Since 2005, South Dakota has obtained millions of dollars in federal GEAR UP grants under the pretense of helping prepare American Indian youth for college. However, in a tradition going back to the first Indian agents, South Dakota’s GEAR UP grant seems to have become a slush fund for friends of the establishment middlemen who provide little apparent value and, in one prominent case, lack credentials to promote Indian interests.
Great Plains Tribal Chairman’s Association spokesman O.J. Semans summarizes that GEAR UP contradiction quite pointedly:
Association spokesman OJ Semans said it appears to the tribes that Gear Up did more to enrich politically connected consultants than it did to help poor students attain post-secondary educations.
“Those that have college educations got more out of it than those that were supposed to receive educations,” Semans said [Jonathan Ellis, “Tribes Demand Control of GEAR UP,” that Sioux Falls paper, 2015.11.13].
The state’s solution to the skimming of GEAR UP is to transfer the program from the incompetent Mid-Central Educational Cooperative to the Board of Regents. Recalling that the Regents were the progenitive home to the corruption of our EB-5 program, the GPTCA says it has a better idea: let the tribes run GEAR UP. Semans tells Ellis that the tribes could run GEAR UP as a scholarship program, which would require less of the consulting and administration that took so much out of the GEAR UP budget under Mid-Central’s watch.
Governor Dennis Daugaard has warned that the tribes are hurt by the “tremendous turmoil” in tribal government. Yet his administration seems to be open not only to involving tribal government in GEAR UP but spending state money to help:
Under Gear Up guidelines, scholarship funds would have to be matched with state dollars. Tony Venhuizen, the chief of staff to Daugaard, said he thinks there’s enough scholarship money in the state’s university system to match Gear Up funds.
He added that the state’s goals for the program are in alignment with what the tribes want from Gear Up.
“That’s exactly the conversation we want to have,” Venhuizen said [Ellis, 2015.11.13].
That’s not a No! The door may be open for the tribes to take over GEAR UP and help their young people (who are also our young people) build their futures.
He added that the state’s goals for the program are in alignment with what the tribes want from Gear Up.
Oh yeah? Since when?
Since everything all blew up. The crew in Pierre is grasping for solutions. OJ Seamans states the painfully obvious and the bosses in Pierre might be attempting to throw off the blinders.
Hey, sounds like I guessed correctly:
https://dakotafreepress.com/2015/11/06/republican-legislator-calls-for-secretary-schopp-to-resign-over-gear-up-scandal/#comment-22672
Sounds like the state (and thus, probably, the BOR as well) are thinking about doing the easy thing and convert the program to a scholarship program, dropping the summer program (which required lots of staff), and factors within the tribes seem to agree.
Kingleon, the GEAR UP rules say the grant is supposed to do both scholarships for low-income college students and early intervention to get kids ready for college. I don’t know if we can get a waiver for the early-intervention component the way we got a waiver for the scholarship component.
Eliminating the summer program would defeat the purpose. If the kids can’t get the extra education and the guidance towards college, the scholarship money won’t be utilized anyway. Think! Keep the consultants’ money hungry hands away from the program and the students might have a chance at success!
Hah, well, no one is probably likely to read this response after three days (except maybe Cory), but here’s my reasoning. From what I understand, SD GEARUP consisted of the summer program and outreach at public schools in SD. I haven’t seen any numbers, but my guess is even ignoring potential graft, that a great majority of funds (I’m gonna bet that 75% that is intended for scholarships at the federal level) went to the summer program. That means anything like a reasonably sized scholarship program is going to going to mean cutting the summer program at SDSMT, and probably retaining a minor outreach component to meet the preparedness requirement.
This hypothesis could be refuted if anyone could show that not-summer-program spending (graft + school outreach + other) actually was a majority of the SD GEARUP spending, but I would be very surprised if that was the case. Very surprised!
I imagine the budget information needed to test that though isn’t public.
good point on the three days, but the tribes can administer this. they may not have time to react immediately after the shocking murders, arson and a suicide in platte, to clean up the state’s mess, but they can make their own decisions.
There’s an argument, Kingleon, that straight scholarships would be more efficient (no staff necessary) and help more kids in college. The evaluations don’t show the summer program helping any more kids complete college; money in the kids’ hands has a better chance of achieving that goal.
Oh, I’m not disputing what the better option is, I was just attempting to guess at what the future of SD GEARUP is, from the little we know of the financials of the situation. My guess is, yeah, we’ll see the summer program dropped for a scholarship program.
That said, given that low-income students tend to go to local public universities, and given that SD has (relatively) cheap publicly schools, my opinion is that preparedness is probably a much more critical element than financial support for success. I would bet that an argument along those lines is probably how SD GEARUP got their waiver from DOE. But if assessment can’t find positive evidence to show the summer program worked, as you say, well…. its hard to argue against that, as you say.