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recruit more tribal members as teachers and promote culturally responsive teaching.
• "I think having native teachers provides that connection to that community and who (students) are as people," said Robert Cook, an Oglala Sioux member and the senior managing director of the Native Alliance Initiative.
• The organization has been criticized, including by state Sen. Jim Bradford, a Pine Ridge Democrat, who argued against state funding for the organization. He said teachers only stay for two years and the program charges schools an eighth of their cost to recruit, train and support teachers.
• "They're not a poor organization," Bradford said.
• In 2012 and 2013 the state provided $250,000 matched, dollar for dollar, by private funds. The state did not provide funding this year, so the organization is currently targeting private contributions.
• Sam said she has heard another critique: "Oh, you're just another group of white people trying to come in and save the Indians."
• But she would like to see Teach for America build up the teacher base on the reservations to the point where there's no need for the organization at all.
• Cook said that might be a too lofty a goal, considering tribal schools get fewer than one application, on average, for every open teaching position.
• The shortage of teachers across the state and the changes presented by the housing shortages and rural location of reservation schools will leave a place for Teach for America, he said.
• Additionally, fewer than a third of students on South Dakota reservations are reading at their grade level, compared with more than three-fourths of white students in the state. And native students here have the lowest graduation rates of any demographic in any state, said Jim Curran, executive director of South Dakota's Teach for America.
• In her new position, Sam will meet with college students and work with Native American groups that could help funnel young people into teacher roles.
• "You want to recruit more people from this area" she said. "Because after their two years, you hope they'll stay in the area."
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• FORT PIERRE, S.D. (AP) -- Residents can still comment on several outdoors issues ahead of this week's meeting of the South Dakota Game Fish and Parks Commission in Fort Pierre.
• The commission on Tuesday and Wednesday will finalize several hunting seasons, including fall turkey, antelope and early fall Canada goose.

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