At Havasupai school in Grand Canyon, fired teacher paints a pattern of neglect

The school that was always desperate for teachers finally had one, and it needed her to start right away.

It was March 2016. The school year was almost over, and Havasupai Elementary School still didn’t have a full staff. So as soon as Mary Beth Burke reached her apartment at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, Acting Principal Coleen Maldonado brought Burke a list of her new students.

The two women sat at a table surrounded by unopened suitcases. Burke watched Maldonado scribble notes next to students’ names. An eighth-grade girl, Maldonado wrote, was “very smart.” She warned that another eighth-grader was manipulative.



But Maldonado focused on the name of a seventh-grade boy who had fallen hopelessly behind. She scribbled one word: “Lawsuit."

Stay away from the mother, Burke recalled Maldonado saying. Try to avoid the student.

Like many students at Havasupai Elementary, the boy had been promised help that never came. His test scores ranked in the first percentile nationwide. ADHD and a learning disability made studies almost impossible. The school had ignored his mother’s pleas for help, so she had contacted a lawyer.

Now Maldonado suggested Burke ignore one of her new students.

Burke silently rejected the principal’s warning. In the classroom, she would work around the boy's learning disabilities, slowly becoming the first teacher he liked.

But the teacher who had once rushed to the Grand Canyon soon saw firsthand many of the problems that would lead nine Havasupai students and their parents to sue the federal government: A school that has failed generations of Havasupai students has resisted reform, refused to offer services for special education or mental health and punished employees who push for change.

PREVIOUSLY: A hidden tribe, a disastrous school, a cry for help

This portrait of dysfunction at Havasupai Elementary is based on hundreds of pages of internal documents and federal court filings, as well as interviews with Burke and a dozen students, parents, government employees and former school staff.

School leaders did not appear to take seriously Burke's repeated alerts about the mental well-being of a student who threatened to kill the new teacher and expressed suicidal thoughts. Burke's suggestion of additional services for the “lawsuit” student’s special needs ended with a reprimand from Maldonado, who told her such services would cost the school more money.

Two months after she arrived in Supai, Burke emailed BIE Associate Deputy Director Tony Dearman, who oversaw all bureau-operated schools.

Burke wrote that she planned to file a complaint against Maldonado and the school. She accused the principal of retaliating against her and asked for the name of Maldonado's direct supervisor.

Dearman responded 23 minutes later, copying his reply to the superintendent overseeing Havasupai Elementary.

“I am sure you will receive a response soon,” Dearman wrote.

Four days later, Burke was fired.

A school failing a community

The tiny Havasupai Tribe’s only school is the worst in a Bureau of Indian Education system that Congress once called “a national disgrace.” It has few textbooks and only a small library. There are no clubs or sports teams, no choir or art programs. Students with learning disabilities are often just sent home. Classes end at noon most Fridays so teachers can leave the Canyon early.

The school teaches only English and math but ranks last among all BIE schools in both subjects: Its students test in the first percentile in reading and the third percentile in math.

Since the federal government took over the school in 2002, Havasupai Elementary has only lagged further behind, locked away from the outside world by the rocky canyon walls.

Supai is accessible only by helicopter or an eight-mile hike down the face of the Grand Canyon. Fewer than half of the tribe’s 639 members live in the village, where there is one store, one health clinic and one school.

“We're in the hole,” one parent involved in the students' lawsuit said. “It's like they put us there, they said, 'OK, they're in the hole. Let's just leave them there, they're not going to say nothing. Let's just give them the least amount of education.' ”

Havasupai students and parents alleged in that lawsuit, filed in January 2017, that the U.S. government "dismally failed" to provide the education it was legally obligated to give all Native children.

Native students are already at a disadvantage: Just 69 percent graduate from high school, a rate well below the national average, according to BIE data. The only group of students with a worse chance of graduating are Native students in BIE schools, who graduate at a rate of 53 percent.

At Havasupai Elementary School, about 20 percent of students go on to graduate from high school.

The federal government has twice asked a judge to dismiss parts of that lawsuit. Its attorneys argued that some of the students could not sue because they no longer attended Havasupai Elementary School, and that “exposure to adversity and trauma is insufficient to establish that plaintiffs are disabled individuals who were denied benefits solely by reason of any alleged disability.”

U.S. District Judge Steven P. Logan will hear oral arguments in Phoenix on October 24.

MORE: Read the complaint filed by Havasupai students and their families

Dearman, who in November 2016 was appointed director of the Bureau of Indian Education, declined to be interviewed for this story and did not respond to written questions.

Nedra Darling, a spokeswoman for the Department of Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs, which oversees BIE, said in an email that the Department of Interior does not comment on pending litigation. Darling said Dearman "is aware of all lawsuits pending against the BIE."

Reached by The Republic, Maldonado said she could not comment on Burke's allegations because it would violate the Federal Education Rights and Privacy Act.

'Just hang in there'

When Maldonado first called Burke from the bottom of the Grand Canyon, she told her three things: Havasupai Elementary needed a seventh- and eighth-grade teacher, the Havasupai Tribe wanted somebody who would stay long term, and everybody was in a hurry.

The 2015-16 school year had started three weeks late because the school's staff was even thinner than usual. When classes finally began, students arrived to classrooms led by teachers who sometimes rotated in and out of Supai on two-week assignments. The school janitor and secretary each covered a class. There was no principal, so Maldonado filled in but kept teaching.

So began another year in which Havasupai children learned almost nothing.

The seventh- and eighth-grade teaching job was still open in March. A lifelong teacher who had just returned to America from a stint overseas, Burke wanted a job that would last until her retirement. So she flew to Phoenix, where an employee picked her up for the five-hour drive to the Grand Canyon. The trek down to the village was her first.

Burke was ready to start the next day. But after she arrived in Supai, she was told that neither her background check nor her contract had been finished, leaving her jobless for almost a week.

She complained to BIE Human Resources specialist Evelyn Begaye, who told her that Maldonado had repeatedly skirted hiring rules in the past.

“We all know she has been doing things out of procedure and it really affected her this time,” Begaye wrote in an email. “Just hang in there.”

Burke stayed, but her stint in Supai was brief.

She filed a lawsuit of her own in May 2017, accusing the BIE, Maldonado and an assortment of school staff of knowingly violating established hiring practices, ignoring the needs of students with disabilities and creating a hostile work environment from which Burke was eventually fired.

The lawsuit names 13 defendants, including Dearman, Maldonado, Superintendent Jimmy Hastings, the Bureau of Indian Education and the United States Department of the Interior. In the complaint, Burke asks for her firing to be overturned, for the five years’ pay she claimed to have been promised and for “punitive damages to the greatest amount allowable by law.”

A system unable to help

Once in the classroom, Burke started to understand the issues that would be cited in the two lawsuits.

Teachers at Havasupai Elementary lacked common materials or a full curriculum. Special education was sometimes no more than a teacher writing down a student’s every move. A standardized test required in all Arizona schools was scheduled, then never given.

Another former school employee confirmed Burke’s claims in an interview with The Arizona Republic. The BIE administration often did not respond to reports of violations at Havasupai Elementary, the employee said.

It's not just an issue in Supai. Similar problems with school oversight and accountability have appeared across BIE's 183-school system.

The bureau’s records are often scattershot. The Arizona Republic’s request to the BIE for a list of Havasupai Elementary School’s former principals returned a list of employees at a different Havasupai Elementary School in Lake Havasu City, a public school that isn’t part of the BIE system.

“It’s not just at one level,” said a former school employee, who spoke anonymously because of fears of more retaliation. “The whole thing was messed up.”

Parents and tribal leaders have begged for help for years, desperate to save what they see as a lost generation. And yet the BIE, which claims to be in a period of drastic reform, can show no evidence it has improved the school.

The mother of the "lawsuit" student, referred to in court documents by the pseudonym Laila R., embarked on a solo crusade. She earned a seat on the school board and sent letters higher and higher up the BIE bureaucracy. When no help came, she emailed a lawyer with the Native American Disability Law Center, which helped her begin the January lawsuit.

Havasupai Tribe leaders have flown to Washington, D.C., to lobby BIE officials directly. They were promised change, and then none came.

A former BIE director even visited the school in person to meet with Chairman Don Watahomigie. Still, nothing improved.

“They just talk with the principal and leave,” said Leota Watahomigie, a Supai resident who worked at the school until June. “They want to get out of here, like everybody else.”

'That lady is cool'

Burke knew of the student marked by Maldonado’s “lawsuit” note before that first meeting. As she waited for a helicopter flight into Supai, a school employee pointed at a young boy standing by the Canyon’s edge.

“There’s one of your students,” the employee told her. Burke walked toward the boy to introduce herself, but the boy hid behind a wooden shack.

Levi R., as he’s called in court documents, had never liked a teacher before. As far as he knew, no teacher had ever liked him — until Mary Beth Burke. Against Maldonado’s day-one warning, Burke kept an eye on Laila’s son.

“That lady is cool,” Levi told his mother after school one day. For the first time, a teacher seemed to care about him, focused not on whether he was going to disrupt the class but on his education. Burke let him speak. She let him rock back and forth in his desk, which other teachers had forbidden, because she saw it soothed his ADHD.

The only barrier to his success, Burke thought, was handwriting. Levi’s writing was slow and painful, and with every misplaced letter his frustration grew. But that could be fixed.

SHARE YOUR EXPERIENCE: Help shed light on the Bureau of Indian Education

Under federal law, every student with a disability is required to have an Individualized Education Program, a document that describes the student’s disabilities and the specific plans to overcome them. Every IEP must be reviewed at an annual meeting between parents and the teachers who oversee special education.

A month after she started, Burke sat at a table with another teacher, Maldonado and Levi’s mother.

“I really enjoy having your child in my classroom,” Burke said, speaking first. “The only thing I’ve noticed is that he hates handwriting and I think we should try to get him some occupational therapy.”

Before Laila could respond, Maldonado and the other teacher turned to Burke, their anger rising.

“You have no right,” Burke recalled Maldonado saying, upset that a teacher would suggest the service directly to a parent.

After the meeting, Maldonado kept Burke in her office to chastise her. Bringing an occupational therapist into the Canyon could cost the school money, Burke recalled being told. She added that Levi’s services were already detailed in his IEP.

But Burke had only been allowed to read a portion of Levi's lengthy IEP.

A complaint, a dismissal

When the 2015-16 school year started, Havasupai Elementary’s IEPs were in shambles. Papers were strewn across desks, or shoved into filing cabinets, or stacked in sloppily constructed piles. No student’s IEP was all in one place, and it took the new staff almost a month to piece them back together, a former school employee said.

“I’d never seen anything like that before,” said the former employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of fears of retribution from the BIE.

Once complete, IEPs were seldom followed. About half of Havasupai Elementary’s students have recognized disabilities, and yet few received any services to address them.

The school’s special-education decisions went through Maldonado, a classroom teacher serving as acting principal. Arizona’s public teacher-certification database lists a substitute teacher’s license under the name “Coleen K. Maldonado” but displays nothing to indicate special-education training.

Maldonado, the former school employee said, did not appear to follow special-education guidelines. "And when I told her it was wrong, she would say, ‘Whatever,’ basically,” the former employee said.

The former employee tried multiple times to alert BIE administrators of special-education violations. The employee sent at least two emails to the bureau’s head of special education, Gloria Yepa, and received no response.

A few months later, the employee tried again, calling BIE administrators directly to discuss the violations. That resulted in a voicemail on Yepa’s direct line. The call was never returned.

Days later, the employee was fired.

READ: Arizona tribe warning: 'Your language is dying'

The school’s lack of special-education programs started well before Maldonado’s tenure as acting principal. For years the staff has lacked enough counselors, special-education teachers and mental-health providers. Often there weren’t enough people on staff to hold the annual IEP meetings.

One sixth-grade student with ADHD had missed so much school that he could barely read or write.

Another student with an IEP spent his days crouched at a tiny table in the Havasupai Head Start preschool because he had been banned from attending school. He spent a week in an adult prison in Parker, four hours away, for pushing a teacher.

BIE’s own data does not reflect those problems. In 2014, a “Special Education Level of Determination” report, which outlines whether schools meet certain standards for special education, gave Havasupai Elementary School eight points on a 10-point scale. “Meets requirements,” the BIE determined. No intervention necessary.

Levi never received occupational therapy.

A threat goes unanswered

A student threatened to kill Burke the morning of April 13, 2016. It was her fifth day teaching at Havasupai Elementary School.

The student yelled obscenities inside the classroom and kicked furniture, according to a report Burke wrote afterward. The threat came when Burke asked the student to stop.

Fourteen days later, that same student threatened suicide.

Burke raised repeated concerns to Maldonado about the student’s well-being in between those two incidents. She’d written an incident report after the student’s first threat against her.

A teacher who had filled in for Maldonado that day refused to accept the report after asking Burke to rewrite with it more specifics. Burke said the teacher, Catherine Muhammed, acknowledged the incident took place but told other teachers that Burke didn't report it.

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Burke wrote another report the following week, after the student behaved erratically in class during a fire drill.

Later that evening, Burke emailed Maldonado: “At this time, I consider (the student) a threat ... I am requesting immediate intervention for (the student's) protection and for the protection of others."

Burke wrote that the student recalled being taken to the clinic by a grandmother, though Burke later said she “didn’t know if this story is accurate or not, as it came from the student.”

But as the student spoke to Burke, she wrote in the email, she noticed the student "did not appear well” and kept bobbing back and forth. Burke had told a classroom aide she felt the student needed medical attention.

Maldonado took the student out of Burke’s classroom that day after the student cursed repeatedly and threw a desk on the floor.

Burke asked Maldonado in the email whether the school knew if the student had actually “made a suicide threat ... today and if (the student) was taken for medical attention and treated.”

“I hope (the student) receives assistance immediately," Burke wrote.

The next day, Burke said, Maldonado called her into her office and asked her, sarcastically, “Do you really think (the student) wants to kill you?”

Maldonado then told Burke the school was getting the student counseling services.

READ: Arizona tribal leaders help students stay in school

It wasn’t until two weeks after the initial threat — when the student publicly threatened self-harm — that the school’s leadership took Burke’s concerns about the student seriously and made an effort to address them, Burke said.

“It was escalating and escalating, and it was obvious the kid needed services,” Burke told The Republic. “So I think the ball was dropped when they had a chance on April 13 to do something for that child, and for me. And they did not.”

After being removed from class, the student was taken to the Indian Health Services clinic. A physician later told Burke that the student's wrists had cut marks.

When the physician asked her why the school hadn’t referred the student to the clinic sooner, Burke pulled out copies of the email she sent to Maldonado, as well as the rejected incident report.

The physician photocopied the documents, and told Burke to bypass the school if the student needed help in the future.

Last days of a short tenure

Everybody had lemonade the day Burke was fired.

Her class spent the morning playing in Supai’s June heat, and Burke placed chilled cans of lemonade on their desks. The students returned, and everybody was in a good mood, until Katherine Campbell walked into the classroom.

Coleen Maldonado was away from the school, and Campbell had taken over as acting principal. She asked Burke to come into her office at noon, after the usual Friday early dismissal.

I’m about to get fired, Burke thought, remembering the other teachers who had been pushed out. When the classroom emptied, she collected her things and went to meet Campbell.

Ten weeks after she arrived in Supai, Mary Beth Burke was fired.

“Specifically, your termination is due to unprofessional conduct,” her termination letter read.

A handwritten note was scribbled below: “Employee was directed not to disclose action with other school staff, and not to speak about the school in a derogatory fashion.”

Notes and documents sent to BIE’s Human Resources department outlined what conduct Maldonado found unprofessional. The list included Burke’s questions about Maldonado's qualifications and authority, an argument about a gate left unlocked, the way she “responded negatively” to a middle-of-the-night “well check” that Burke viewed as harassment and Burke’s negative comments about the school to a teacher who once visited Supai.

It cited the IEP meeting in which Burke suggested occupational therapy for Levi, which “implicated the school to provide evaluation and costs had the parent accepted or then required follow up.”

The letter also referenced the student's threats stating that Burke never filed a "critical incident report" despite being "informed to complete it in writing on several occasions."

There would be no exit interview.

“In the end, I believe, they got rid of me for complaining about the way I was hired, for special-ed violations when I advocated for children, and because of the gross mismanagement of the school,” Burke said. “I had no other recourse but to file a federal complaint.”

Almost immediately, Burke and Laila R. said, Maldonado and other BIE administrators began a campaign to get the teacher out of Supai. But Burke refused to leave until her final paycheck came through. So she stayed, even after her apartment’s utilities were cut off and a federal police officer threatened charges if she didn’t leave.

She spent her days wandering through the Canyon, exploring the sacred lands she was being forced out of. Tribal members stopped her on the dirt paths and thanked her for trying. The tribal council invited her to speak about the school.

She found Levi’s mother, and they exchanged phone numbers. “If you ever need me for your lawsuit,” she told Laila, “I’ll be there for you.”

Within a year, both women had filed lawsuits against Havasupai Elementary School administrators and the Bureau of Indian Education.

While on a hike, Burke crossed paths with Levi one last time. He asked why she had been fired.

She said she didn’t know.

Reach the reporters at awoods@arizonarepublic.com and ricardo.cano@gannett.com.

SHARE YOUR EXPERIENCE: Help shed light on the Bureau of Indian Education

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