronounced among Native American students, whose chronic absenteeism rates jumped from 31% to 54% in the same timeframe.

Chronic absenteeism is when a student misses 10% or more days of school within the school year.

Attendance and academic performance are directly correlated.

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“School is how we bring kids to understand their role in the world. You can’t educate kids who aren’t there,” Graves told South Dakota Searchlight. “The key to the American Dream is a great education. If you get a great education, you can go anywhere in life.”

The state Department of Education is handing out millions of dollars in grants to school districts over the next three years to address student absenteeism through research-based programs.

‘Doesn’t feel right’: Some schools with significant Native American representation miss out on grants

The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated absenteeism in school districts across South Dakota.

“The pandemic put education as a lower priority over other issues,” Graves said. “That sunk in with a lot of people, and we saw a definite decline in attendance rates of students.”

Recovery is taking longer than expected — both in South Dakota and nationally, Graves said. Some demographic groups are faring worse than others — including Native American children, Hispanic or Latino children, and economically disadvantaged children.

Sioux Falls will be awarded $1.5 million over the next three years to address absenteeism. The district was one of nine to receive awards, including Pierre, Wilmot, Waubay, Sisseton, Watertown, Mitchell, Leola and Spearfish — all at varying amounts.

Out of the school districts selected, Sisseton has the highest representation of Native American students at 54% of its student body, according to . Waubay and Wilmot’s student bodies are 34% and 22% Native American. All of the other schools receiving grants have Native American student populations lower than 20%. School districts that serve majority Native American student bodies, such as Oglala Lakota County, Todd County and White River, were not awarded the grants. 

Superintendent Roberta Bizardie of the Todd County School District said the district applied and was surprised when it was not awarded a grant. Native American students make up 94% of the student body, and the school district has a chronic absenteeism rate of 40%.

“I just didn’t feel right,” Bizardie said when she saw which schools were awarded grants.

There are three social workers serving the school district’s 2,000 children — many of whom are economically disadvantaged. The application planned to use money to hire more social workers and attendance liaisons dedicated to absenteeism issues.

Since the district was not awarded a grant, Bizardie plans to work with the Rosebud Sioux Tribe’s truancy department to reach out to families. They’ll continue using their social workers, sending daily calls to parents when their child isn’t in school, creating more family engagement events and encouraging attendance with incentives for students.

A representative from the Department of Education told the district that the reason it did not receive a grant was because some of the line-item expenses listed in the budget weren’t “clearly listed in our narrative,” Bizardie said.

While Native American students, on average, have higher chronic absenteeism rates and lower academic achievement rates than other demographic groups, it goes hand in hand with socioeconomic status, Graves said.

Out of the demographic groups, low socioeconomic status is the most important to address, he added.

Graves said Native American education is seeing a “small renaissance” through private programming closely connected with culture and language. He plans to keep an eye on those programs.

“What I think public schools need to do, and what I’m hoping they’ll do, is that they’ll watch that renaissance of private education and think about what we can do to adapt and serve students who attend public education,” Graves said.

Districts spend grants on transportation, mentoring & engagement

The student absenteeism grant effort is funded through the federal Bipartisan Safer Communities Act of 2022. The schools will report on progress at the end of each school year until the grant is finished.

The awarded districts are addressing absenteeism differently, though all will spend some of the money on transportation, mentoring or engagement activities to entice students to attend school.

Sioux Falls will target elementary and middle schools with predominantly economically disadvantaged students. Working with younger children will “catch them at an early age” before a student loses too much ground or incentive to attend school, said Assistant Superintendent James Nold.

“A significant way out of poverty is through education,” Nold said. “We can encourage attendance, have staff and programs in place all to give a meaningful education and pull children out of poverty. Education hits on so many fronts; it’s so important to have a child in school on a daily basis.”

Attendance liaisons focus on relationships, mentoring

The most popular use of the grant funds is hiring an attendance liaison or advocate to build connections with students and families who struggle with attendance.

In Sisseton, the school district hired Michelle Greseth to implement the national intervention program “Check and Connect,” which focuses on relationship building between a mentor and a student. During the 2021-2022 school year, 26% of Sisseton high school students were chronically absent. So far during the 2023-2024 school year — after implementing the program and an attendance awareness campaign for students and families — 11% of high school students are chronically absent.

Greseth or other trained staff plan to work with students and families for a minimum of two years, reviewing data and educational progress, behaviors, attendance and intervention efforts.

Greseth said she’s already seeing progress in the nearly dozen middle school and high school students she began meeting weekly during the fall semester.

“If you don’t have the relationship then the data isn’t that meaningful because they’re not willing to buy in — you really want to know the kid and what drives them and motivates them,” Greseth said. “They won’t care about how much you know until they know how much you care.”

Sioux Falls hired six liaisons committed to student attendance and one recovery teacher to help middle school students who have fallen behind in their academics. Wilmot School District Superintendent Larry Hulscher said about 10% of its students are chronically absent.

Hiring just one attendance advocate for the small school district will help alleviate the burden on already overworked staff, Hulscher said. Principals, teachers and school resource officers across the state have attempted to build those attendance relationships in years past.

“Quite honestly, we haven’t been able to dedicate much time to that as the other responsibilities that come with those jobs,” Hulscher said. “This person can dedicate all of their time to this.”

Watertown plans to hire three family support specialists. Watertown’s chronic absenteeism rate has hovered around 20% over the last three years, said Superintendent Jeff Danielsen.

“The principal represents authority and the SRO represents authority,” Danielsen said, using the abbreviation for “school resource officers,” the law enforcement officers present in some schools. “This position is for someone who won’t have those titles; someone who can catch more flies with honey than vinegar.”

Enhancing extracurricular activities

Getting students involved in at least one extracurricular activity they’re passionate about — sports, theater, debate, student government — will help carry them through school and to graduation, Graves said.

“Almost nobody liked every subject in school, but almost everybody got through it even though they didn’t like them,” Graves said. “Like a student who isn’t fond of English but has to pass the class because he loves football and can’t play otherwise. That engagement is huge. If you’re not engaging kids, you’re missing a large part of the boat.”

Graves served as the Mitchell superintendent before joining Gov. Kristi Noem’s administration.

The Mitchell School District plans to hire an attendance liaison and social worker like other awarded schools, but Superintendent Joe Childs also plans to build a “robust offering” of extracurriculars in the district’s “Kernel Club,” which is an after-school program for children transitioning from elementary school to middle school. The school district has an 18% chronic absenteeism rate.

Kernel Club activities are currently limited to two sports: volleyball and basketball. Childs plans to expand offerings to cover more sports, performing arts and visual arts opportunities.

Graves hopes school districts across the state will continue to invest in Career and Technical Education and Jobs for America’s Graduates programs, which have also led to higher attendance rates and student participation rates.

The goal, Graves said, is to course-correct and bring statewide chronic absenteeism and general absenteeism rates back down to pre-pandemic numbers.

The hope for Sioux Falls, Nold said, is that the programs implemented by the district are “so effective that we can’t do without them in three years.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seth Tupper for questions: info@southdakotasearchlight.com. Follow South Dakota Searchlight on and .

Inflation, turnover, minimal increases in state aid to education, and pay raises absorbed by non-teaching staff: Those are the reasons for South Dakota’s lagging teacher pay, according to education experts and school officials.

The Legislature expected to into public K-12 education in the first year following 2016’s historic half-percent state sales tax increase. The tax hike was primarily meant to boost the state’s last-in-the-nation ranking for average teacher pay.

Expectation soon gave way to disappointment.

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South Dakota rose to 47th in the nation for teacher pay thanks to the 2016 influx of funding, but has since fallen back to 49th, collected by the National Education Association. South Dakota’s , about $51,000, ranks higher than only West Virginia and Mississippi (the rankings go to 51 because of the inclusion of the District of Columbia).

The Legislature adopted minimal increases in state aid to education in years immediately following the tax increase — as low as a 0.3% increase in one year. Then, last winter, lawmakers reduced the state sales tax from 4.5% to 4.2% until 2027.

Wider socioeconomic factors have also influenced the fall backward. The teaching profession has suffered massive turnover, driven by the COVID-19 pandemic and low pay. School districts have struggled to hire other positions — bus drivers, counselors and custodians — forcing the districts to choose between raises for teachers or other employees.

Inflation rates that rose to 5% and 8% , respectively, only widened the gap — with school districts paying more in utilities, gas and other overhead costs.

Gov. Kristi Noem addressed lagging salary increases in her budget address earlier this month, for the slow growth and proposing a 4% boost in state education funding. The state Department of Education is actively working on to address the issue, she said without offering further specifics.

The Legislature’s decision to initially slow state aid increases after 2016 has been detrimental to the initiative’s success, said Jacqueline Sly, a former House of Representatives Education Committee chair from Rapid City who co-chaired the Blue Ribbon Task Force that proposed the tax-increase legislation.

Teacher salary projections made by the task force depended on 3% or higher annual increases in state aid.

“That got us off track right away,” Sly said. “That piece of it was really vital initially, because then we moved up on the ranking and then went back down and are at the bottom again.”

The Legislature tightened its belt after the 2016 sales tax increase in response to in 2017. That year saw a 0.3% increase in state aid to education. The following year was also a tight budget year, but an  pushed the increase to 1%. Education funding received a during the 2019 legislative session and 2% in 2020.

If there aren’t consistent increases, Sly said, the state will never make headway.

Demystifying state aid and teacher pay

The Blue Ribbon Task Force convinced the Legislature to revamp the state school funding formula, basing it on a statewide target for average teacher salary to prioritize the role of teachers in state funding. That target was set at $48,500 in 2016, and has increased each year by a percentage adopted by the Legislature.

The statewide average teacher salary has never reached those targets.

That’s because the state’s “target teacher salary” isn’t actually the state’s goal for average teacher pay. In reality, it’s a basis for the state’s public education funding formula. Before the 2016 legislation, the formula was based on a per-student allocation.

Funding determined by the “target teacher salary” formula update goes not just toward teacher salaries, but also toward overhead costs and salaries for other school workers — bus drivers, preschool teachers, librarians, administrators, custodians, food service workers and counselors. Schools also receive funding from their own local property taxes.

“There’s this misbelief that the target teacher salary means every district in the state should be paying that salary on average. That’s not the intention of that number,” said Rob Monson, executive director of the School Administrators of South Dakota. “That’s what is set to gather the dollars needed to fund the K-12 system.”

That’s not to say the “target” that now defines overall school funding isn’t also the average salary goal sought by educators. The South Dakota Education Association President Loren Paul said the “target teacher salary” is what educators are going after.

Currently, the statewide average teacher salary is far short of the current target of $59,659. Noem for the coming legislative session, which, if approved, will increase the target to $62,045.

“Four percent is good,” Paul said. “With the shortage of educators, we could always use a little bit more. We are gaining on states, but we haven’t overtaken anybody yet. A little more would help. Five percent would be great.”

Accountability standards are ‘outdated’

The 2016 legislation sent 63% of the tax increase to public schools, 34% to property tax relief and 3% to raise instructor pay at the state’s technical colleges. Of the money that went to public schools, 85% had to be used to increase teacher salaries in that first year.

The legislation did not mandate that future increases in state aid would go to teachers. But the legislation did create a School Finance Accountability Board to track if state aid increases went toward teacher salaries.

Based on the law, school districts only have to compensate their teachers, on average, more than they did in 2017 — meaning if a school district failed to increase its average teacher compensation for nearly seven years since then, it . Compensation, in contrast to pay alone, includes the monetary value of benefits, such as health care coverage.

The Rapid City School District’s average teacher pay, for example, increased 2.5% between fiscal years 2017 and 2023. Its average teacher compensation has increased just over 7%. That put the district below the target salary goal, but nonetheless kept it out of the accountability board’s crosshairs.

If consistent improvement was the goal, Paul said, defining success as better than 2017 has become an inadequate metric.

That’s “outdated,” Paul said. The organization is “anxiously awaiting” the state Department of Education’s new accountability measures.

The teacher-pay law was , but was extended through June 2024 . Sly said the task force’s intention was to have legislators reevaluate and reset the accountability measure in 2022, not simply extend it.

The South Dakota Education Association, which Paul serves as president, had asked legislators to extend the board’s authority.

After the state turned down federal funding for summertime child food vouchers, the South Dakota Department of Education is seeking sponsors for another program that provides summer meals to needy children.

Sponsors feed kids who qualify for free or reduced price lunch during the school year, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture reimburses sponsors. , sponsorships are available for Bennett, Bon Homme, Buffalo, Charles Mix, Custer, Gregory, McCook, Meade, Oglala Lakota, and Stanley counties.

Potential sponsors must by Feb. 1 to be considered.

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The ask comes after South Dakota’s decision not to deliver to more than 60,000 kids in the summer of 2023.

That money was available through a separate USDA program called Pandemic Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT), launched during the pandemic and made permanent this year.

South Dakota was to opt out.

Unlike the summer food program now seeking brick-and-mortar hosts for meals, the summer EBT doesn’t tie food aid to location. Instead, it offers EBT cards worth $40 per child per month to eligible families through the summer, which can be used to buy , but not hot foods.

The state signed on for pandemic EBT in 2020 and 2021, but not in 2022 or 2023.

Gov. Kristi Noem’s spokesperson, Ian Fury, that because of “South Dakota’s record low unemployment rate, our robust existing food programs, and the administrative burden associated with running this program, we declined these particular federal dollars.”

The site-based summer food program is not meant to be the only way to provide meals to kids when school’s out, said Nancy Van Der Weide, spokesperson for the Department of Education.

“It is a stop-gap to help those kids who fall through the cracks — the ones who, for whatever reason, are not able to access food via SNAP,” she said via email, referring to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

Offering food, as opposed to money for food, “ensures that the meals these children eat are balanced and nutritious, and that meals are available throughout the month rather than until the money runs out.”

“Doing it this way also ensures that money is used efficiently for food that goes to children first. Many schools also operate summer feeding programs from their buildings to achieve the same ends.”

Critics: Denying funds indefensible

The programs are not an either/or proposition, however. The state could take advantage of both if it chose to. While the pandemic EBT program is over and the deadline for the first 2024 summer EBT is fast approaching, says that states could opt in to the program in future years.

The South Dakota arm of the nonprofit group Bread for the World has urged state residents to ask Gov. Noem and Education Secretary Joe Graves to accept the funds for next summer.

The site-based summer food program is helpful but doesn’t touch all South Dakotans, the organization says, particularly those unable to access meal sites.

“Neither program by itself is enough to cover a child’s nutritional needs,” . “Kids need both.”

Cathy Brechtelsbauer, Bread for the World South Dakota’s leader, cited that says just 5.5% of the children who receive free or reduced price school lunch are fed through site-based programs.

Turning away funding is indefensible, according to Brechtelsbauer.

“How can they turn down food for kids who are hungry?” she said.

She was among the signatories of a Nov. 20 letter urging the state to reverse course on the EBT funds. The other name on the letter was Xanna Burg, Director of South Dakota Kids Count.

“South Dakota has not yet committed for 2024,” the letter reads. “There is still time to commit so that school-age children will not miss out on critical nutrition support during the hungriest time of the year.”

Thirty-nine other organizations are listed on the letter. Among them: Augustana University, the American Heart Association, Sioux Falls Thrive, the Boys and Girls Club of Standing Rock, South Dakota Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and the Episcopal Diocese of South Dakota.

Fury, the governor’s spokesman, told South Dakota Searchlight via text on Thursday that he stands by the administration’s earlier explanation for declining the federal funds.

Brechtelsbauer called the reference to federal requirements and administrative burdens a smokescreen.

“Forty-three other states did this, so we could figure out how to do it in South Dakota,” Brechtelsbauer said. “If we can’t, we’ve got a much bigger problem.”

School lunch debate looms for 2024 session

The question of who ought to pay to feed hungry kids has become a recurring one for lawmakers and their communities in recent years.

Earlier this week, the Sioux Falls School District announced that it had secured a donor to cover unpaid balances for 1,800 students whose parents hadn’t kept up with school lunch payments. that the debt from unpaid lunch accounts has accrued at about $3,000 a day. Without the donor, the district could have ended the year with as much as $500,000 in school lunch debt.

Moving forward, kids whose lunch accounts fall $20 in the red will be served a sack lunch. A $75 negative balance will cut off meals altogether.

State Rep. Kadyn Wittman, D-Sioux Falls, who brought a bill in the 2023 session that would have offered free school lunch to all children regardless of income, took to X (formerly Twitter) to express her consternation over news of a private donor paying off lunch debt.

“That should be the government’s responsibility,” . “It is cruel and, frankly, unbelievable that South Dakota kids can go hungry during the day if their parents fall behind on payments.”

Her bill to provide free school lunch for all failed in the House Education Committee. The Department of Education opposed the bill.

Wittman plans to introduce a “scaled back” version of the bill in the 2024 session.

“Last year’s bill was way too optimistic. I realize that South Dakota is not ready to offer free school lunches,” Wittman said.

Rather than cover school lunch for all, her new proposal would essentially offer free meals to students who currently qualify for reduced price lunches by reimbursing schools for the reduced price charges. Families whose incomes are between 135% and 185% of the federal poverty line qualify for reduced price lunch; those with incomes lower than 135% of the poverty line qualify for free lunch.

Wittman is hopeful that a coalition of supporters will help move her fellow lawmakers to support the bill, which is estimated to cost $578,916 annually – millions less than last year’s proposal.

According to a pre-session information sheet on the bill, its cosponsors will include Tyler Tordsen, R-Sioux Falls, Sen. Liz Larson, D-Sioux Falls, and Sen. Mike Rohl, R-Aberdeen.

At least one other school lunch proposal will not appear before lawmakers in 2024, however.

Rep. Fred Deutsch, R-Florence, had signaled plans to introduce a bill, , that would have paid for lunch for K-8 students who qualify for free or reduced price lunch.

Deutsch has since decided not to pursue the bill. The lawmaker told South Dakota Searchlight that concerns about a leaner budget, in her weekly column in late October, have convinced him to table the proposal for now.

“Given our budget tightness, I thought this was probably not the year to bring it,” Deutsch said.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seth Tupper for questions: info@southdakotasearchlight.com. Follow South Dakota Searchlight on and .

South Dakota doesn’t invest much state money in child care — unlike — and existing subsidies for child care are underutilized.

Unless that changes, South Dakota will fall behind in its workforce and economic development, according to legislators, child care providers, and economic leaders who participated in a recent .

The state matches around $800,000 a year (the minimum requirement) to receive federal dollars for low-income child care subsidies, and the state used millions of dollars in federal COVID relief for child care provider grants over the last few years. The latest state effort, using more COVID relief money, is another to find “innovative solutions” to address child care’s accessibility and affordability issues in the state.

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But that federal money is running out, and the state doesn’t have a plan to replace it. Even then, providers say the money didn’t fix underlying problems.

While the urgency and the need for collaboration between the public and private sector was front and center at the SDPB panel, the need for more state involvement was also loud and clear.

Something needs to change, said President of the South Dakota Chamber of Commerce and Industry David Owen.

“Inflation coming out of COVID is a threat and that’s a domino this economy can’t afford,” Owen said. “If we don’t figure something out, we’re going to go from child care being marginal and on the edges to ceasing to exist. This needs to be addressed.”

SD’s current subsidy program is ‘perpetuating the problem’

Of the roughly 29,000 South Dakota children who qualify for subsidized child care, only 1,800 receive assistance — about 7%.

That’s “abysmal,” Early Learner South Dakota Executive Director Kayla Klein told South Dakota Searchlight.

Klein says there are two main reasons for the poor subsidy participation rate: paperwork and reimbursement rates.

The first step to increasing the low participation rate of children in the child care subsidy program is to address regulations that disqualify otherwise low-income families from the program. Current regulations often disqualify people who need subsidized child care the most, Klein said, such as single parents, teen parents and homeless families.

Nicole Weiss, early learning director for the YMCA in Rapid City, explained that of the roughly 50 people in the organization’s child care programs for homeless families and children with teen parents, only three receive subsidized child care.

That’s because regulations require that single parents pursue child support payments before they qualify for assistance — though some mothers might not want to because they don’t know who the child’s father is to collect payment, they may not want to push for child support because of an abusive relationship, or other factors. Teen parents especially are less likely to pursue child support, .

The child care subsidy program also requires parents work or attend school a certain amount of hours, Klein said. In the case of a homeless parent searching for work, that can be difficult. Homeless parents sometimes do not have the necessary documents needed for the program application, either.

If homeless parents can’t put their children in care so they can search for work, they can’t afford housing or escape poverty, Klein said.

“It’s like the system is perpetuating the problem,” Klein said.

Those fixes can be made administratively, Klein said, but they won’t fix everything.

Child care providers lose money when accepting state subsidies

The second reason participation rates are so low in the state is because child care providers lose money when they accept state subsidies, Klein said.

About 60% of child care providers in South Dakota are unregulated by the state, which means those providers don’t have access to subsidy dollars. Even then, state-licensed providers can opt out of the subsidy program.

Providers can choose to be unregulated for a variety of reasons — facility requirements that are difficult to achieve in an in-home setting, they don’t want state involvement, or there’s no financial incentive. The latter is what Klein hopes to change.

“People tend to want paying parents and don’t want to deal with subsidies because there are so many flaws in the system,” she said.

State subsidies typically do not cover a child’s entire tuition. Providers can either accept that they’ll lose money by taking on the child, or they can require the family to pay the remaining balance after the subsidy is paid.

If providers try to have the family pay a co-pay, they risk not getting fully paid — causing a headache for the provider, a fight with the family, and eventually leading to the child being kicked out of the facility.

“Because we know that the parent is on child care assistance because they can’t afford it, why would I anticipate they’re able to afford anything more than the state is subsidizing?” Klein added.

A lag time in being paid by the state also contributes to providers being hesitant to accept subsidies, she said.

Additionally, the state reimburses providers on an hourly basis, but most families don’t keep their children in day care for the entire time the provider is open. If parents who are eligible for a subsidy pick up their child early, the provider doesn’t get the full day’s amount, even though the spot is reserved for a full day.

Basing child care subsidy rates on true cost, not market rates

Sen. Tim Reed, R-Brookings, is spearheading the child care discussion in the supermajority Republican Legislature. He says there is a drive within his caucus to address the issue in the coming session, which begins in January.

Reed’s concern, as the CEO of the Brookings Economic Development Corporation, is that South Dakota isn’t investing in its own workforce, he told South Dakota Searchlight. Research shows that early learning is essential to a person’s development.

“I’m afraid other states will get ahead of us and have a better educated workforce,” Reed said of other states’ support for child care.

New Mexico approved a constitutional amendment devoting a portion of the state’s Land Grant Permanent Fund — fees the state collects from oil and gas development on public land — to early education and child care, generating an estimated $150 million a year for early childhood programs. Since August, the state has made for all families making up to 400% of the federal poverty level, or $120,000 for a family of four.

The Washington Supreme Court upheld a (passed in 2021) that will pay for early education, child care and public school construction projects. The state from the tax in its first year.

And Minnesota dealing with child care improvements, including a continuation of previous grant programs for child care workforce programs funded through federal COVID relief money and creating the new Department of Children, Youth and Families.

Vermont for child care providers and expanded low income child care assistance subsidies to 575% of the federal poverty level ($172,500 for a family of four). New York similarly expanded its low income child care subsidies to 300% of the federal poverty level ($90,000 for a family of four).

Reed’s focus is to increase provider reimbursement rates for child care subsidies.

Child care subsidies for low income families at or below 209% of the federal poverty level ($62,700 for a family of four) are reimbursed to providers through a regional market rate. The issue with that, Reed said, is that the public already recognizes that child care providers aren’t charging enough to properly pay their employees and keep their businesses afloat.

Instead, he said the state should base its subsidy reimbursements on the “true cost” of doing business, thereby increasing the state funds to providers to more accurately reflect how providers should be paid. He likened the reimbursement model to how nursing homes are currently reimbursed at 100% for Medicaid residents — a decision the Legislature made last session.

“We at least have to get to the true cost,” Reed told South Dakota Searchlight. “Even at that point we’re not necessarily giving enough money to pay the employees enough.”

Klein hopes increasing subsidy rates will incentivize more providers to register with the state — which would then hopefully lead to a higher subsidy participation rate in the state — but it won’t immediately address the issue since subsidies only account for a fraction of the need.

Mike Bockorny, CEO of the Aberdeen Development Corporation, said during the panel discussion that he hopes something is done in the next year.

“The answer can’t be at the end of this legislative session, ‘We don’t have the money,’” Bockorny said. “We can’t not do anything. That’s not going to work. I think the people who are saying ‘Oh, this is going to cost a lot of money’ are looking at it wrong. It’s not a cost. This is an investment.”

Finding more data and evaluating funding options

Reed was one of six legislators who traveled to Nashville this summer for the Hunt Institute’s Early Childhood Leadership Summit. It was there he realized how much other states contribute to child care.

The takeaway from the event for Rep. Linda Duba, D-Sioux Falls, is that South Dakota needs an evaluation of what the state is already doing.

“What are the sources of funding? Where are they coming from? Who administers them? Are they strictly federal pass-through dollars? What are they and how many families are we leaving behind?” Duba said about the state involvement.

The group plans to present a proposal to Gov. Kristi Noem this year on how to partner with the Hunt Institute to analyze South Dakota. Noem campaigned on child care accessibility and affordability last year.

Legislators are determined to use grants or business donations to pay for the analysis, so it won’t be taxpayer-funded.

“A lot of this hinges on getting a thumbs-up from the governor,” Duba said, “but I think what we’ve proposed is a good starting point. We don’t know what we don’t know. Emotions are fine, but data is what drives good policy decisions.”

Beyond subsidies: What about the 60%?

Duba is doubtful increasing subsidy reimbursement rates will increase the number of state licensed providers.

“With licensing and regulation comes other things an in-home provider needs to do,” Duba said, referencing facility requirements, such as square footage and bathroom requirements. “I understand encouraging providers to become licensed and I’m not pooh-poohing that, but is that an immediate fix? Not necessarily.”

That’s where the state and private sector can play a role, Duba said. Businesses can make child care part of a benefits package for employees, like Black Hills Energy in Rapid City, which partnered with Rapid City YMCA to offer child care.

Faced with 21 staff openings, the YMCA has decided to temporarily close three classrooms and cut 10 positions while trying to hire the other 11. The organization has several private partnerships, and it offers benefits, substantial paid time off and retirement packages.

But it’s not enough, said YMCA Learning Director Nicole Weiss, calling for more state involvement to help boost pay.

“If you can’t buy your groceries, you’re not looking at what your benefits are,” she said.

It’s the same issue in Sioux Falls at Embe, which serves up to 400 children.

“Our starting wage is higher than average, but it’s not enough,” said Brandon Hanson, executive director of child care and school age care at Embe. “On a daily basis, we are choosing between pushing our families into poverty or pushing our employees into poverty.”

As an independent, in-home child care provider in Sioux Falls, Karen Rieck said she makes about $7 an hour after factoring in the other expenses and the hours she works off the clock. She has to work a second job.

The state has to help “take the financial burden” off of child care providers to properly support the economic ecosystem, Weiss said.

“We have to do something right now,” she said. “In a year or two years we’re not going to have employees, because we won’t have child care. The time is now.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seth Tupper for questions: info@southdakotasearchlight.com. Follow South Dakota Searchlight on and .

Child care is a workforce issue. Providers, business professionals and experts have been saying that for years.

On Thursday, the Governor’s Office of Economic Development and the Department of Social Services announced a $3 million grant program to expand child care in the state.

The , which uses federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) dollars, will be awarded to communities that bring several entities together — providers, economic development organizations and governments — to present innovative solutions to child care problems, said Joe Fiala, partner relations director for GOED.

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“Child care impacts business, so it makes sense that we would at least be involved to some extent,” Fiala told child care providers and experts at the Early Learner Summit in Brookings on Thursday.

States have to obligate or commit ARPA dollars to specific projects by the end of 2024, or the money will be returned to the federal government.

The deadline for communities to apply for the new grant program is Oct. 27. Awardees will be notified the first week of November.

Unaffordable and inaccessible child care has been widely covered by state and national media in the past couple of years. The issue gained attention during Gov. Kristi Noem’s reelection campaign and was a topic of discussion during the 2023 legislative session. The city of Sioux Falls released a this summer highlighting the issue at a local level.

Planning grants will be awarded up to $50,000, which can cover consultant costs, survey and data costs or providing stipends to volunteers, Fiala said. Implementation grants will be awarded up to $500,000.

“Three million dollars is a nice pool of money and we’re excited for that,” Fiala said, “but I think it will go relatively quickly once we start approving grants. When you think about the whole state, that’s probably a drop in the bucket compared to what’s needed.”

Examples of ideas across the state include the development of an early childhood and youth development office in Sioux Falls, which was one of several recommendations from the Sioux Falls Child Care Collaborative report, and Madison’s new tax increment financing (TIF) district that will help fund a child care center in that city. It has a population of over 6,000 but only has in-home child care operations.

TIF districts provide upfront financing for public improvements and then capture the new and higher property taxes generated by a development project to pay off the financing.

“If we view child care as basic infrastructure,” said Brooke Rollag, executive director of the Lake Area Improvement Corporation, “just like roads and streets or any other tool we use to get to work, then we can utilize a TIF for this project as well.”

There should be several entities engaged in applying for each grant, Fiala said, such as local economic development organizations, community coalitions, local governments, businesses, school districts, nonprofit organizations and existing child care providers.

“I do not want 25 applications from Sioux Falls,” Fiala said. “That’s not going to work. I need Sioux Falls to come together tightly and maybe come up with only three or four.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seth Tupper for questions: info@southdakotasearchlight.com. Follow South Dakota Searchlight on and .

Schools are lagging the state’s target pay for teachers, and the gap is growing, according to data shared with a state board in Pierre.

That’s despite the 2016 Legislature’s efforts to address the problem by increasing the state’s sales tax by half a percentage point. This year, the Legislature reduced the state sales tax by three-tenths of a percentage point; meanwhile, the state’s average teacher pay .

The state’s Teacher Compensation Review Board conducted its first meeting of 2023 on Monday in Pierre.

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“South Dakota was so far behind everyone else,” said state Sen. and Board Chair Jim Bolin, R-Canton, a former teacher. “We didn’t move up significantly in the number of states we passed, but we did close the gap.”

According to a report shared by the state Department of Education, South Dakota teachers were making an average of $42,025 during the 2015/2016 school year. During the 2016/2017 school year, the number jumped to 46,979.

The average teacher salary among the state’s approximately 10,000 teachers is now an estimated $51,363. The state Department of Education showed slides with a target of $55,756 for this year. And the state may veer further off track from that goal without a significant increase in compensation. The state’s goal for 2024 is $59,659.

South Dakota’s average teacher salary ranks only above Mississippi and West Virginia (the rankings extend to No. 51 because Washington, D.C., is included). The state is last among neighboring states, and about 7% of South Dakota teachers leave the profession each year.

A presentation shared with the board said the state also faces a teacher shortage, especially in elementary, special education, language arts, fine arts and math. Aberdeen Superintendent Becky Guffin told board members about the consequences of not having adequate staffing.

“We no longer have a calculus or statistics class,” Guffin said. “And I think we used to offer four foreign languages. We’ll be struggling to have a Spanish class next year.”

South Dakota Department of Education Secretary Joseph Graves followed that, saying, “And they’re not reflected in the data because you can’t have an opening for a position you don’t have.”

Graves said the state has a number of efforts in place to improve the situation. Those include advertising to recruit teachers from outside the state, a mentor program, and that aims to help about 90 teacher aides from more than 50 school districts become fully certified teachers.

“Right now, we’re trying to see if the pilot works,” Graves said.

Ranking 49th in teacher pay is nothing to celebrate, said state Sen. Reynold Nesiba, D-Sioux Falls, who sits on the review board.

“Why can’t South Dakota be first in the region?” Nesiba told South Dakota Searchlight. “We should make education the priority that it deserves to be. When budgeting, we start there and build the rest of our budget around that. But we just don’t do that.”

Meanwhile, Gov. Kristi Noem that state government closed the 2023 budget year with a surplus of $96.8 million.

Bolin said he wants to raise teacher pay.

“We’re doing reasonably well, but not well enough if we’re wanting to stay competitive,” he told South Dakota Searchlight.

A dearth of qualified counselors also emerged as a pressing concern during the board meeting. Graves said the state is likely “way under” the ideal counselor-to-student ratio.

“You can’t hire guidance counselors,” Graves said. “There just aren’t any people in that profession.”

The board, which was created in 2016 when the Legislature raised sales taxes for teacher pay, aims to draft recommendations for the next legislative session in Pierre this winter. The board’s next public meeting is scheduled for Aug. 21.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seth Tupper for questions: info@southdakotasearchlight.com. Follow South Dakota Searchlight on and .

There are 12,260 licensed child care slots in Sioux Falls, but 64% of child care centers can’t enroll their licensed capacity because they don’t have enough workers, according to the Sioux Falls Childcare Collaborative. That cuts actual available slots by hundreds — and it’s a familiar situation across the state.

The collaborative presented the results of a six-month study in June, detailing affordability challenges — for parents and caregivers — and potential solutions to address the need.

was “increase career pathways to the profession,” such as creating a high school dual-credit program or developing internships and job training programs.

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Beginning this fall, one of those solutions will kick off in schools across the state: a high school-level Child Development Associate (CDA) course. The course will allow high school students to earn the credential to work toward becoming an early childhood education professional at day cares and preschools while earning high school credits toward graduation.

“We can’t keep talking about how there’s a teacher and early childhood shortage and not do anything about it,” said Summer Schultz, incoming superintendent of the Brookings School District and former Dell Rapids superintendent. “Our preschools and day cares need to keep staffed with quality people. This opens the door for more trained individuals at an earlier date.”

The program allows any student in South Dakota interested in early childhood education to earn a CDA credential through a virtual course. Larger school districts, like Aberdeen and Harrisburg, will have their own in-person courses, said Travis Lape, innovative programs director at Harrisburg and Educators Rising SD state director.

The program was created through a partnership between Educators Rising SD, the state Department of Social Services, Sanford CHILD Services and the federal Department of Education Head Start Collaboration Office.

The course combines required class time with required on-site training at day cares. Students will work 480 hours at a day care before earning their credential. While those students will have to be supervised at all times and won’t be left alone with children, it will be another set of hands to care for children, Lape said.

“Let’s say that the Sioux Falls School District alone had 100 kids in this course. We’d need 100 placements for those kids to earn their 480 hours. That’s 100 new employees,” Lape said. “If Harrisburg has 60, that’s 160 between the two school districts in the Sioux Falls metro. This attacks the early childhood education workforce in that we’ll have 16- to 18-year-olds who are passionate about early childhood education wanting to get their feet wet and work.”

Lape said the online virtual class will allow 30 students to attend in the first year and train at day cares in their community. About 10 spots are already filled, with student locations ranging from Madison to Yankton to Deuel County and Faulkton County. Lape expects more students will sign up throughout the summer.

Harrisburg and Aberdeen school districts will have about 100 students between the two school systems taking in-person classes this school year, Lape estimated.

Currently, day care workers seeking their CDA credential in South Dakota attend an online course run by a third-party agency funded by the state DSS. Sanford CHILD Services operates training in the Sioux Falls metro and Aberdeen areas, and it already had an online course and curriculum in place. It was relatively simple to turn the existing training into high school coursework with the partnership, Lape said.

The program “puts South Dakota well ahead of the curve” in addressing worker shortages in the field, said Deborah Bergeron, deputy director of collaboration and innovation for National Head Start Association. While there are CDA programs in high schools in other states, those are in individual schools rather than being available statewide.

Bergeron hopes to see students fill needed positions at Head Start locations across the state. Head Start is a federally funded program that delivers early learning, health, nutrition and family support services to impoverished children up to age 5. South Dakota has .

Nationally, 20% of Head Start and Early Head Start classrooms were closed between May and September 2022, primarily due to staff vacancies. That meant sending children home, where some parents couldn’t work or had to attempt to enroll them in programs that were too expensive.

“We serve the most vulnerable kids in the country,” Bergeron said. “The impact is more than the kid not attending preschool. Head Start is where they generally get the best nutrition, where they’re connected with well child visits at the doctor, where we catch early learning disabilities that might not get noticed otherwise.”

The program will only address the “increased pathways” recommendation by the Sioux Falls Childcare Collaborative. Other factors, such as low employee salaries, are major factors in the workforce shortage.

The mean hourly wage for child care workers in Sioux Falls in May 2022 was $12.34, about $26,000 a year. The report recommends subsidizing child care by local businesses, the city or state government to help address that issue.

Students in the new CDA course will attend two classes a week for 90 minutes each. Outside of class, students will work in local child care centers to earn their 480 hours of on-the-job supervised experience.

“If a school has to fund a math teacher or an education training teacher, you know where they’ll fund it. It’s the math teacher, even though we know we need an education training teacher for teaching the next generation of teachers,” Lape said. “We wanted to take that barrier away.”

Typically, it would cost $800 for a child care provider to earn the credential, but the program doesn’t charge students. DSS awarded Sanford a contract to provide the instructor and coursework, Lape added.

If students decide not to enter into the workforce directly after high school, the program could count toward credit hours to earn an associate or bachelor’s degree in the field. Lape said it’s a launching point for students who might be interested in other teaching paths outside of early childhood education.

“This training is not going to make you a bad teacher,” Lape said. “If anything, it’ll help you understand the bigger picture — development, safety, health and wellness. It’s a stepping stone.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seth Tupper for questions: info@southdakotasearchlight.com. Follow South Dakota Searchlight on and .

The South Dakota Board of Education Standards will hold its second meeting since revealing the revised social studies standards that drew controversy again this summer.

A day before the official deadline to register or submit public comments, the Board from teachers, school board members, parents, school administrators and more. The Monday opposing the proposed social studies standards as well.

The standards originally drew criticism in 2021 after the state in the first draft. Gov. Kristi Noem ordered the standards revision process to restart in 2022.

The DOE released its revised standards in August, but quickly drew criticism again after the South Dakota Education Association said that the standards discourage inquiry-based learning and emphasize rote memorization, adding that Native American history and South Dakota history are “afterthoughts or lumped in with other standards.”

“They wildly deviate from current social studies standards and will upend the curriculum for every teacher, every classroom and every school,” shortly after the revised standards were released. “The proposed standards are too time specific and only focus on events from 1492 to 2008 raising many questions about how teachers would approach teaching current events.”

An found that the 2015 standards are less specific than the detailed 2022 document, which is nearly twice as long, among other notable differences.

The revised standards are “politicized,” said Tim Graf, superintendent of the Harrisburg School District — one of South Dakota’s fastest growing school districts. The changes involved a 15-member committee and , according to the Associated Press. Of the three educators on the committee, all three opposed the revised standards, Graf added.

Graf won’t be making public comments at Monday’s meeting, since he already took a personal day in September to drive three hours to Aberdeen and make public comments at the first Board revision meeting. His public comments were short but focused on his concern for the future of South Dakota public education with the state government involving itself in picking standards and curriculum.

“This concerns me greatly about what the future of public education is if this just becomes a political football for any future curriculum and options,” Graf told South Dakota Searchlight on Thursday.

The Board normally approves and is involved in curriculum and standards for public education across the state. But not to this degree of interference and control.

This is far bigger than just social studies standards.

“I believe this is just another example of South Dakota taking its teachers for granted and not respecting the work they do as professionals,” Graf said. “What concerns me is if we lose teachers over this … There is nothing more important than having a great teacher in classrooms and we’re having more and more trouble being able to fill our classrooms with teachers. This will exacerbate those concerns further.”

Another Harrisburg School District representative and a Harrisburg School Board member plan to make public comments on Monday. Graf encourages parents of South Dakota students to read through the revisions themselves.

The South Dakota Board of Education Standards’ will take place Monday at 9 a.m. at the Sioux Falls Convention Center, where board members will hear public comments on the issue.

The BOE’s first public meeting on the revision was held in Aberdeen and included 707 written public comments ahead of the meeting, with the majority opposed to the standards and only 67 proponents.

People interested in presenting in-person or remote public comment must register with the Department of Education by 2 p.m. on Nov. 18 by emailing Ferne.Haddock@state.sd.us. Those interested in submitting written comments must do so online or by end-of-day Nov. 18.

Opponents and proponents will each receive 90 minutes for public comment. With 35 opponents who were signed up to speak in Aberdeen in September, only 27 of them fit into the 90-minute section.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seth Tupper for questions: info@southdakotasearchlight.com. Follow South Dakota Searchlight on and .

High-schoolers received special focus at a day-long workforce summit Wednesday at the Sioux Falls Convention Center.

The Sioux Falls Development Foundation hosted the . The event featured guest speakers and community business leaders sharing insights, and opportunities for young people to build relationships with those leaders.

Approximately 70% of in-state students graduating from a South Dakota public university remain in the state after graduation. The other 30% leave. This means the state is investing tax dollars to educate some workers who don’t stay – an issue commonly referred to as “brain drain.”

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Denise Guzzetta, vice president of talent and workforce development with the Sioux Falls Development Foundation, said students meeting with city leaders improves their likelihood of calling Sioux Falls home in the future.

“So it’s very important for them to socialize and get connected to business and community leaders,” Guzzetta said. “Everybody has a role to play in the workforce. It’s not just the employers. It’s the community.”

Guzzetta said the city has talented kids in the school system.

“We work hand-in-hand with students so they understand what’s possible here versus somewhere else,” she said. “This is a generation that’s going to be entering the workforce in very large numbers. Baby Boomers are retiring and exiting the workforce. And so we need these young people here.”

And the message is getting through to some.

Lincoln High School student Jesuit Munoz moved to Sioux Falls from Puerto Rico. He said events like the WIN Summit have shown him South Dakota is the right place to put down roots.

“I see many opportunities here,” he said. “In Puerto Rico, there are not as many. So, I’m here. I’m good in Sioux Falls. I like this.”

That’s what Sioux Falls Mayor Paul TenHaken wants to hear. He said the city still has an extremely low unemployment rate of 2 percent despite a record number of people moving to the city last year.

“If you ask me how this works, how 7,000 people move here yet we have record low unemployment, I don’t know. I don’t get it,” TenHaken said. “I do know that COVID has created a whole different set of options for people who had to go into the office. Now, they can be anywhere.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seth Tupper for questions: info@southdakotasearchlight.com. Follow South Dakota Searchlight on and .

That’s basically the degree of wisdom involved in raising child-to-adult ratios as a way to help with the child care crisis. Raising ratios is a false remedy that does active harm. We need to stamp out that ill-advised brushfire of an idea before it spreads.

Iowa is currently poised to be the first state in quite a while to raise their ratios. As the news site reported, the bill, which already passed the Iowa Senate:

“would increase child care center staffing ratios, allowing providers to increase the number of children enrolled in their care without hiring additional employees. Under the bill, each child care worker could be responsible for as many as seven 2-year-olds or ten 3-year-olds, up from six 2-year-olds and eight 3-year-olds at present.

The bill passed 32-18 along party lines, with Republicans arguing it was necessary to address Iowa’s workforce crisis. Child care providers and advocates have criticized the bill, arguing it could decrease the quality of care, cause more teachers to quit, lead to the ‘warehousing’ of children, affect children’s development and possibly even put kids in danger.”

(Iowa Senate Republicans also rejected an amendment that would have required programs to notify parents when ratios were being raised — so much for parent empowerment.)

Now, let’s be fair. Iowa’s new ratios wouldn’t be the highest in the nation, and the ratios would be in line with nearby Democratic-controlled states like Minnesota. However, just because your neighbor chooses to drive without a seatbelt doesn’t mean you should stop wearing yours (i.e. Minnesota’s ratios could probably stand to be lower). It is notable that many Iowa child care providers — those with expertise in the field, those whom parents trust to care for their children, those who would hypothetically “benefit” from having more paying customers, those who know the real-life difference between eight and 10 3-year-olds — are loudly .

For that matter, there’s no reason to think that raising ratios will even have the intended effect. States with high-ish ratios, like and , are having awful child care shortages just the same! To put yet more strain on an already beleaguered and exhausted workforce in this particular moment is simply egregious. While some argue no provider is required to fill up to these maximum ratios, the pressure to do so is likely to be huge.

It’s true that there is no “magic” ratio, but as a general rule of thumb, fewer children per caregiver is better. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children & Families , “Many research studies have shown that low child-to-provider ratios and small group sizes have a positive impact on the overall quality of early and school-age care and education programs, and the experiences children have in those programs.” A 2017 by ChildTrends researcher Brenda Miranda further explained:

“Research shows that smaller child-to-staff ratios have been associated with . Moreover, when early childhood caregivers are responsible for more children than they can manage, it . Indeed, the presence of a second caregiver has been associated with a lower likelihood of child abuse in the child care settings

In addition to ensuring that young children are cared for in healthy and safe environments, children who are cared for in ECE settings with lower child-to-staff ratios receive , and engage in with their caregivers. Such interactions and lay the foundation for children’s ability to build healthy relationships in the future. Lower child-to-staff ratios and smaller group sizes have also been associated with children’s positive development, including higher , and .”

Directionally, too, raising ratios is a policy decision akin to Michael Scott . It suggests that the cause of the child care crisis is merely regulatory, not a persistent refusal to put in enough public funding to with adequately-compensated staff. It is the worst kind of political sleight-of-hand: making things worse in order to look like you’re doing something.

Parents should know that lawmakers have the opportunity to create real solutions for affordable, accessible, quality child care via permanent public money. Parents should also know that lawmakers trying to raise ratios are abdicating their responsibility for actual positive change in favor of a gimmick providers don’t want and which is liable to harm children.

Shame on the pigeons.

Sandra Bishop, research director at Council for a Strong America, provided initial context before the following panelists presented.

• Thomas Dempster, director at IFAM Capital and former South Dakota State Senator
• Geoff Spalding, police chief in Astoria, Oregon
• James C. Johnson, retired U.S. Air Force general
• Mindy Young, early education consultant and trainer
• Leigh Sargent, director of Tallahatchie Early Learning Alliance

Below are our top five takeaways from the conversation.

1. Defining “rural” correctly matters. Bishop explained that there are various definitions, but two of the most common come from the U.S. Census Bureau, which defines an area that has fewer than 2,500 residents as rural, and the U.S Department of Agriculture, which has a more nuanced definition applying nine categories of rural-urban continuum coding. “Using the U.S. Department of Agriculture definition, approximately 14 percent of the American population live in rural areas, and there are rural areas across all 50 states,” Bishop said.

2. Poverty rates are on the rise. Children and families in rural areas have a higher poverty rate than those in metro areas: 22% compared to 17%. The poverty rate increases to 25% for children under the age five living in rural areas. More than three-fourths of the U.S. counties with persistently high child-poverty rates are rural. While these counties span the U.S. and have different demographic representation, they are disportionately populated by children of color. “The children of color in those areas have rates of poverty that are more than double those of non-Hispanic white children in the same counties,” Bishop said.

3. Access to quality early child care and education is essential. “What early childhood education does, especially with targeted investments, is allow disadvantaged children to participate and to own the American Dream,” Dempster said.

However, children in these rural communities are less likely to have access to these vital programs. Chief Spalding explained, “Rural areas are more likely to be classified as child care deserts,” which are areas where children under 5 years old outnumber the available licensed child care slots by 3 to 1 or more. “Research shows the kids who participate in high quality early learning programs are better prepared to start kindergarten, more likely to graduate from high school, less likely to have behavioral problems and less likely to become involved in crime.”

4. Population and employment are declining. For the first time in history, rural America lost population between 2010 and 2016. Contributors to this population loss are threefold, “This is due in large part to young people leaving rural areas,” Bishop explained. “There have also been fewer births and an aging population.” These declines have led to a decrease in business, employment and critical services like health care.

5. Critical recruitment systems are suffering. The U.S. military and local law enforcement agencies are struggling to recruit qualified applicants, especially in rural areas, for the reasons previously explained. Of the pool of 20 million individuals ages 17-24 that have the potential to serve in the nation’s military, 3 out of every 4 are ineligible due to medical, academic or conduct issues. “The physical, mental and emotional capabilities that we need our service members to have are all rooted in those first five years,” General Johnson explained. “Those years are foundational.”