It's back to school, but not in Red Lake for some

By GREGG AAMOT

Associated Press Writer

RED LAKE, Minn. (AP) - Dozens of students on the Red Lake Indian Reservation will attend school in neighboring districts this fall rather than return to the district where seven people were murdered five months ago.

At least 50 students who went to Red Lake schools a year ago have decided to attend school outside this isolated northern Minnesota reservation, and several others who are remaining in the Red Lake district will take most of their classes at home.

"I guess I just don't trust that school anymore,'' said Ashley Morrison, a senior who plans to take classes at her Red Lake home. "I'm not really caught up in my work, either, after missing so much school, and I think this will be better.''

While some students leave the district each year, this year's exodus is somewhat higher, officials said.

About 20 students who went to Red Lake schools last year plan to attend school in Kelliher, which will have about 80 students from Red Lake in all. Of the 80 some Red Lake students who will go to school in Bemidji, 19 were in Red Lake last year. Officials from both districts said they usually have about a dozen new Red Lake students each fall.

Meanwhile, Clearbrook-Gonvick will have 11 new students from Red Lake while Blackduck will have two.

More than half of the students at Red Lake High School stopped coming to class after 16-year-old Jeff Weise killed a security guard, a teacher and five students before killing himself March 21 in the nation's worst school shooting since Columbine. Weise also killed his grandfather and his grandfather's companion.

School administrators in the region were initially wary of taking more Red Lake students.

"I thought, 'We don't want to benefit from this,''' Bemidji Superintendent Jim Hess recalled.

But that changed after Red Lake Superintendent Stuart Desjarlait called superintendents from the area together and asked them to reconsider.

"His thought was, 'It's better for these kids to go to some school rather than no school at all,''' Hess said. "So he took the high road and asked us to open our doors.''

Desjarlait said the number of students leaving his district this fall isn't too much higher than it has been in recent years, though he added, "we hope to have them back right away.''

School officials said Wednesday it wasn't clear how many Red Lake students would attend school at home. Orientation for the new school year starts Thursday, with classes set to resume on Tuesday.

The Legislature also made it more amenable for neighboring superintendents to accept more students from the reservation, passing a bill to ensure that Red Lake wouldn't lose state financial aid - which is based, in part, on enrollment - if students fled the district.

Bemidji, which normally stops accepting applications from students outside the district in January, agreed to reopen its open enrollment process for two weeks in August. Nineteen Red Lake students signed up, Hess said.

Several students who talked to The Associated Press by phone Wednesday were staying inside on a rainy day and declined face-to-face interviews. Some said they hadn't talked about the shootings much lately, and didn't want to.

Chongai'la Morris, a sophomore, said he spent his summer attending powwows in North Dakota, Wisconsin and Nebraska, where he danced and tried to forget about the rampage.

He'll be back at Red Lake High School when school begins Tuesday.

"I stayed away this summer,'' he said. "But I'm excited to see my friends again and start a new year. I don't have too many worries about safety and things like that.''

His cousin, Sherene Iceman, won't be returning. She had thought about leaving the district last year, and the shooting sealed her decision.

"I think it will be pretty safe (in Red Lake), but I just don't know,'' said Iceman, who will be a student at Bemidji High School about 40 miles south of here. "I don't like going to school with my friends, anyway, because they distract me. So this will be good for me.''

Also on Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Donovan Frank released an updated but heavily blacked-out copy of the docket in the case of Louis Jourdain, the only person charged in the school shootings.

Jourdain, the son of tribal chairman Floyd Jourdain Jr., is being tried as a juvenile so the proceedings are not public. Neither prosecutors nor the defense have said much about the case or what Louis Jourdain is charged with doing. The court documents say he is charged with two counts, though their nature is not listed. Floyd Jourdain has maintained his son's innocence.

The court has periodically released the partial docket, which lists dates of certain hearings, orders and other filings. The latest version shed little light on the case against Jourdain and did not indicate whether a trial date has been set.