The director of the U.S. Bureau of Indian Education has been removed from his post after an inspector general's report found he used his influence to help people close to him get jobs in apparent violation of federal hiring practices.

Charles "Monty" Roessel was removed from his position Wednesday. Ann Marie Bledsoe Downes, a deputy assistant secretary in the Department of the Interior, will take over as acting director.



The report from the Interior Department's Office of Inspector General concluded that Roessel used his authority to significantly influence two hires at the bureau. The prospective employees were a program analyst with whom he had a romantic relationship and a relative who worked in the Navajo Nation school system.

The Bureau of Indian Education, which is housed in the Department of the Interior, oversees some 180 schools across reservations in more than 20 states, serving about 48,000 students.

The bureau for decades has been plagued by ineffective leadership, financial mismanagement and lack of expertise among staff in dealing with tribal schools, and has had more than 30 directors in the last 36 years.

Today, native youth post the worst achievement scores and the lowest graduation rates of any student racial subgroup. According to the most recently available federal data, 70 percent of American Indian/Alaska Native students graduated from high school, compared with the national average of 82 percent. And graduation rates among Native American youth who attend schools run by the Bureau of Indian Education are even worse, hovering at just 53 percent.

Moreover, many of thebureau's school facilities have been equally neglected, lacking even basic essentials such as heat and running water.

Roessel, who was named bureau director in 2013 after working in the agency for two years overseeing federally funded schools on the Navajo Nation, told congressional lawmakers last year that things would be different under his watch.



According to the inspector general report, Roessel acknowledged that he hired the program analyst and also admitted to having an ongoing romantic relationship with her that began before he became the bureau director and before she began working at the bureau. He called her a "close friend," and said "that's a tough question to answer" when asked if the two were romantically involved.

"In addition, Roessel and the BIE program analyst provided inconsistent statements in their responses to our questions and caused us to doubt their overall truthfulness and candor," the report says.

Roessel also admitted to intervening in his relative's hiring process to make sure she got a position she had applied for in the Navajo school system.

The office initiated the investigation in June 2014 after receiving a complaint from an official within the Bureau of Indian Education. Both cases appeared to involve violations of federal regulations regarding personnel practices, the report states.

According to the report, at the time the investigators interviewed Roessel, he was already "planning an exit strategy" from the bureau.