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Tribal Child Care Technical Assistance Center (TriTAC)
Effective Program Strategies

Partnerships with Tribal Colleges and Universities Oglala Sioux Tribe

Demographic Information:
The Oglala Sioux Tribe's Child Care and Development Program provides child care services within the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The reservation occupies more than 10,000 square miles in southwest South Dakota and is divided into nine districts. The Tribe’s social service agencies face great service-delivery challenges because of the large distances covered and the diversity of needs among these largely rural districts. More than half of the reservation’s 47,000 residents are under age 18, and working parents often commute more than 100 miles roundtrip to reach jobs on and off the reservation.

Type of Program:
The Oglala Sioux Tribe’s Child Care and Development Program operates a certificate program offering parents a full range of child care options. Through the certificate program, tribally-operated learning centers, and strategic partnerships, the Child Care and Development Program serves more than 400 children from birth through age 12 in center- and home-based settings.

In addition to operating the certificate program, the Tribe’s Resource and Referral program also provides parent and provider training, a provider resource library (including books, videos, and arts and crafts supplies), and health and safety improvements for public areas of family child care homes (e.g., fixing broken windows, putting up fences near busy roads, or replacing broken steps).

Oglala Lakota College (OLC), founded in 1971, was one of the first tribally controlled colleges in the United States. Since that time, it has grown from a small community college to an accredited, four-year-degree granting institution awarding certificates, AA degrees, and BA degrees in a wide range of subjects, including Education, Human Services, and Lakota Studies. OLC also offers a Master's degree in Lakota Leadership. Current enrollment is approximately 1,000 students, with a full time equivalency of 650-700 students per semester.

Effective Program Strategy:
On July 3, 2002, President Bush issued Executive Order 13270 – Tribal Colleges and Universities; like that of the previous administration, this Executive Order asserts that "postsecondary institutions can play a vital role in promoting excellence in early childhood, elementary, and secondary education" and encourages federal agencies to encourage and enhance partnerships with Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs).

The Oglala Sioux Tribe’s Child Care and Development Program has collaborated with Oglala Lakota College (OLC) in formal and informal ways for many years. They initially came together to purchase several low-cost houses from the state ("Governor’s Houses") to use as child care facilities. The College granted easements to the Tribe for the building of its child care centers because it saw the potential for service to its students. Then, because its governance structure allowed more financial and operational flexibility than that of the Tribe, OLC shepherded the child care programs in these buildings through the start-up and initial operations phases, with the Tribe providing funding on a cost-reimbursement basis. When the Tribe’s Child Care and Development Program had sufficient resources to manage the programs, it took over day-to-day operations of the centers.

Currently, the Child Care and Development Program and OLC are partnering to meet a number of existing service needs on the reservation. First, they are joining forces to increase child care availability at the College’s Manderson campus. The two parties have developed a lease agreement and operating plan through which OLC waives the Tribe’s rent for the Manderson child care building and, in exchange, the Child Care and Development Program makes OLC students a priority recipient of child care services in all of its facilities. The Child Care and Development Program provides maintenance support for the Manderson center.

Through a separate Memorandum of Agreement (MOA), OLC provides training and technical assistance for all of the Child Care and Development Program’s center- and home-based providers. Training topics offered include responsive care for infants and toddlers; managing child behavior through management of the child care environment; CPR/First Aid; classroom arrangement; appropriate educational activities (geared toward in-home providers); and child development.

Using grant funds, the College is able to provide a one-week orientation program for all new child care staff and offer free CDA classes for all of the Child Care and Development Program’s providers and staff. OLC also provides instructors to conduct workshops at the Child Care and Development Program’s annual parent/provider training retreat and to train all of the college students who staff the Tribe’s summer kindergarten-preparation program.

The close proximity of the College campuses to the Tribe’s child care facilities makes it easy for child care providers to get individualized, on-demand technical assistance and training. Providers can meet with the College’s early childhood instructors as needed to address specific questions or issues that they are facing in the classroom. The early childhood faculty may also build on these one-on-one discussions to create workshops to share vital information with a larger group of providers. For example, with less than one week’s notice, OLC staff developed a training session for providers who had just welcomed an autistic child into their classroom. The center had not been informed of the child’s disability when he was registered for the program and therefore had not been able to train the classroom teachers in advance.

Opportunities for collaboration between the College and the Tribe’s early childhood programs continue to develop. The Director of OLC’s Early Childhood Department has recently become a participant in the monthly Early Childhood Organizations (ECHO) meetings convened by the Child Care and Development Program. Representatives of the tribal Special Education Department also participate in ECHO, which grew out of the collaboration between the Child Care and Development Program, the tribal Head Start program, and the Boys and Girls Club. Through a Head Start Partnership Grant, OLC is training the staff of the ECHO agencies to conduct Head Start assessments and is handling the data collection and reporting requirements for the Head Start program. The ECHO partners are also developing a cross-program training for the staff of all of the participating agencies; this training would be conducted by OLC.

Resources:
The College’s ability to provide training to the Tribe’s child care providers is partially supported by funding from the Bush Foundation, which has awarded $2,615,598 to the State of South Dakota to increase training opportunities for infant-toddler caregivers. The State’s Office of Child Care Services contracts with OLC to provide training (including the Program for Infant/Toddler Caregivers training developed by WestEd) to child care providers on the Pine Ridge Reservation.

The Child Care and Development Program provides child care services to eligible OLC students using CCDF funds.

Results:
Through the MOA, ninety-eight child care center staff and family child care providers are receiving training that satisfies their state licensing requirements. Twenty-eight of the Child Care and Development Program’s staff, from classroom teachers to cooks, are currently working toward their CDA through the free courses provided by the College. Without OLC’s trainings, the Child Care and Development Program would have to pay their child care providers, staff, and mentors to travel off the reservation for training.

The lease agreement between the Child Care and Development Program and OLC allows the Tribe to expand child care availability to the Manderson area without constructing a new facility. The agreement provides much-needed subsidized care for the children of college students that OLC could not provide on its own, since the College does not have the staff or funding to operate a child care center in its Manderson facility.

Lessons Learned:
Both the Child Care and Development Program and the College have found challenges in the creation and maintenance of these collaborative agreements, but the challenges are balanced by their shared goal of providing quality services for children on the reservation.

Before the Manderson lease agreement was signed in the fall of 2002, the partners spent approximately two months negotiating the details. They struggled with issues such as who would pay for what, who would have ownership, what would the program be called, who would pay for the utilities, and whose parking lot would be used. Both sides learned that it is important to know what you want before you begin negotiations and to be clear about it in your discussions. They successfully developed an agreement because they knew what they needed and where they could compromise.

However, they have also found that agreements such as the Manderson lease should clearly indicate what would happen if one side were unable to fulfill some of its obligations. For example, if CCDF eligibility regulations prevented the Child Care and Development Program from providing free child care to all OLC students, would the Manderson rent waiver stay in effect or would OLC require the Tribe to pay for the use of the facility? Answering questions like this before signing the first agreement can prevent frustration and keep one partner from being "left holding the bag" in the middle of a contract period. It can also prevent service interruptions that might stem from lengthy or difficult renegotiations.

Another lesson that OLC has learned is that you cannot make more commitments than your budget can support. The Bush Foundation funding that OLC receives from the State totals approximately $50,000 per year, which pays for the coordinator’s salary, the reimbursement of trainers for mileage driven to training sites, and the production of training materials. The College has found it difficult to provide all of the trainings and materials required under the Bush and Head Start grants with the existing staff and funding resources. The Bush funds present an additional challenge because the College must reapply for them each year and therefore cannot rely on them for long-range planning.

Contact Information:
Frances Jack
Acting Director, Child Care and Development Program

Address:
Oglala Sioux Tribe
Box 2070
Pine Ridge, SD 57770

Phone: (605) 867-5172
Fax: (605) 867-1774
E-mail: pigeon_jack@hotmail.com

And

Shawna Pourier
Department Director, Early Childhood Education

Address:
Oglala Lakota College
PO Box 490
Kyle, SD 57752
Phone: (605) 455-6052
Fax: (605) 455-2787
E-mail: spourier@olc.edu

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This page was last updated June 5, 2004.