Dive Brief:
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Three years ago, the U.S. Bureau of Indian Education missed a deadline established by Congress to publish the estimated number of American Indian and Alaska Native students eligible for academic and cultural supports from the Johnson-O’Malley program, according to a report released Thursday by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
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GAO said BIE officials attributed the delays of the estimated figures to COVID-19 disruptions and a 2018 law passed by Congress that updated and modernized requirements for the Johnson-O’Malley program.
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BIE published an estimate in July that 578,070 students were potentially eligible for services by the Johnson-O’Malley program, which supports American Indian and Alaska Native students attending public schools and select tribal schools. The agency has relied on a 1995 count of eligible students who received services that year to determine its current budget allocation for the program, the report said.
Dive Insight:
Because of BIE’s delay to publish estimates of student eligibility for the Johnson-O’Malley Program, the GAO report said implementation of the 2018 law’s funding provisions and contractor reporting requirements will also be held up.
Some services in the Johnson-O’Malley program include purchasing school supplies and providing language enrichment. The program’s allocated funds are determined annually by a formula that considers the number of eligible students served and the average per-student operating costs.
As part of that formula, the agency is also required to report an annual count of the current number of students receiving the program’s services per the Johnson-O’Malley Supplemental Indian Education Program Modernization Act passed in 2018. However, for FY24, the agency will continue to rely on 1995 student counts for determining funding allocations. Contractors that report higher updated counts during FY23 will see funding increases.
The program’s student count in 1995 — at 271,884 — was less than half of BIE’s most recent estimate.
BIE intends to complete the first annual count since the program’s 2018 update by the end of fiscal year 2024.
Starting in fiscal year 2025, the agency will distribute the program’s funds based on current student counts reported annually by contractors. If a contractor does not report student counts by FY25, the agency told GAO it will withhold those contracted funds moving forward.
GAO has previously called attention to other issues with the agency’s handling of the program. In a separate GAO report published in 2020, the office flagged concerns that BIE was not maintaining a “complete and accurate list” of all Johnson-O’Malley program contractors.
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