Jenny Ung

Palm Springs Desert Sun

Palm Springs Unified School District will be forming a Native American studies curriculum for the 2018-2019 school year in collaboration with the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians.

The PSUSD Board of Education approved the program at a board meeting on Oct. 24. For the next year, the district and tribe will take part in planning sessions to develop the curriculum.

“The school district and tribe have been sitting together for the past year,” PSUSD Foundation Director Ellen Goodman said, “looking at and unraveling what it would look like to educate the students and bring the Agua Caliente’s history, culture challenges, successes and celebrations to the district.”

There are 103 students who identify as American Indian or Alaska Native enrolled in PSUSD this school year, according to the California Department of Education.

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The curriculum will be geared toward students who don't know much about Native American history, Goodman said. It will focus on grades three through eight, primarily because these grades have already begun to look at topics like human geography and American history.

“It’s like an eight-year trajectory," Goodman said.

PSUSD currently includes Native American curriculum as a part of U.S. History and California History courses in fourth, eighth and eleventh grades, Assistant Superintendent Mike Swize said.

But the PSUSD Native American studies program will feature a localized curriculum.

"By partnering with the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians," Swize said, "we have the opportunity to be a model of cooperation between K-12 education, curriculum development and local heritage, history and culture."

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The program is an opportunity to tailor the curriculum to the Agua Caliente specifically, Tribal Chairman Jeff Grubbe said. It also makes sense because the school district sits on reservation land.

“We want to make sure to start with the history of my tribe and how we came to be,” Jeff Grubbe said. “Since they go to school on our land, we want to share our history.”

The Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians is also one of Coachella Valley's largest employers through its casinos and hotels.

"A large population of kids who go to school here end up working for us," Grubbe said. "Students can learn more about the tribe, so if they do come work with us, they know who we are."

Education reporter Jenny Ung can be reached at Jenny.Ung@desertsun.com.